ReAnimal Interview

Playing the new game, ReAnimal, by the creators of Little Nightmares at Gamescom 2024 was a unique opportunity. It led to an insightful interview with Andreas Johnsson, co-founder and business developer at Tarsier Studios. What made this interview particularly interesting was that, unlike typical interviews where I ask the questions, this time, the tables were turned, and I was the one being questioned at the start.

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Andreas Johnsson:

So let’s start off with, has anyone not seen the trailer? Have you seen the trailer? Yes, yes, yes. Oh, you played the demo? Yeah. OK. Nice. Cool. Yeah? How was that?

• I played the game with my colleague Arian in co-op mode, and the spirit of the old, canceled project, The City of Metronome, was strongly felt throughout.

Andreas Johnsson:

The city of Metronome. What???

 You know, I’m one of the co-founders of Tarsier. I’ve been with the studio for… Next year is going to be 20 years. City of Metronome. Yeah, I mean… We were really anticipating, like looking forward to see what they were doing.

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• Since my first interview with Tarsier Studios in 2019, where I discussed Little Nightmares 2 with Mr. Dave Mervik, I have been following Tarsier Studios closely, both as a fan and a journalist. After your acquisition by THQ Nordic and knowing that the Little Nightmares IP was with Bandai Namco, I was eagerly waiting to see what your next project would be. Today, I finally had the chance to experience Reanimal. Interestingly, despite also trying out Little Nightmares 3 at Gamescom, Reanimal felt much more like a true successor to Little Nightmares. What do you think could be the reason for this?

Andreas Johnsson:

It’s… We’re best friends with the producer at Bandai Namco. We had drinks with him the other day. And for me personally, it goes back to when we worked with Media Molecule. So they made LittleBigPlanet 1. We made some assets for that game. They made the second game. We made lots of more assets. And we learned about the world of LittleBigPlanet. And then they got tired. They wanted to do something new, And we got to make LittleBigPlanet for the Vita. And we got to… kind of push the boundaries of that universe, try out some new things, especially when it comes to narrative and visuals. And in that, you can also see some traces from City of Metronome. And it’s the same way now with Little Nightmares. So in a sense, like Little Nightmares, we grew a bit tired of making yet another Little Nightmares, as with Media Molecule and Big Planet.

There were other things as well, like being acquired by Embracer and getting the opportunity to create something new that we can own. Absolutely. And just excitement of what could that be. But now it’s time for Supermassive to kind of break the boundaries that I think, you know… when you create the game you set some boundaries.

This is the game… here are the core pillars, but you also set some mental boundaries that will not help the games.

 Where they don’t have that baggage that we have. So they can break and create, You know, break new grounds in the crisis, so I … we’re excited. I’m excited about what they’re gonna do.

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• One feature that fans have been eagerly anticipating in your games is a co-op experience, especially in Little Nightmares 2. With the character Six acting as a deuteragonist, many fans, including myself, expected a two-player mode. Could you elaborate on the challenges you faced in implementing this feature in your new game?

Andreas Johnsson:

That’s really nice to hear because I think that’s been one of the challenges in this project. I mean, there are countless challenges.

Joschka Pottgen (Lead Core Engineer):

As in any project.

Andreas Johnsson:

Like just the fact to go co-op and online from technical perspective.

Joschka Pottgen:

It was a big step for the studio, for sure.

Andreas Johnsson:

But then also, like, OK, so what does this mean in a horror setting? Because it’s bound to happen that the players will fool around a bit when they’re playing together, like, haha, I’m going to run into you, or I’m going to run over there and stuff like that. But that’s also one of the charming elements of playing a horror game together, but also watching a horror movie together. That’s when you kind of, when shit hits the fan in the movie, you can laugh a bit nervously, your friend is sitting by and you… There’s something added.

Joschka Pottgen:

About that shared experience.

Andreas Johnsson:

Yeah, exactly. But for us, it’s been like the drama curve. In a horror, at least our horror games, you need some time to relax a bit, to calm. And that’s where you also can play around and fool around a bit, in co-op. But then when, you know, one of the chase scenes in the demo, for example, I can imagine that you both went into like, okay, let’s run. No time to play. Yeah.

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• I’ve played many horror games, but your games always remind me of the phobias I faced during my childhood. I’m very curious to know why Tarsier Studios has a special focus on these childhood fears, and why you’ve continued this theme in your new game, Reanimal.

Joschka Pottgen:

It’s not quite how we think about it, right? It’s not about the fears you have as a child so much. It’s a lot about having child protagonists and putting them in these circumstances. Because for us, we find it so interesting to have characters that are underpowered and are kind of fighting for survival in this horrible world. And also the juxtaposition of the horror and the children who, by themselves, because they’re innocent maybe or because you don’t quite what happened to them? Like, there’s a lot of intrigue, there’s a lot of uh playfulness that comes from that. So that’s really what we’re… What we’re

Andreas Johnsson:

And I… I think it also, as a player, you… you get…  I think a better connection with the kid and… and feeling like you want to help the kid more than if we would put, like, a 25-year-old dude in the game. It would be like, okay, it’s just another, I can probably find a gun. It’s… it’s instantly…  it becomes about like some kind of emotional attachment because of this kid in this fucked up situation. So… but there’s also like… like that the kids are, the whole hiding sneak, and they’re not that, they can’t go into fist fight or guns or whatnot. That also creates like, it’s so much more interesting, there’s are loads of games with guns. Say that again if you like guns, but we feel that this is more interesting. Or at least it… it’s something different.

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• Given that both Little Nightmares and Reanimal offer a 2.5D visual experience, I have a concern I’d like to address. In Little Nightmares, the depth perspective occasionally caused issues for players, making platforming quite challenging. In Reanimal, I noticed some changes in the camera. Was this new camera designed to address these issues? Additionally, does the new game still face platforming challenges due to depth perception problems in certain areas?

Andreas Johnsson:

 I mean, I remember that we had some challenges, and in the end product as well, challenges with perspective, the depth perspective. That’s not the reason why we went with this camera for this game. This is just a result of us wanting to do something more, to evolve.

And when we talked about… okay, Our core pillar in ReAnimal is being scared together. That’s the core pillar that tells us what choices we should make when we make the game. And early on, we prototyped different cameras to see… OK, what would fit this kind of game. We tried, like, a split screen. It just fall apart… It was horrible for this kind of game, at least.

And that’s when we came to this kind of camera. I guess it’s a bit of Silent Hill, some of the scenes at least.

Joschka Pottgen:

 Reminiscent of it, at least.

Andreas Johnsson:

Yeah, reminiscent of it. But it’s this directed camera. And in some situations it follows you a bit. In some situations it stays and just pans out, and you can get this kind of scenic view.

In places, it just zooms in and creates this claustrophobia.

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• Could you talk more about the team working on the Reanimal project? What’s important for me and our readers to know is whether the team that initially started with the vision of creating The City of Metronome has retained its core members after joining THQ Nordic.

Andreas Johnsson:

So we have from the original team, I think we’re still five at the studio, still working. So five of us has been at the studio for about almost 20 years.

 But City of Metronome, it’s mainly two people. It’s Per, our art director. He’s one of the co-founders. And it’s Björn, who’s also one of the co-founders … design … he’s not a design director but senior designer. And they are the main masterminds behind City of Metronome. But you can see Per’s artwork throughout the whole of Tarsier … you can see it in Rag Doll Kung fu, our first proper game and Little Big Planet, obviously. You can see Björn’s genius design ideas in Statik, the VR game, the puzzle game. And it’s amazing that we’re still, like, five people from back then that are still working at the studio.

Joschka Pottgen:

 And when it comes to Little Nightmares, there’s definitely more people on the team. Absolutely. I would say the whole core team is still working on this. That’s also why a lot of people draw a lot of comparisons between the two games. I mean, I … the big thing is the visual identity. Since Per, the art director, is still there. I mean, you have that vibe, right? Because actually in the beginning, when we started making this game, we were almost like, every idea almost was weighed against, is this too similar to Little Nightmares? Should we do something completely different? And at some point we were like, you know what? I mean, we have strengths. Why are we shying away from our strengths and trying to almost bend over backwards? To do something that then maybe isn’t as good as it could be. Instead, we should focus on the game we’re making and make the game as good as it can be and be just proud of what we are and what we can do, right? And at the same time, go beyond what we’ve done before. There’s a lot of new things in here that we’ve never done. You mentioned … the co-op. That’s a big thing for us as a studio. Then the camera is completely different. We’re trying dialogue in this for the first time, which for Dave, for Merv, is a big difference as well. How do we bring dialogue to a game, without then all of a sudden giving away too much? We want minimal storytelling like you are used to as our fans. We want people to interpret what we’re doing. And having the space to theorize about what everything means and how everything fits together instead of just giving them, here, by the way, this is the world, this is exactly what happened, and here’s yada, yada, yada, right? Because for us, it’s super important that we have people, have that opportunity because it’s so cool for us to see where they take it like, what … what … what … what are these guys doing like I…  I don’t know is it, and then they connect to two things that maybe in our mind had nothing to do with each other and it’s just… it’s just super cool to see. Yeah, It’s a bit humbling to us as well because it shows how passionate people are about the games and the story, and how willing they are to dive into each and every little thing. It’s super cool to see.

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• If you have any special message for the Bazinameh audience, we would be delighted to hear it.

Andreas Johnsson:

I hope you enjoy what you’ve seen so far of Re-Animal, our new game from Tarsier Studios. It’s a co-op horror adventure where we hope that you will enjoy the horrors of our world together. Enjoy!