Tom

Okay, so what the actual heck is going on?

We've got sheep with human arms eating children, a world covered in water, and the worst case of orphan bullying I've ever seen.

It's very tarsier, which means it clearly means something.

You just have to stop and think about it for a moment to figure it out.

One thing we see all over this game is rabbits.

The girl wears a rabbit mask, there are images of rabbits running in circles, there are rabbit altars, and a literal dead rabbit at the end.

Now, that might seem like nothing, the game is literally called Re-Animal, there's gonna be some animals in it, but for it to be showing up this much, it has to mean something important.

especially given Tarsier's focus on nightmares in previous games, as well as the Steam page for Re-Animal talking about how the design of the characters in the world are based on or symbolic of these children's troubled pasts.

So, what does the rabbit mean symbolically?

Well, of course you have classic examples of fertility or it being a symbol of good luck, but as I dug through the many, MANY websites talking about the different

meanings, one of them caught my eye.

The idea that rabbits or hares were actually a symbol of bad luck.

This comes from historic folklore, so of course I was drawn into it.

You guys know how much I love to talk about that stuff.

Tarsier are a Swedish company, and in Nordic folklore, an all-white hare was thought to be a transformed witch.

So seeing one meant you had an evil sorceress in your

midst.

Weirdly, Celtic folklore is actually very similar, just with one slight change.

Instead of just bad luck, they believed a hare brought death, and if one crossed your path, you were doomed.

This was considered to be even worse if you were in the midst of a war.