If you’re a fan of the Little Nightmares series, boy oh boy do I have good news for you.
Yes, we already knew Little Nightmares 3 was in the works, but today during Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024, we got a new look at the co-op gameplay and some of the monstrosities you’ll have to contend with. There’s one in particular toward the end of the trailer that’s chasing the two protagonists by dragging itself with its gangly, emaciated arms, and I feel like noping out of that encounter already. We also see plenty of platforming and puzzle solving in the new trailer that focuses on the two new protagonists, best friends Low and Alone.
The visuals look great, the music is sparse but effectively creepy, the platforming and puzzle-solving look solid from a distance, and most importantly, the monsters look like they crawled right out of my worst melatonin-induced nightmares. Which is exactly what you want from a new Little Nightmares game.
For me, the trailer offers some assurance that the Little Nightmares series is still in good hands despite original developer Tarsier being sold to Embracer and thus not being involved with the series. This is a perfect segue into the other big reason Little Nightmares fans are eating good.
It just so turns out that Tarsier is also working on a new game, Reanimal, and it announced it during the same Gamescom show that brought us the new Little Nightmares 3 trailer. Now, just because it’s from the same developer as the original Little Nightmares doesn’t mean it’ll be anything like those games, but in this case it absolutely does mean that. It seems to be a lot like Little Nightmares, in fact.
In fact, I attended a group interview with Tarsier co-founder Andreas Johnsson and Reanimal narrative director Dave Mervik, and Johnsson said Reanimal is “the next game in our strategy, of sorts,” of making games with a “unique tone and atmosphere” in which “players get to imagine and interpret the world themselves.” The term ‘spiritual successor’ was never used explicitly, but that’s very much the vibe I got from the conversation. Johnsson also said the game is “darker and grittier” than any of Tarsier’s previous work.
Anyway, the trailer for Reanimal is quite something. The muted color palette, macabre art and character design, and gameplay are very similar to Little Nightmares, but there’s definitely a slightly more menacing, explicitly horror-esque tone to it than we’ve seen in Little Nightmares. It stars two siblings trapped in “a hellish version of their home” that’s filled with all manner of appalling creatures including what seem to be giant, reanimated animal corpses.
One thing Reanimal is doing different from Little Nightmares is boat traversal. Mervik said the world is composed of various levels that are separated by water, and to get to each main area you’ll have to travel by boat. He also said there are some “smaller areas you can explore in a non-linear way and still, in those areas, that’s where you can find these extra pieces and see ‘what is really going on here’ and start to form a picture of the pasts of these kids.”
There’s no release date for Reanimal, but it’s coming exclusively to new-gen consoles and PC. Meanwhile, Little Nightmares 3 is due out on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile devices sometime in 2025.
In the meantime, scare yourself silly with the best horror games out now.
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