izigame.me

Animal Well is a strange game.

On a technical level, it's excellent. The spritework is charming, the music is atmospheric, and the controls are tight and responsive. As a near-solo project, it’s very impressive, and it definitely makes me interested in the dev’s future work. The game's mechanics, though simple, are profound in combination, and their discovery and application in the game's world are genuinely enjoyable-- but even with all those positives I'm not sure I can truly say I like it.

While streaming it to one of my friends, they commented that it feels more like a ‘toy’ than a game, per-se-- and upon reflection I can’t help but think it a cogent enough criticism to warrant mentioning here. Like the many tools which make up the inventory system, such as a spinning top, Frisbee, Yo-yo and bubble wand Animal Well seems to view play as a reward in itself. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but because the game has no real narrative to tie it together and gives minimal instruction at the best of times, the gameplay is all it has going for it. If it doesn’t grab you immediately, the laissez-faire approach to its design can make it wear out its welcome, even considering its short length.

Contrary to most Metroidvanias, a lot of upgrades (even those offering massive quality-of-life improvements) are entirely optional because you don’t need them to progress most of the time. There’s no incentive to hunt them down beyond the general desire to explore the map, and you still might miss them if your observation, note taking, and lateral-thinking skills aren’t up to snuff. Likewise, some tools are woefully underdeveloped and are used only a few times; of the 12 main' items, I would say that the bouncy rubber ball and UV lamp stand out as examples where a tighter focus and fewer items would've served the experience better.

True to its name, Animal Well has a lot of depth, but I would argue it verges on being too much. The player’s enjoyment can only last as long as their patience for puzzling through the game’s deliberate attempts to be obtuse does-- and there are secrets in spades, with varying degrees of reward. Towards the end of “Layer 2” (collecting all the eggs and getting the True Ending), scouring the world can start to feel like a bit of a slog, even with all the items and traversal methods unlocked-- nor would anyone operating in good faith fault you for getting frustrated and looking things up.

Animal Well feels like it was built with speedrunners, dataminers, and obsessive secret hunters in mind (sometimes at the expense of normal players), so it should be no surprise to anyone that that’s who it’s most attractive to. There is a palpable and almost perverse glee on display in the inclusion of puzzles that are basically impossible to solve through legitimate means, or that maybe one-in-a-thousand people will even perceive, a-la Forbidden Siren. Hello, barcode-in-the-grass . I personally don’t find this level of engagement to be fun or rewarding, but I do respect the hustle (on both the developer’s and community’s part) even if it’s not for me.

At a price-point of $25 (at time of writing), the game doesn’t really give that much bang-for-your-buck. It’s not hard to see ~100% of it in 15-20 hours, or to beat it even quicker if you just want to see the end, or have trouble picking up on the subtler mechanics. Furthermore, I don’t think there is much replay value because most of the fun is in the initial discovery, rather than the moment-to-moment gameplay.

Still, for all my grousing, I don’t dislike Animal Well, and I enjoyed my time with it enough to both 100% it and write a review. It ultimately has a lot of heart, and I can’t fault it for being what it is. There is a strong creative vision behind it, and I’d much rather games like this be made than the endless litany of subpar nostalgia-bait remakes or corporate slop that the games industry loves churning out for a quick buck Hello Silent Hill 2 Remake . Consider picking it up on sale, if you can.

A Puzzle Game not meant to be solved: A Metroidvania that becomes Fez

Tips
Before reading, this is a game that for the most part is best experienced blind. Though I recommend reading these tips:
Use your map markers for things you don't understand, Pay Attention to the background, and go in knowing you will not be able to solve everything yourself, no matter how hard you try. Knowing these things may make you enjoy it more without spoiling anything.
Comparisons
If you've heard that this game is like Metroid mixed with Outer Wilds, I would consider the Outer Wilds comparison to be wrong. It's much more like Halo 2 mixed with Halo 3 Tunic or Fez. (The game directly references both of those games, wearing it's inspiration on its skin). Formulaically more like Tunic, difficulty more Like Fez. (Unfortunately)
Basic Elements
I love this game, but I also hate it.
The Art, Performance, Controls, Sound design, all stellar. Music was all good ambient tracks that set the mood well, but none of it really stood out. There is little to no story (though the creator implied the story hasn't been fully found yet)
As a Metroidvania
Where this game really shines is it's metroidvania elements; having interactable environments, the most unique abilities I've seen in one of these kinds of games. and it's mix of puzzle solving with exploration. In this way I think it bests the flow of even Hollow Knight's exploration, which is incredibly high praise. Though it trades combat for puzzles, so it's not to say one is better than the other, I prefer to have interactive exploration over fighting my way through the world.
Specific Abilities
The bubble was a cool replacement for The double jumping. I Found it last, though most find it first, and I think found first it's a little too OP.
The Disk I got really early on and learned out to abuse it, using it to get to places you're clearly meant to get to with the bubble. Clearly intended but made me feel like I was thinking outside the box with my kit without skipping to much, which is all the fun of Metroidvanias.
Maybe I feel some stigma towards the bubble because it feels like most people get it and it overshadows the Disk. Also, I wish the Disk let you use other abilities while on it.
The ball was badly tutorialized and underused.
The yoyo was annoying to control.
The Fire cracker had no reason to be limited, was simply annoying.
The Flute was a cool idea, how it was used early game was cool. I was really excited to see how it was going to be used late game, though I was really disappointed by how it was used late game, simply due to difficulty. More on this below.
(I also really think the symbols over the cats and the codes for them just needed to be bigger/stand out more, so many people miss the connection)

My fault
I unfortunately forgot to use my map markers, so I had a lot of issues of forgetting where I needed to backtrack. This would have greatly changed my perspective on the game, because I had to have someone tell me where most of the endgame content was, and I didn't feel like re-exploring the entire map every time I got a new ability. For the most part I think that simply would have saved me from needing help before I got all the eggs.

I got most of the eggs on my own, only needed help with 7/64. (I think) No complaints with those, they all seemed easy enough for find on your own.
The issues I take arise after that point.
The Egg Puzzle
I felt mixed on this puzzle. Starting it felt like a chore. It felt like it could go so many different directions and that I'd be sitting there for hours doing inputs. Eventually I realized the correct way to figure it out, but was blocked by not knowing binary code. Granted, realizing that 8 was the only number not being used so that's what the 0's mean, isn't too far fetched to figure out, but I had to be told, and I had to tell others. But if that wasn't enough, after all that, you're still inputting it wrong because one of the eggs is upside-down. This was funny, and maybe I would have been more fine with it if the puzzle was simpler up to that point. I just felt like it had too many little things to figure out with how long it was and how many places you could go wrong and how many rabbit holes you could go down. But at the end of the day, it feels possible to do by yourself, although I don't know anyone who did it without hints, so it left a sour taste in my mouth.
I thought this to be comparable to the Golden Path from Tunic, but not only did it lack the soul and celebration that puzzle had, tying everything together in such a beautiful way, it was just a little too hard. Though it was doable enough that I still enjoyed doing it, thinking it was really cool, even if I wish it was a little easier.
The Post Game
The reason I compared this game to Fez rather than Tunic in the title, is the end. Though it Formulaically feels more like Tunic in that the main portion of the game is simpler exploration, and the end is looking for input puzzles, I compare it to Fez because these puzzles are not something you're going to figure out on your own.
The bunny puzzles aren't inherently bad. They're each pretty cool. It's the fact that you don't know where any of them are. You could explore the map several times over and not realize a puzzle was sitting right in front of you. It was here that the game felt like it was ripped away from me, like it was something I was no longer allowed to solve. It felt like the single player game was no longer single player. I had to look everything up and wait for everything to be found. Which sucks, because these were legitimately good puzzles, albeit some a little to hard even if you know where they are, nothing too insane. This greatly disappointed me because this was the part of the game I had been looking forward to the most after realizing the similarities to Tunic. With a few tweaks this could have simply been made accessible to the individual with something akin to the Seeking Spell from Tunic.
I think what annoys me most in this game is the 4 empty bunny statues, with secret bunnies you can cheat and clip into which then screw with the final bunny puzzle. This just makes it confusing as to when you're even done collecting them all and ready to start the puzzle.
I understand some people really like it when communities come together to solve the in depth puzzles of the game. Listening to the Message at the very very end of the game where the creator says he wanted to put super secret puzzles no one would be able to find for years just because he wanted to know that it was there made me feel a little better about the game as a whole. It was sweet, and there is beauty in those sorts of things I can appreciate. But personally I hate those sorts of things, especially when it's such a huge portion of the game. It felt like the whole game was building up to something I couldn't even do. I believe puzzle games should be fully solvable to the individual, maybe with a hidden ARG at the end like TUNIC has. If the only thing that was a community made thing was the wingdings puzzle (and whatever else after that's still unfound), I'd be happy with that, since the reward feels beyond the game anyways.
The Mural ARG was actually really fun to solve alone with the website fans made. Wish it was just in the game.
The biggest mystery is how the game is under 40 MB.

Review after achievements completed: Animal Well

All the reviews I've seen about this game are either hyperbolically positive or straight-up memes, so let me be a joyless nerd and provide a more nuanced take.
Animal Well is a solid metroidvania with more than its fair share of puzzles and mysteries, none more baffling than how Billy Basso managed to cram all of it into a mere 40 MB. As with many modern puzzle games, there's a sort of exponential difficulty curve; the majority of the puzzles - certainly all that are required to beat the game - are pretty straightforward. Beyond that, truly completing the game, without resorting to a guide, will require an unreasonable amount of hours triple- and quadruple-checking every room on the map for something you missed, and comparing notes with at minimum several dozen of your friends to work out some ARG-level esoterically vague hints.
Mercifully, the truly capricious requirements - the speedruns, the deathless runs, what have you - do not have achievements tied to them. Still, this is a game that you should walk into with the expectation that you will eventually need a guide if you want to keep your sanity. "A traveler's guide to Animal Well" is great, with excellent use of spoiler tags.
I ding'd all of the achievements for Animal Well in a little under 16 hours - which is not to say I completed it. I resorted to the use of the aforementioned guide once I only had a handful of late-game collectibles left, because re-combing the whole labyrinth for where to use my third(!!!) incredibly situational niche item didn't strike me as a good way to spend my time.
If this doesn't strike you as a glowing review, that's because it isn't. Animal Well is definitely good! The thumbs-up is right there; don't come at me. I do like the novel takes on how your character's abilities improve; I recommend Supraland if you want more of those unexpected spins on familiar mechanics. I just didn't walk away from it with the ecstatic euphoria that seems commonplace in its reviews, whether because of the fiddly platforming or because of the aforementioned niche items.
Still, all that said - recommended.