REANIMAL dropped just shy of a month ago, and has received overwhelming praise. It is an adventure horror game developed by Tarsier Studios, the masterminds behind Little Nightmares 1 and 2.
After a rather lukewarm reception to Little Nightmares 3, developed by Supermassive Games and not affiliated with Tarsier Studios, I think a lot of us were even more eager for what the original studio was cooking up with REANIMAL. It’s a brand new game not associated with the previous franchise. As far as I’m concerned, this is the true sequel without being an actual sequel.
I will warn you now that we will be getting into spoilers and theories! But do find a buddy to play this game with as you can play co-op and experience this incredible game firsthand.
The Story
We follow two siblings, a brother and sister, as they navigate this hellish flooded world to rescue their three companions and escape.
This game is already different from the original franchise, as it actually includes (minimal) dialogue. The very first piece of dialogue is when the brother rescues his sister from the flood and she attacks him. When they settled down, he said “I thought you were dead.”
Upon the very first playthrough, this seems understandable. The sister, perhaps frightened and didn’t realize it was her brother, attacked him. He thought she was dead because he found her floating in the water. After you play through the game though, this simple sentence takes on a whole new meaning, but I’ll get to that later.
You both traverse this landscape, slowly finding each friend and encountering stuff of truly horrific nature. All the way, the sister is getting sicker and sicker, with the occasional scene of a sheep in a well, which is slowly coming back to life and growing.
It all culminates to one moment, where the sister doubles over in pain, and she vomits up the sheep we’ve been seeing. It had finally escaped the well, and with that, it escapes her. The sheep runs away, killing one of their friends almost immediately.
We are thrust into a war scenario, as the military is trying to kill all the beasts we’ve been seeing. It’s not going well. Soldiers keep killing themselves and we are a target for snipers.
They continue to lose everyone until you are left as the sister, confronting this beast she unwittingly created.
And then, it stops. The sister goes into a shed, and they attack her as she tried to defend herself.
The next shot is her brother dragging her body using a rope and body bag. If you are co-op as the sister, all you can do is writhe in the body bag while her brother drags you to the well you’ve been seeing. They throw her in the well and a circle of sheep surrounds everyone. The screen goes red with fury as the sheep all scream.
The final scene is the sister dead in the well, before she spasms and screams.
Theories
A lot of this will be speculative because as their games go, some things are left for your own interpretation.
What we do know though is the game is very clearly telling us the sister and the sheep are one and the same. Her brother and friends murdered her, seemingly a sacrifice, and somehow comes back to life in a nightmarish way. Perhaps the events of everything we played through is a nightmare sequence of the children’s guilt for murdering her, and she’s getting her revenge for the pain and trauma they’ve inflicted onto her.
But what of the flooded world? A popular theory is that there is a war occurring, causing all kinds of issues. So the children, who are in a cult as suggested by all the sheep at the end encircling them in a sort of ritual, sacrifices the sister to stop the war. Perhaps there’s even multiple victims. But she was the one who came back to enact her revenge.
As a result of these ritualistic killings to stop the war, they instead flooded the earth.
In the beginning, when her brother said “I thought you were dead” he didn’t mean because of her almost drowning, but because he killed her. And she attacked him because she was furious at what her own brother did to her. She may have then resigned herself to helping him find their friends so she could get her revenge once and for all.
I quite like this theory, but what are your thoughts? Do you have any interesting theories or things you noticed? I think this one is fascinating and checks off all the major story beats to form a cohesive, nightmare story.
Final Thoughts
I adored this game, maybe even usurping Little Nightmares 2 as my favorite from this studio. The story it told was fascinating and the gameplay was so much fun and perhaps even scarier than the previous games. I think Tarsier Studios went all out for this latest installment and it shows. The true sequel to their previous games, despite having no affiliation at all.
It had nonstop scares and action sequences, especially the moment where you fight the sheep with a tank while rolling backwards. Truly an incredible moment that’s a real standout for me.
We can expect three new chapters in later DLCs that may expand on this world and the lore we’ve built up so far. This summer, we will see the first DLC, with subsequent releases until early 2027.
Did you play the game? If not, what are you doing here, go play it! But I’d love to know your thoughts and any theories you may have.
