Animal Well

ANIMAL WELL is an open-ended puzzle platformer where you must obtain items in order to explore and progress through more of the map. A shorter way to refer to the genre, it is a metroidvania style game. Only the game can potentially be much more than that, if you want to really dive into it. I didn’t, but other people sure did.

Find it on Steam.

Animal Well is a game with a lot of questions and little answers. And beating the game only gets you more questions. Where are you? In the animal well supposedly. It is a strange place full of old ruins and temples dedicated to various animals. Who are you? Not an animal. You are some kind of round thing with only legs that came out of a plant pod. What is your goal? Based on the map you find, there are four fires pre-marked. You have to go there and do something. Why are you doing this? No idea. I’m not sure there is an overall hidden idea to the game.

One question I have is why are all of the upgrades you find human toys? There are things like a bubble-making wand and a flying disc. There are more signs of humans around as well. Though I guess it kind of makes sense considering all of the temple-like structures in the animal well. I don’t know if the animals could build all that.

The presentation style is old-school pixels with optional scanlines to mimic that old-style television look. The music and sound effects are all also from olden times. There are more modern systems in the game, though, such as the physics system and lighting engine. It adds to the atmosphere having lanterns swinging as you pass by. The shadows react as you expect them to. The blend of old aesthetics with newer lighting works really well.

This game is full of puzzles, and I am talking some ridiculously hard puzzles you wouldn’t even know exists. Though that is all for extra things. If you only want to beat the game, you’ll need some platforming skills and using the items to solve some challenges. The gameplay is solid. It is filled with exploration and figuring out where to go. You have stamps to mark the map, and I suggest you use it since there is some wandering around involved.

It probably won’t take too long to simply beat the game. But you might notice there are still many parts of the map still covered, and you’ll probably have come across some secret eggs along the way. Finding all of the secret eggs, while doable, can require some really attentive watching of the surrounding background. I didn’t manage to find all of the eggs myself and used some help.

Past the eggs is where the real hard stuff starts. This is the kind of stuff the game developers expect many people working together to puzzle out. I won’t say much on it so you can see for yourself.

If you just want to beat the game, Animal Well will provide you with some fun challenges in an interesting world. If you want to dig deeper into the game, then there are a lot of secrets to discover. Aside from a very basic tutorial, the game won’t tell you anything. Even the functions of items are left for you to discover. Some are obvious, some are not. The depths of the Animal Well are deep if you go looking, but the surface is pretty fun as well. Though the game is a bit short if you only tread on the surface.

Find it on Steam.