REANIMAL PC Demo: Beautiful Horror, But No Keyboard Input

REANIMAL PC Demo – A Beautiful Horror I Couldn’t Play

From the outside, REANIMAL looks like exactly the kind of horror adventure I should be excited about. It’s the new project from Tarsier Studios, the team behind Little Nightmares and Little Nightmares II, now working with THQ Nordic on a co-op horror journey about a brother and sister trying to rescue their missing friends on a cursed island.

The REANIMAL PC demo offers a taste of what’s to come, with the full game set to launch on Friday the 13th, February 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2, with a free demo already available.

REANIMAL – Release Date Trailer

Official REANIMAL release date trailer. Footage © Tarsier Studios / THQ Nordic.

I fired up the PC demo to see what the hype was about – and immediately hit a wall. I launched it with no controller plugged in, expecting to play on keyboard and mouse like I do with most PC games. The opening screen asks me to “Press A”, but in my case no keyboard key did anything at all. I tried every usual suspect, hammered my way across the board, and the game simply refused to move past that prompt.

The REANIMAL PC demo asks you to “Press A to start” – but on my setup, no keyboard key worked at all.

Officially, REANIMAL is built with keyboard, mouse, and controller support on PC, and other players are clearly managing to play that way. On my system, though, the reality was simple: without a gamepad at my desk, I couldn’t start the demo at all. For a PC build that’s otherwise presented as plug-and-play, that’s a rough first impression and, for anyone expecting to play on keyboard and mouse, it can easily feel confusing and a bit misleading.

I’m not saying REANIMAL is universally “controller-only” or that the developers are deliberately hiding anything. It most likely comes down to an input bug or edge case in this demo build – some setups clearly work, others don’t. But as a player who downloaded the demo in good faith to see what the game feels like, the end result is still the same: no controller, no demo.

REANIMAL

Release: February 13, 2026

Genre: Survival Horror, Cinematic Platformer, Co-op Adventure

Developer / Publisher: Tarsier Studios / THQ Nordic

Platforms: PC — Steam, PlayStation 5 — PlayStation Store; Xbox Series X|S — Xbox Store; Nintendo Switch 2 — TBA

Related reading: if you enjoy seeing how games build momentum long before launch, you might also like our feature on how over the hill hit 650,000 Steam wishlists in ten months.