Tarsier Studios

Tarsier Studios is a Swedish video game developer based in Malmo, founded in 2004 as Team Tarsier by nine developers including Andreas Johnsson and Bjorn Sunesson. They spent years doing work-for-hire for Sony, creating art assets and downloadable content for LittleBigPlanet, before building their own original games. In 2019 they were acquired by Embracer Group for approximately 99 million SEK or $10.7 million. They are best known for Little Nightmares, one of the most visually distinctive horror games of the last decade.

Tarsier Studios Origin Story: From Work-for-Hire to Little Nightmares

The Early Years

Tarsier started as a small team doing work-for-hire, producing art assets for Sony’s LittleBigPlanet and its Vita port. In 2010 they signed an exclusivity deal with Sony that lasted several years. CEO Mattias Nygren joined in 2006 and steered the studio toward eventually building original IP.

Finding Their Voice

Tarsier pitched an original horror game to Sony, who passed on it. They then found a publisher in Bandai Namco, who invested in what would eventually be called Little Nightmares. The game was originally announced under the title Hunger in 2014 and renamed before launch to avoid confusion with The Hunger Games series.

Tarsier Studios Games

Little Nightmares (2017)

Little Nightmares launched in April 2017 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. You play as Six, a small girl in a yellow raincoat trying to escape the Maw, an underwater vessel full of grotesque inhabitants. The game is a puzzle-platformer built entirely around atmosphere, dread, and the feeling of being very small in a world designed to hurt you. A Nintendo Switch version followed in 2018.

Little Nightmares II (2021)

The sequel introduced Mono as the playable character alongside Six. Following its release, Tarsier confirmed they were finished with the Little Nightmares series. Since Bandai Namco owns the IP, the third game went to Supermassive Games, released in 2025.

Reanimal (2026)

Reanimal is Tarsier’s first original IP since leaving the Little Nightmares franchise. Released February 13, 2026, it carries the same distinctive visual DNA as their horror work. For fans of Little Nightmares who felt the series went to the wrong hands with Supermassive, Reanimal is the real successor.

What Makes Tarsier Studios Worth Watching

Tarsier’s strength is environmental storytelling and creature design. Their games say almost nothing explicitly and communicate everything through what you see and feel. That approach carries through to Reanimal and it is what separates their work from most other horror developers.