Animal Well (2024)

Sometimes you just know when a game is going to be totally enchanting. I was sold as soon as I saw Animal Well's beautiful high-contrast neon pixel art. I was nevertheless a bit hesitant to check out the game at first, since indie metroidvanias can be hit or miss for me. As luck would have it, it's also a great video game, with great atmosphere and puzzles to match.

Animal Well gives you next to no guidance, being a game that has trust in its own mechanics and in the player's ability to figure things out. You awaken as a small blob in a dark and mysterious world, from where you can deduce the game's primary goal: find four flames and return them to the shrine at the center. Along the way, you find items and collectibles, though to say much more is to ruin the many lovely surprises and delightful moments in this game.

At times, Animal Well feels like it tries to make up for its lack of combat with difficult precise platforming gauntlets. Most of these are great, and there are some genuinely jaw-dropping "You want me to do WHAT?!" moments. The save system feels just forgiving enough to keep things moving through the few times that don't land as well, without removing the challenge. The world feels huge, but navigating it was never an issue. I'm not a metroidvania expert, but it hits that same sweet spot as Super Metroid where you're constantly finding new paths and shortcuts to make traversal breezy as heck.

Reaching the end credits doesn't take that long, but you can pour even more time into the game by searching for collectibles and diving into its expansive post-game. This is where the game starts to get a bit devilish and cryptic, and it started to lose me as a result. By then, though, I still felt very satisfied with what I played.

As a debut solo effort from developer Billy Basso and Dunkey-run publisher Bigmode, Animal Well is quite a solid outing, and I'll be looking forward to what comes next from both of them.

Animal Well is a delightfully clever game. Many times during my playthrough I'd figure out a puzzle or discover one of the many fun trinkets you use as tools to solve them and it'd bring a smile to my face. I love how many of these tools are simple children's toys. I often ended up playing with them just for the fun of it. Sometimes that playing would even lead to discovering another of the layered secrets present within the game. I think some serious praise is deserved for how good Animal Well is at dropping little hints towards collectables and hidden rooms as well as how much fun its world is to interact with. It made me feel smart as I figured stuff out in a way that not many games do.

I also really appreciated its presentation. The well has a very cool neon aesthetic throughout that helps make the world feel dark while keeping things visible. The sound design is synth heavy and has an intimidating warbling effect to it yet maintains its simplicity most of the time so it never feels overbearing when it shouldn't. If I were the type to do so, I could see myself keeping the game open to one of the cooler looking rooms in the background of working on something else just for the vibe of it.

However, there came a point where I had cleared out the vast majority of the map (or thought so, anyway) and it came time to scour back over it for all the stuff I may have missed or not had the right tools for the first time. It was around here that it started to lose its appeal. There are ways to speed up travel time somewhat (keeping vague here purposefully) but they rarely felt sufficient for the sheer amount of back and forth this game expected of me.

The map, while surprisingly useful when hunting for secrets, can be oddly misleading and dense to parse in the later hours of the game. Because of this, I decided I was satisfied with "just" getting all the Steam achievements despite the knowledge that there is much more to dig into here. It's just too tedious for me and I'm sure I'd end up googling more than I'd want to.

Despite those issues, this reminded me of both Fez and Tunic, two games that have some super deep puzzles and just ache to be explored. If you enjoyed those, this is certainly worth a look. If you're a more traditional metroidvania fan, know that there is next to no combat here, but the exploration is rewarding and well designed.

3/5

Played on Nintendo Switch.

I liked what I played of this one (maybe about 5-6 hours). It was fun, creative and the atmosphere slaps. It didn't grab me in a "can't wait to boot it up again" type of way, and there were a few other things vying for my attention this year. Another Switch game that I hope will see life on a future flight / trip.

I did technically roll credits on this, but obviously there's plenty of game after that and I don't feel like I can really give a full review of the game until I've played the rest. Unfortunately, between the fact that I didn't utilize marking the map as much as I should have and now there's one particular item somewhere and I have no idea where because I've filled in the whole damn map seems like (it's 1 of 9, ifykyk), and the fact that I found like 6 eggs and then there was a power outage before I could save, I'm just kind of dispirited. Honestly I think I'll have to come back to this in like 1-3 years and just start over form the beginning, knowing what I know now about using the map. Map early, map often!

p.s. There was a lot about this that reminded me of Axiom Verge 2 in terms of how it approaches the metroidvania design, but I wish it had as many fast travel points as that game because the way they do it here is real tedious.

Oversimplified opinion: At so many points Animal Well feels like it was constructed to be opaque. Traversal is cumbersome, the puzzles are so obscure they lend towards impossibility, everything seems ungenerous to the player...other than the INSANE artwork.

Sub-genre: Puzzle platformer, Fez worship, metroidvania?

Favorite part: Getting one of the items and transforming all the artwork / environment

Rating: 2/5

Review: This game just wasn't really for me. I felt so many times a bit of gratification when solving a little environmental puzzle but that was dwarfed by the amount of times I felt frustrated at the lack of direction, opaqueness of puzzle, and busy work of traveling from one biome to the other.

Overall it was a vibe and the atmosphere and art style were great but I couldn't get over what chore it sort of felt like. I get the level of detail put in here in immense. Everything has a purpose, but I feel like if you're someone who doesn't have much time to play games and want a good gameplay loop - 90% of it will be lost on you.

I found all the eggs. Wish I stopped after the first credits rolled.

Animal Well is a 2D puzzle platformer with light metroidvania elements, fantastic level design, and an attractive atmosphere and aesthetic. It will overstay its welcome for a player compelled to complete it, but is easy to recommend to anyone who likes this sort of thing and won't think twice about putting the game down once it stops engaging them.

The puzzles range from trivial to so-obtuse-you-can't-be-sure-there-even-is-a-puzzle, but on average I felt I was offered a high density of well-calibrated challenges. The game usually does an excellent job of communicating what the player needs to do through its environment or by presenting iterations on past obstacles. I invested about 27 hours, and I'd say 20 of those were very rewarding.

My chief complaint is that there was no good off-ramp after I felt like I had finished enjoying the game, somewhere around hour 23 or 24. If I had been offered a "bad" ending at that point, just to provide me with a sense of closure, I don't know if I would have taken it. I would have appreciated being asked, though.

For most players, I believe getting to the first set of credits at around 8-10 hours will not present a satisfying stopping point. But getting to the second set of credits involves finishing a laborious and largely aimless scavenger hunt, with steeply diminishing returns on the effort necessary to find the outstanding mcguffins. This gradually eroded my impression of the sharp puzzle design with pixel-hunts and guessing games about hidden interactions.

To be clear, Animal Well has more to offer in this vein for anyone who continues past where I stopped. There are still rooms I know about but can't access, or can access but don't know what to do with.

I have nothing intelligent to say about the story, such as it is. Nothing in the game made me feel like investigating the lore of the Well or its inhabitants. Nothing in the game made me feel anything at all, except a steady dopamine drip as I made progress and occasional frustration when I was denied.

In lieu of a satisfying conclusion I submit my petty controller gripes. While I wouldn't say the control scheme lets the game down in any way, I did find it frustrating at times:

• The jump button always results in a fixed height (i.e., there is no short hop for a tap, nor any extra height for a longer hold). Maybe there is a clever puzzle reason this had to be the case, but a lot of the platforming would have benefited from being able to finesse the jumps.
• When trying to mark up my map, I would constantly hit cancel and put it away when I meant to delete a pin or change tools.
• Managing my inventory through the pause menu was disruptive, but using the shoulder buttons to switch tools on the fly quickly become cumbersome as I found more.
• There are several cases where the game requires navigation of platforms which are moving on or between the threshold between rooms, resulting in whiplash and input errors as the player has to move their eyes rapidly from one side of the screen to the other and then back.

Finally got 100% on this (by my definition, which means all the achievements), and went ahead and looked up the crazier secrets that were still hiding from me. Game is insane. wingdings has never been so important. People are still trying to figure some stuff out, apparently.

Definitely a GOTY contender. I felt that on an individual puzzle-by-puzzle basis, nothing really stumped me or impressed me too much, but when taken as a whole package it's such a perfect exploration experience and the vibes are IMMACULATE.

I recently finished playing through Animal Well and I had a lot of fun doing so. It's an incredibly dense metroidvania full of secrets and surprises, that rewards its players for exploring and experimenting with everything they find. While playing I couldn't stop thinking that this game was made for people smarter than me, and that I wouldn't be able to solve most of its puzzles, and yet I still couldn't stop playing. It's just that good.

Before anything, I wanna talk about the presentation, because it's absolutely insane. Everything about this game looks, sounds, and feels incredible. The pixel art in the game is truly beautiful. Everything is really detailed in both its design and animation, and I truly think there's no part of the game that looks bad. However, where the game truly shines graphically is with its lighting and particle effects. I don't think I've ever seen a game do these better, and they give the game a mysterious and slightly terrifying atmosphere. I love it.

There's also many, many animals in the game (who would've thought), and they all look incredible. The designs for these animals ranges from horrifying realistic nightmares, to funny animal caricatures. All animals follow the same artstyle, which makes them fit in together even when they're so different, no matter if they're creepy or cute.

There's little to no music in Animal Well, but every room has its own set of ambient noises that make the world feel alive and breathing, adding to its creepy nature and giving it somewhat of a horror-like feeling. A few rooms actually do have their own music, and they stand out even more due to this approach.

Now let's talk about the story. Nobody knows what the story is yet. Let's talk about the gameplay.

The game is a metroidvania that substitutes combat with puzzle-solving and exploration. Instead of getting new weapons to fight the monsters of the well, you'll get access to toys that allow you to solve new puzzles in creative ways. Of course, combat still technically exists, but it's more about distracting and outmaneuvering the enemies through the use of items instead of outright fighting them. And speaking of items? They're all fun, and are a treat to play with. Love them.

There's a very heavy focus on secrets all through the game. As you play, you'll come across many hidden pasageways, entrances tucked away where you can't see them easily, or platforms just barely out of reach. It incentivizes exploring every single nook and cranny of the map, thinking outside the box to reach new places, and you're usually rewarded by getting either eggs, which are the main collectible, or some other silly items.

The overall map design is super smart as well. It's huge in the sense of it having a lot of stuff, but still small enough to fully traverse in just a couple of minutes. The way they achieved this is by densely packing a ton of stuff together and giving each screen multiple uses, making the world feel bigger than it is and, once again, incentivizing the player to fully explore every single room in the world because there's just no way there's nothing hidden in here there's a big unexplored spot on the map and there's gotta be a secret entrance somewhere around here.

One of my favorite parts of the map is how smartly all the areas connect. Essentially, you're thrown in the middle of an open-world metroidvania at the start of the game and can go one of four ways. No matter where you end up, you'll always get access to a new item that allows you to solve some puzzles, but not all of them, meaning you'll eventually get stuck and have to backtrack and go to a different corner to find something else to play with.

This gets you familiar with parts of the map, and once you're in the other side of the world and finally get access to the item you needed to progress, you'll immediately know where to go next. And if you already have this item from exploring the map earlier? Then you'll suddenly be able to complete an entire area and progress in the game without even meaning to. It's genius. I love it.

But that's only layer 1 of the game.

Before the game had even come out, the developer made a big deal of the fact that the game had multiple layers. Essentially, all players would have access to a simple, puzzle-focused metroidvania, but the few that actually chose to go deeper and explore more were rewarded with a very in-depth experience, full of secrets, ARGs, and more. The game really opens up once you've "beaten" it, and exploring through the world again can be both frustrating at times, yet extremely rewarding at others.

While I don't have many issues with the first layer of the game, it's the post-game that starts to show some flaws. The game gives you more and more special, secret items as you keep playing, and while these can be just as fun as the other items, they're just boring or even useless most of the time. This also means that you'll be forced to explore the entire world once again just to try and find the few secrets that you didn't have access to the first time around, which can turn boring really quickly

A few more puzzles become available once you reach the ending, and they're all very meticulously designed. Figuring out the solutions for these (or at least for the ones I'm smart enough for) was so rewarding and I absolutely loved it. Shoutout to the duck/bunny mural.

I do admit that I did cheat a few times and looked up the locations for a couple eggs, and the solution to the final boss. The game got too overwhelming with the amount of items and knowledge I had, and I just didn't wanna try every item combination possible in all the rooms.

IN CONCLUSION: Animal Well is a great game. It's a really cool experience that's full of secrets and surprises, and that keeps their players engaged introducing new and interesting concepts one after the other. It's an absolute treat when it comes to presentation, with an unmatched atmosphere and an amazing visual style. Sure, the experience may start running out of gas as you get closer to the end, but even just playing this without delving deep into its secrets is worth it. 9/10

Anyway I can't believe dunkey made this game all on his own that's insane

I can fully acknowledge and see why many people would love this game. There’s things I do love about it, the art style and atmosphere are great. Every mechanic, puzzle, and upgrade are so unique and quirky. It clearly has so much love put in and I had a lot of fun for a few hours.

But I have a pretty low tolerance for cryptic puzzle solving. The game is great when you’re moving along at a good pace, but suddenly I found myself totally stuck and frustrated. Many things in the game require lateral thinking and trial and error (it’s basically a non-linear puzzle game), and it really became frustrating how obtuse some puzzles are.

I’m not huge on the games where you have to sit and really think or try tons of things to make progress. It’s fun up to a point, but this game crosses the line for me. I just slowly stopped being excited to press play, so I had to abandon it.

Unlike some games (breath of the wild), I totally understand the praise the game gets and hats off to people with more patience than me. But ya, it’s just not really up my alley.

Maybe one day I will revisit it and have a different opinion.. 100% possible.

The atmospheric and mysterious Animal Well is one of the coolest Metroidvania games out there. It made me think of Super Metroid in vibes and visual storytelling, but it's focused on platforming and puzzles over combat. The design of its mechanics and objectives is really nice, and the hidden depth of its optional puzzles and secrets interestingly brings to mind games like Fez and The Witness. Even just playing the game to the credits with a bit of venturing off the beaten path is a very satisfying experience to get lost in.

All the fundamentals are on point here: the nicely-designed map layout, the smooth-feeling controls, the unique visuals, the balanced feeling of danger and vulnerability, the immersive sound design, and the overall pacing. What makes the main questline really stand out is the design of the core item mechanics that you use to interact with the world. Finding unexpected ways to use these items or unexpected scenarios to apply them in is great fun, and the game's level design and minimalism makes this discovery feel like intuitive play even when it's secretly giving you a well-planned tutorial.

There are a few pretty annoying sections where it took me a long time after figuring out what to do until I could actually do it, for various reasons. Some sections had you switching between items in a time-sensitive situation, which I found cumbersome. Others were just pretty precise bits of platforming or timing that I struggled with more than I would have liked. Screens where you could fall to a lower level or otherwise get locked out of something without backtracking back around made some precision-heavy parts particularly frustrating. Overall I just wanted the game to be a bit less precise and demanding in the action, since I was mostly enjoying it for exploration and puzzles.

A lot of the game's content is optional stuff tucked away in hidden passages or even hidden in plain sight through innocuous-looking environmental details. You'll naturally come across a lot of this stuff, whether you realize it or not, and at the very least will be able to have fun going for the secret chests hidden throughout the world which offer some nice rewards. It doesn't make it too obvious, but the game is good at visually suggesting where some secrets might be, so you're sure to find some if you look. The deeper layer of hidden puzzles... let's just say I read about some of this stuff and will not be bothering with it myself, but if you're one of those kinds of people, it seems to have some really cool ideas.

I finished the game with a fair amount of optional stuff left on the table, but I feel like I got my fill after some tiring later parts and don't really want to poke around the map for what's left at the moment. Still, the discoveries that I did make, and the other surprises and head-scratchers throughout this world made for a really fun feeling of discovery. I love the overall vibe and theme of this game, its simple presentation and unique mechanics. I would have probably preferred a meatier surface-level experience (maybe another major zone and key item) over one that loads so much into secret-hunting, but it's a really cool game nonetheless.

Layer 1 done

Not sure how far into the game I'm actually gonna get, but I definitely wanna try to get the whole map and get as many eggs as I can (maybe all if possible?).

I'm slowly starting to feel the same way I did with Baba, where I know I'll get to a point where I'm not smart/crazy enough to continue solving the meta puzzles in the game, but I'm having fun in the meantime.

I can't tell if I like this game or not. When it's going well and I get into the flow of things it feels good to play but every so often you run into a challenge that is just obtuse and the logic seems weird. Granted, other folks might walk into those puzzles and recognize it instantly so I don't wanna bear down on it too much but personally there's a strange friction I run into and especially if I haven't found a save point near that challenge I spend more time running through safe areas and redoing platforming or whatever is on the way... That's pretty lame.

So far I think my only critique would be that for a game like this I personally feel like a Celeste style "every room is check-pointed" would be better, or just more abundant save points. I think the repetition of screens and challenges is getting a bit grating.