Exploring the World of Reanimal
During Gamescom 2025 I headed to the THQ Nordic booth to meet Andreas Johnsson (Co-founder & Business Developer) and David Mervik (Narrative Director) from Tarsier Studios, who walked me through Reanimal. Unlike many presentations, this wasn’t hands-off — I played the demo together with my wife, both of us taking control of the leads, which set the tone for the conversation that followed.
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For those unfamiliar, Tarsier has built its name on atmospheric worlds. The Little Nightmares 1 & 2 series introduced their style to millions and grew into more than cult hits — selling over 20 million copies, inspiring comics, collectibles, and countless fan theories. Though Little Nightmares III is being developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco, Tarsier Studios — now part of Embracer/THQ Nordic — remains closely associated with the first two games, and their design language still echoes in Reanimal.
In this feature we’ll follow that thread: how a cinematic camera becomes part of the storytelling, why co-op horror was seen as both a risk and a challenge, what it means for violence to guide design, and how monsters and children once again form the fragile core of Tarsier’s vision.
Hands-On with the Gamescom Demo
The demo dropped us into a real location from the game — about half an hour in — rather than a staged vertical slice built just for the event. In the finished version, this area is approached by boat, but for pacing the team cut that sequence from the demo. Andreas Johnsson was straightforward about it: “We removed the boat for the demo. So there’s no way to go on the boat.” It worked well, giving them something concrete to talk about without spoiling too much.
Both characters in this demo were operated by me and my wife, which made it easy to feel how the game sets up its rhythm when two people share the same space. That element deserves its own closer look — and we’ll get back to it later.
The game has a storyline, but also side locations you can approach, sometimes by boat. I instantly asked what purpose these optional paths serve — are they just flavor, or do they affect the playthrough? David Mervik clarified: “There’s collectibles that you can explore side areas for, not like side quests.” These aren’t just trophies either; some of them tie back into alternate endings, rewarding curiosity with more than just worldbuilding scraps. “If you collect certain things, then, yeah, you will… you’ll discover more at the end.”
Before wrapping up, the developers confirmed that the public will get this same slice soon. “We’re going to release the demo to the public in October,” Johnsson said, likely mid-month. Not the full game, but enough for everyone to poke around and start building their own theories. THQ Nordic had a strong showing overall — I’ve already covered Gothic 1 Remake and SpongeBob: Titans of the Tide, with Tides of Tomorrow still to come — but Reanimal was something very special. Let’s explore it further!
From Little Nightmares to Reanimal
You can’t talk about Reanimal without acknowledging the shadow of Little Nightmares. The new game grows out of the same DNA, but the developers were clear that it isn’t a repeat. The shift is visible the moment you pick up the controller.
The moment I started to explore the world, I noticed how different the camera behaves compared to Little Nightmares. Back then it was fixed in a dollhouse perspective, always looking inward at tight, claustrophobic rooms. That choice worked perfectly for the series’ eerie, toy-box atmosphere. In Reanimal, the lens takes on a more cinematic role, pulling back to reveal the scale of the environment or tightening in to crank up the tension. “With Little Nightmares it was a dollhouse camera,” Andreas Johnsson recalled. “It was always pointing inwards looking into these small rooms. Here we have this kind of directed camera.” But here? A camera move that robs you of comfort.
A camera move that robs you of comfort.
I’ll be honest — I’m usually not a fan of losing control of the camera. In many games, being locked into a fixed angle during a chase can feel frustrating, even unfair. But here it worked differently. The camera isn’t just a restriction; it’s part of the design. It heightens tension, pulls focus to what matters, and sometimes amplifies the helplessness in ways manual control never could. It’s a classic cinematic trick used for storytelling, like music or sound design, only here it’s interactive. Players can nudge the right stick for small adjustments, but 95% of the framing is orchestrated to guide mood rather than mechanics.
The other big step forward is the decision to embrace true co-op, both online and on the couch. In Little Nightmares 1 and 2, people found their own way of making it a shared experience: parents and kids passing the controller back and forth, couples guiding each other through creepy puzzles. The studio kept hearing those stories, and it made them wonder what would happen if they stopped leaving co-op to improvisation and actually designed for it. “We heard a lot of stories back then with Little Nightmares about people playing pass-and-play with their kid or a partner,” Johnsson said. “So we thought it would be a very nice experience to play a horror game in that kind of setting.”
That decision shaped Reanimal from the ground up. The world, the camera, even the pacing of scares — all tuned for the idea of two people facing dread together. David Mervik described the tone bluntly: “It’s darker. The key word for this game throughout the development has been violence.” If Little Nightmares had a grotesque charm — eerie but almost playful — then Reanimal is deliberately harsher. The characters are older, their world more hostile, and the threats less abstract. It doesn’t go full Dead Space, but it no longer hides its edge behind whimsy.
What makes this transition fascinating is that it doesn’t abandon what worked before. It still feels like a Tarsier game — layered, symbolic, open to interpretation. But it also feels like the studio deliberately refusing to be boxed into one formula. They’ve carried forward the unsettling strangeness, the childlike perspective, but retooled the frame and the systems to bring out something rawer. If Little Nightmares was about stories whispered through a crack in the wall, Reanimal wants you to step through that crack and confront what’s on the other side.
Balancing Solo and Co-op Horror
Reanimal can be played alone or with a partner, but that choice isn’t just a menu option — it changes how the game feels moment to moment. In single-player, the second character is handled by AI. In co-op, the tension is shared across two people sitting on the same couch or connected online. Striking a balance between those two setups wasn’t simple.
Andreas Johnsson admitted the team wrestled with it constantly. “You want to make sure that it’s enjoyable in both situations, right? So in single player, the AI can’t be too helpful. It needs to be a bit more passive, but still not too passive, right? So it’s a tricky balance.” The danger was that an over-eager AI might solve puzzles or blunt the scares, while an underactive one would feel like dead weight.
The co-op side posed its own risks. Horror usually thrives on isolation, and the team worried that letting two players loose together might break the atmosphere. David Mervik explained their hesitation: “That was one of our reservations when we were considering co-op horror because it almost feels like it threatens the sense of horror.” Instead of backing away, they treated it as a challenge. Could they design moments that keep players so focused on surviving that they don’t have time to fool around? “It’s sort of like, well, can we get people to be thinking, holy moly, we need to get out of this?” Mervik said.
The answer lay in atmosphere and immersion rather than forcing behavior. “If you remove that from players so that they play our game correctly, then you’re not active in the same way,” Mervik explained. By scripting less and trusting the design to create dread, the team let players retain freedom while still feeling the weight of danger. It means that even laughter — those nervous chuckles that slip out in tense moments — isn’t a failure of horror but a natural release valve.
And I think they succeeded. During the demo, as we were escaping dangers, I found myself looking not only after my own character but constantly checking how my partner was doing. Even when I managed to slip away, it was still intense to watch how she dodged threats, every move counting. When we finally made it through, there was that classic shared release — “phew.” It’s the kind of moment you simply can’t experience alone.
When we finally made it through, there was that classic shared release — “phew.” It’s the kind of moment you simply can’t experience alone.
Co-op unlocks new layers of worry and empathy. Playing together, especially in the same room, comes with its own running commentary: “no no no, go left, fast fast fast!” These frantic bursts of guidance and panic are absent in solo play. But don’t get me wrong — this isn’t a Mario-framed party game. The grimness and despair remain part of the design, only now filtered through two people reacting to it in real time.
The Guiding Word – Violence
Every project needs a north star, and for Reanimal that word was “violence.” It didn’t mean splattering blood across the walls or chasing shock value. It was a creative filter, a way to judge whether each part of the game carried the right edge.
David Mervik explained how it guided them through countless decisions. “It’s a way of judging things… you concept lots of things, you get sketches from all over the place. And the question is: does it feel violent enough? Maybe the artwork is a little too polished, so it needs to be torn up a little, have those harder edges.” The same went for the soundtrack. If the music came in too soft, too sweet, it didn’t belong. “A violent musical choice is very different than a violent act,” he added, but the principle was the same: every discipline had to reflect that tone.
The shift is clear when comparing Reanimal to Little Nightmares. Where the earlier games carried an eerie charm — grotesque but almost playful — this world feels harsher and less forgiving. “Tonally it demanded to evolve away from the kind of tone that we struck with Little Nightmares,” Mervik said. “We don’t go full Dead Space or anything like that, but it’s got a harder edge to it.” The protagonists themselves are older this time, and their experiences show in how they confront what’s around them.
“Violence” wasn’t the only keyword pinned above the desks at Tarsier. Another was “scared together.” It explains why the team refused to split the screen in co-op. Instead, the camera always keeps both players in a shared perspective, making them face the same threats and the same pressure. Every creative choice was measured against these pillars: does it channel violence? Does it hold the players together in dread?
Storytelling Between Clarity and Mystery
Reanimal walks a fine line between showing and suggesting. When asked whether the story is meant to be obvious or left entirely to interpretation, David Mervik answered that it had to be a bit of both. “I want people to know that there is an intention, that there is a story and there’s something to discover. If you just say, go ahead and theorise what we’re up to, then it’s not as engaging.”
That balance shows in the way dialogue is handled. Unlike Little Nightmares, where the silence was almost total, Reanimal introduces voice-over — but only in tiny fragments. “The characters will talk very seldom, but they do talk,” Mervik explained. The aim wasn’t to hold the player’s hand in the Uncharted style, with characters narrating their feelings out loud. Instead, it was about sprinkling just enough words to spark curiosity. A phrase dropped at the wrong moment, a tone of voice that lingers. “It’s more engaging as a player to go, ‘Why did you say it like that?’ and then not get told why.”
Even the title invites speculation. During the session, the question came up: is Reanimal about becoming animalistic, or animals becoming human? The answer was deliberately evasive. “We’re still Tarsier,” Mervik said. “We still make our games… it’s an evolutionary step for us. By the end of the game, my hope is that you’re kind of like, I think I know, but I’ll play one more time and just see.” It’s not about clarity, but about leaving players with enough to argue over long after the credits.
To capture the essence of what Mervik described — and much more — I uploaded a 13-minute gameplay video showing exactly what we experienced in the demo. It’s part of the actual game, and it might contain a few spoilers, though nothing that will ruin your first playthrough. Beyond the balance of intention and mystery, the video also shows how co-op plays out, how the camera shifts to shape tension, and how the atmosphere builds in real time. In short, it’s a condensed look at nearly everything we discuss throughout this interview.
It’s clear that for Tarsier, storytelling isn’t about explaining everything — it’s about creating a world that feels intentional enough to inspire questions. The game plants seeds, and the interpretations grow in the player’s mind. And if the narrative is the soil, then the creatures are the roots pushing up through it — strange, unsettling, and impossible to ignore. Which brings us to the monsters of Reanimal.
Creatures of the World
Some of the strongest impressions from Reanimal come from its monsters — beings that feel wrong even when they resemble something familiar. The sheep is a good example. At first glance it looks ordinary: shaggy, horned, lumbering. But the longer you stare, the less it adds up. Its proportions don’t sit right, its presence unsettles. Early viewers were already asking, “What is that sheep thing?!” and David Mervik only deepened the intrigue: “The sheep is integral to it. We’ve had that from the start. That’s the one I’m really interested in, finding out what people make of it.”
The way he put it made the intent clear — these creatures aren’t random designs, they’re planted enigmas. Each is a puzzle, the community’s first quest: not just to survive them, but to decode what they mean and why they exist in this world.
These monsters aren’t stitched together for the sake of variety. They grow out of the backstory, connected to the same themes that shape the setting and its characters. That gives them weight beyond simple enemy encounters. You don’t just fear what they might do to you; you start to wonder why they are here at all.
Monster designs in this form leave gaps for the imagination to fill, and those gaps are often more terrifying than any direct explanation. The Reanimal bestiary carries both meaning and enigma — some truths may surface through collectibles and side paths, while others will remain unsolved, leaving fans to argue, speculate, and boil over theories long after the credits. I have my own theory, but I’ll keep it to myself until the game’s release. As an influencer I could unintentionally affect someone’s perception and block a new theory from arising.
Children at the Heart of Horror
As parents of two kids, we’re naturally sensitive when games put children into bleak, violent worlds. So one of the questions we carried into this interview was simple: why kids again?
The studio has built its reputation on child protagonists — from Six and Mono in Little Nightmares to the two leads in Reanimal. When asked directly, David Mervik didn’t hesitate: “It’s not that we hate children, but it’s interesting to drop them into a world that does.” Instead of arming players with capable adults who can fight their way through anything, the decision to center children changes the balance completely. Vulnerability becomes part of the design.
That vulnerability also sharpens the stakes. “If you drop fully capable, tooled-up adults into this world, it’s a totally different balance,” Mervik explained. “So for us, it’s like putting kids at the centre of this and it’s like, what’s happened to these kids that’s brought them here? How will they cope?” The monsters and violence stop being abstract threats — they become overwhelming forces pressing against characters who are barely able to survive.
There’s also a strong creative influence behind the choice. Mervik pointed out that many in the studio grew up with the works of Studio Ghibli, where children often face hostile worlds. Instead of seasoned adults meeting danger with grim determination, kids stumble, adapt, and improvise, giving the narrative a fragile edge.
In Reanimal, the protagonists are older, closer to teenagers. That shift gives them a little more agency while keeping the vulnerability intact. It’s an evolution of the studio’s familiar theme, adding a glimmer of resilience without stripping away the fragility that defines their work.
And while our initial question might have sounded too provocative, the goal was to uncover the design perspective behind that choice. In the end, I think Tarsier managed to put just the right kind of pressure on players with this decision.
Reanimal – Collectibles and Release Plans
At the booth, there were smaller treasures too. Press kits, creative maps, and figurines that finally let the team hold their designs in physical form. Andreas Johnsson smiled as he described seeing them in the real world for the first time — a tangible reminder of years of work.
Beyond the show floor, THQ has already unveiled a full merchandise line for the game. The Reanimal Collector’s Edition (€199.99 / $199.99) includes PVC statues, an artbook, a folded map-poster, a keychain, and stickers. For fans of the characters, there are also five Orphans figures sold individually at €29.99 each, or together in a set box for €129.99. The highlight, however, might be Reanimal – The Mine resin figurine: a strictly limited piece priced at €89.99, hand-painted, and capped at only 500 units worldwide.
And then comes the bigger hint: the release window. Reanimal is officially planned for Q1 2026 across Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2. What’s interesting is that all of the merchandise listings give an exact date — March 31, 2026.
Unless THQ intends to start shipping collector’s items long before the game itself, it seems more like a quiet confirmation of when players will finally step into this world.
Final Reflections
I really appreciate THQ Nordic for the invite — the close chat with the Tarsier team was a fantastic way to learn the game from the inside out. That’s the value of exclusive interviews. Beyond the trailers and press releases, such conversations give you the chance to get familiar with the makers rather than just the result — the game itself. It helps explain why things are designed the way they are, and I genuinely hope my articles are not only interesting for fans, but also useful for indie developers searching for their own way to build great games. I find these talks both inspirational and practical, a chance to uncover how ideas eventually solidify into specific mechanics and creative decisions.
For me, the takeaways here are clear. The camera isn’t just a technical tool, but a part of storytelling that shapes the player’s emotions. Co-op isn’t a gimmick — it amplifies the experience by adding worry, empathy, and shared release into the mix. And perhaps the most defining element: children at the center, with their unique perspective shaping how players see the world around them.
With Reanimal, Tarsier has stepped into something darker, sharper, and more demanding. It’s not just about surviving monsters, but about decoding what they mean. Not just about feeling fear, but about carrying responsibility for someone else.
The demo will arrive this October, so make sure to follow the Steam page — or my socials — for the latest updates and more content like this.
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