The first two Little Nightmares games were standout horror adventure platformers that leaned heavily on atmosphere and visuals. The first game, though a bit short and unevenly paced, had DLC that made up for its brevity. Little Nightmares II was a much bigger sequel, with better pacing, more inventive scenarios, and a length that felt just right, matching the overall content of the first game plus its DLC. When it came time for Little Nightmares III, Tarsier Studios chose to create a new IP where they could experiment with co-op and further expand their formula with REANIMAL to great success.
Ironically, the actual Little Nightmares III did that too, but with less imagination and with a pathetic whimper. While REANIMAL‘s main adventure was an insane trek through a war-torn island wrought with animalistic monstrosities and mystery, the game concluded with a big question mark and left gamers wondering what it all meant. The Prisoner is the first DLC chapter of three. Does it explain the dark and surreal story, or does it leave gamers with even more questions?
REANIMAL is a cinematic platformer adventure game about two siblings: a Boy with a sack mask and a Girl wearing a rabbit mask, who reunite at sea and return to their flooded, war-ravaged home island. The setting is a hellish landscape of decay, abandoned industry, orphanages, trenches, and coastlines. Every locale is festooned with grotesque creatures: slithering human skins, spider-like beings, mutated animals, and more. The narrative is deliberately ambiguous and told largely through environmental storytelling and sparse dialogue. Recurring images of monstrous creatures, along with signs of war and sacrifice, hint at deeper themes of childhood trauma, repeating cycles of violence, and a sinister ritual that may have sparked the island’s transformation… Maybe. By the time it reaches its explosive finale, adrenaline is high, but so is the desire to know more and see where it’s all heading. Then it ends.
Like everything in REANIMAL, The Prisoner is steeped in vagueness and heavy with dread, layered with atmosphere and fragile hope amidst the horror, pushing the Little Nightmares formula into something darker and more intimate. The Prisoner follows two new child characters: a hooded inmate and a female soldier in a stahlhelm. After their aircraft is shot down, they journey through a hellish landscape to reach a modern-looking skyscraper. The quest ties closely to the events leading up to the climax of REANIMAL‘s core game, kicking off with a bang and packed with enough intrigue to keep players hooked.
The prisoner and the soldier explore a bombed-out shopping mall, spelunk around in a crumbling metro station, and get into a high-speed motorcycle chase through the ruins of a city. Both characters get bespoke weapons to differentiate their co-op experience too. The inmate gets a Polaroid camera which has a potent flash that blinds as well as has magical effects on some objects. The soldier gets a fire axe which is handy for close encounters with violent ashen children. Shockingly, the story permits a sequence where the kids get their hands on a couple of guns, which is bold for a video game.
The production values and art direction are top-notch; easily on par with some of the best set pieces in REANIMAL‘s core game. The war-like scenes are especially effective at conveying the senselessness of battle and maybe that the real animals are man all along. There’s a great deal of fire and smoke in this package, and the blasts of heat feel palpable. The way dust fills the air and diffuses in light is very convincing. The puzzles and variety are condensed and come at a rapid-fire pace without downtime, like an amped-up Ico set during a surrealist world war.
REANIMAL‘s first batch of DLC chapters is very promising and delivers the same kind of thrills, chills, and stupefying imagery fans of the main game will love. However, it comes with a few flaws that cannot be ignored. The Prisoner is too short, and yeah, he is lacking in stature, but that’s not the point. This first DLC is over way too quickly. This has been a problem with pretty much every game like Little Nightmares from the start, and it’s something that needs to be addressed.
The Prisoner ends just when things feel like they are beginning, and while it’s good to leave players wanting more, it’s not good to leave them unsatisfied. It’s like going to an excellent five-star restaurant and only being served quality bread with the richest, creamiest butter while being surrounded by delicious-looking appetisers and main courses. The DLC and its future chapters probably would have been best if they were implemented into the main game released as one big adventure. Doing an episodic season pass structure with something as short as REANIMAL, where there are long gaps between each chapter release, is disengaging.
Another problem with The Prisoner is that there were quite a few bugs encountered during its short and condensed play time. One of which was a game-ending glitch that got both the inmate and the soldier stuck in mid-air during a scene transition into a daring fire escape, leading to an unavoidable game over every time. Other times, if playing solo, the partner AI would get stuck and not move or follow, making progress impossible.
