Reanimal Review

Tarsier made the first two Little Nightmares games, lost the series when its publisher handed the third to another studio, and built this instead. It is a spiritual sequel in everything but the name, and it is bigger and nastier than anything the studio shipped under the old one. Two children, a boy in a sack mask and his sister in a rabbit mask, work across a drowned island looking for three friends taken by things a review should leave undescribed. A speedboat opens routes away from the critical path, coffins and masks reward searching, and a free Friend's Pass lets a second player join without buying a copy.

The art is the reason to play it. A camera that holds both children in frame at all times does more for the dread than any jump scare, and the monsters, designed around the siblings' shared past, are upsetting rather than merely grotesque. Puzzles and platforming are where it thins. Several reviewers found the camera as irritating as it is effective, scores ranged from a five out of five to a six out of ten on that point alone, and the moment to moment play is the same set of climbs, pulls and hiding places the studio was using in 2017. Superb atmosphere attached to ordinary mechanics, which has always been the deal here.