I remember the day a fresh copy of CU Amiga magazine arrived in my brother’s hands, and on the ride back home we pored over its pages, eager to fire up the A500 and try out the cover disks. One demo on the game disk came with an enigmatic title, Flashback, and an intriguing little postage stamp screenshot of a man in an alien jungle. The demo itself, with its lush artwork, rotoscoped animation, and movie-like cutaways and insert shots, blew my tiny little mind. Though like most 80s kids I had tried out the original Prince of Persia, this was my first true brush with a genre that is often called the Cinematic Platformer. Game genres are in some ways harder to define than in other linear storytelling media, given that mechanics and interaction is so much of the equation, but the cinematic platformer is entirely about vibes, as the kids say (or is that already outdated? Asking for an ageing Millennial friend). And the vibes are definitely strong with REANIMAL, as its demo amply proves.
Tarsier Studios‘s previous efforts in the Little Nightmares series is another gap in my gaming knowledge, but with a taste of REANIMAL I’ll be happy to go back and check them out. But to the game at hand, the demo drops you into the role of a little masked child in a boat, and you’re soon joined by a companion (The whole game can be played in local co-op, though I played solo). While REANIMAL favours a spooky tone, it functions very much like classic cinematic platformers like Another World: there are puzzles and navigation conundrums, stealth and narrow escapes, as you explore a dilapidated factory and its surroundings filled with creepy skinsuit rat-dudes and lumbering bogeymen.
I like how nothing here really seems to be ‘correct,’ scale wise, from your player kids to the oversized enemies. It unsettles you at a visceral level. The demo’s atmosphere can be a bit of a hindrance; a couple of times I found myself stuck because I hadn’t noticed the one thing I needed to interact with in the gloom. I’m glad it doesn’t handhold you by constantly suggesting the way forward, but be warned that this is a game where you do have to pay attention, and death is inevitable to give you some jump-scares, until you figure out the correct ‘cinematic’ way of playing.
This trial and error game loop is par for the course, something built-into the genre as far back as Prince of Persia, which is why even back in the day this subgenre of platformers rarely had a life counter. In some ways seeing all the death animations and missteps is part of the fun, and REANIMAL is a solid piece of cinematic spookiness.
Do check out the demo, or watch my clumsy playthrough of it on my youtube channel.
– VKB