That last item deserves flagging plainly rather than being buried in a store listing. If that’s material you’d rather avoid, this is not the DLC for you.
It’s telling that a substantial share of the players recommending this DLC do so with the caveat “get it on sale” attached. When your positive reviews come with a discount condition, that’s a pricing problem rather than a quality one — and it’s a large part of why this sits at Mostly Positive rather than higher.
Our advice up front, so you can stop reading if that settles it: this is a wishlist-and-wait purchase unless you already own the Season Pass.
REANIMAL – The Prisoner introduces two new characters — the Soldier and the Prisoner — and drops them into the war-ravaged streets of a place you’ll recognise, where they proceed to stumble down a rabbit hole that changes both of them.
It’s the first of three planned chapters, developed by Tarsier Studios and published by THQ Nordic, and it arrived on August 7 at $9.99.
What’s Here Is Genuinely Very Good
Let’s be clear about the quality before we return to the quantity, because they’re separate arguments. The Prisoner meets the bar of the main game. The art direction, the sound design and the sheer oppressive weight of the atmosphere are all intact — Tarsier remain among the very best in the industry at making a place feel wrong.
There’s one set-piece in particular — you’ll know it when it happens, and it involves ordnance — that is flatly one of the best moments in anything REANIMAL has produced. It’s the sort of sequence that justifies the whole chapter on its own, and it’s the thing players keep coming back to when they talk about this DLC.
And Now the Problems
The story is similarly restrained. There’s one meaningful piece of lore delivered near the end, and it’s not currently possible to say what it means — which is defensible in a three-part structure, but it does mean this chapter ends without much having landed. REANIMAL’s minimalist, interpretive approach to narrative is a feature of the series; here it edges closer to simply not saying anything yet.
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
|---|---|---|
| Tarsier Atmosphere, UndiminishedArt direction, sound design and the sheer oppressive weight of the place are all fully intact. This meets the bar of the main game, and there’s one ordnance-related set-piece that stands with the best moments the series has produced. | Too Short for $9.99The most repeated complaint, and a fair one. The content is good; there isn’t enough of it. When a large share of your positive reviews carry a “get it on sale” caveat, the pricing is the problem. | Collision and CrashesMovement catches on geometry often enough to become a running irritation, and crashing was widespread enough that Tarsier issued a public statement eleven days after launch. A paid add-on should arrive steadier than this. |
| Sharper Character RolesThe Soldier and the Prisoner are more distinctly differentiated than the base game’s pairing, which strengthens the co-op asymmetry and gives swapping sides genuine replay value. The best addition here. | One Reused LocationEssentially a single space, drawn from the original campaign. The war-ravaged recontextualising works, but if you expected somewhere new, you won’t get it — and that’s thin ground for a first chapter. | It Doesn’t Launch From the DLC ScreenEnough players assumed their purchase was broken that this needs saying out loud. A one-line pointer in the launcher would eliminate it entirely. |
| Co-Op Options Still Class-LeadingOnline, split-screen, cross-platform, Remote Play Together and a Friend’s Pass so your second player doesn’t need to buy in. That last one meaningfully softens the price. | The Lore Barely MovesOne meaningful revelation near the end, and no way to interpret it yet. Defensible across three chapters, but this one ends without much having landed. | Trial and ErrorSeveral sequences lean on repeated failure to teach you what they wanted. Some is intended design language; some is unclear signposting made worse by the collision problems. |
The Verdict
A spine-chilling adventure that’ll haunt your dreams — that was our verdict on REANIMAL, and everything that made it true is still present in The Prisoner. Tarsier haven’t lost a step on atmosphere, the two new characters are mechanically the most interesting pairing the series has had, and there’s a moment here that will stay with you.
The trouble is arithmetic. One reused location, a lore drop you can’t yet decode, a collision system that fights you and a stability record that required a public statement — sold for ten dollars, as the first of three. Individually those are all survivable. Together, at that price, they add up to something that feels like a fragment rather than a chapter.
The frustrating part is that the ceiling is obviously there. The sharper role differentiation is a genuine step forward, and if the remaining two DLCs build on it with new environments and a story that actually resolves something, this trilogy could end up excellent. The Prisoner just doesn’t stand up especially well on its own.
Buy it now if you own the Season Pass, or you’re the sort of REANIMAL obsessive who wants every fragment of this world the moment it exists. You’ll get real value from what’s here.
Wait for a sale if you’re anything else. That’s not a dismissal — it’s the same conclusion most of the people who recommend this DLC arrived at independently, and it remains the honest advice.
For more reviews, check out our full reviews section, or read our review of the base game.
