In Reanimal, a scary game from Tarsier Studios—the creators of Little Nightmares—you play as two orphaned kids trying to save their friends from mysterious monsters. The story starts with you controlling the male orphan, who is in a small wooden boat. He practices steering and accelerating in open waters, guided by buoy lights, toward a girl orphan floating nearby. Once you rescue her, you continue navigating through narrow rocky passages, using her lantern to look around while steering carefully to avoid damaging naval mines outside an abandoned factory in a forested waterway. After docking on a beach, you control the male orphan and explore the area, finding a key inside suitcases on the beach to open a door leading inside the factory.
You then enter a sewer system, crawling through grates and moving past dark tunnels until reaching the factory’s upper levels. Outside, you witness a shadowy figure closing a garage door—later identified as Sniffer, the first antagonist—who is dangerous and will attack if he catches you. You slip inside the factory, climbing ladders, crossing high platforms, and solving puzzles involving rotating pipes and power boxes. During this exploration, you find collectibles like masks and posters, and encounter another child who warns you to leave. Moving through broken floors and dark rooms, you rescue the female orphan, using teamwork to cross hazardous areas.
Progressing further, you climb a high wall with the mechanic’s help, and encounter a boy who tells you to leave. You then find a missing rail cart wheel by a desk, which you attach to restore the cart. As skin suits—hostile enemies—begin to chase you, you work quickly to escape back outside, pushing the cart along the tracks to leave the factory behind.
Next, you head into the train yard, entering through a crack in the wall near a bathroom where you grab a toilet plunger to retrieve a key. You avoid Sniffer, who is actively hunting you, hiding behind suitcases and crates while carefully moving in crouch mode to stay hidden. Reaching the train, you use levers with your partner to start moving the train out of the yard. Sniffer chases you, forcing a frantic escape by running across bridges and through the environment until you finally get outside with the rail cart wheel.
In the following chapter, “Into the Forest,” you jump down onto the ground and follow a path through woods, using the orphan’s flashlight to see in dark areas. You’re chased again by skin suits, which you outrun by taking alternate routes, including across logs and fences, until you reach a clearing with Sniffer’s ice cream van, which begins chasing you downhill. You and your friend manage to escape by jumping over a ledge, but Sniffer captures your other friend, ending the first chapter of Reanimal.
