Developed by: Shared Memory
Animal Well was a game that hadn’t been on my radar until I saw the stellar reviews. I was aware it was the first game published by Dunkey’s indie label; BigMode, that was all I knew before jumping in. Like another Indie classic, Cave Story. Animal Well was made by 1 person, Billy Basso. starting as a passion project years ago, Billy moved onto full-time when he knew he was onto something special. Billy’s inspirations came from classics of the medium; Super Mario Bros 3 and Tunic but also key elements from survival horror games.
Game sizes are disgustingly huge with them easily exceeding 60gb+ nowadays. So, it was a welcome surprise that the entire file size for Animal Well is a measly 100mb total. Funny fact: is that it's smaller on other consoles compared to the PS5's, as the PS5 UI picture takes up a good 60mb of that file size. Similar to last year’s indie darling and a personal favourite of mine, Cocoon, Animal Well continues the brain-twisting, out-of-the-box puzzles set in an interconnected labyrinth with minimal instructions and a reliant need on the players learning through the unique language of videogames.
Animal Well is a special experience; I hope other players go in as blind as I did. With an incredibly intricate world and puzzle design that makes you feel like a genius, a truly revolutionary Metroidvania that makes games of the same genre feel outdated.
After coming off the heels of Hellblade 2 and its very simple puzzles, I was pleasantly surprised with how much Animal Well was the total opposite. As you start, you are given no instructions, no control tips or objectives, nothing. At first, it seems you’re stuck with no help from the game, but you’ll soon learn everything placed in the well, speaks for itself. I’ll give an example, from the opening seconds, you start in the middle of a multiple exit room. You’ll most likely move to the right, as firstly your interest is peaked by an animal who quickly scartles away as soon as you move off. Anyone would assume it's the correct route, from being a common staple in 2D games and even the way English literature is read. It also plays with preconceived videogame knowledge of games like the NES classic Metroid, going left from the start leads to a secret. It’s minutiae like this, that makes Animal Well play with conventions of how to approach a video game.
You play as, a very plain nameless blob. On paper, you have limited movement options and nothing to help you overcome puzzles, but across your journey, you come across a few invaluable items. Tutorials are never given to you, it's through experimentation that you figure out the applications. Which ends up with pure dopamine moments when you’ve discovered it’s uses yourself; not a tutorial telling you how.
One such item: is the frisbee. My brain already knew I could distract passing dogs with it, but later on, a puzzle had 2 levers spaced between and I had to somehow trigger both within quick succession. After failing a couple of times I had an idea of seeing if throwing the disc would result in it pinging back and forth which triggered both. This was one of the many times I had a eureka moment that led to that feeling.
You traverse a seamlessly bottomless well, that’s nearly entirely encumbered by darkness. The limited colours used, the quiet ambient use of environmental and animal noises lead to an un-nervy tension while exploring unknown areas. It sure does induce boatloads of tension while playing. There’s a surprising number of horror-esque scenarios that add to the feeling of pressure, these really add a feeling of claustrophobia and isolation. Most of these are unscripted moments, but there is a late-game unavoidable moment; a hellish tedious gauntlet, I was happy to see the other side of.
During my travels I became intimately familiar in my surroundings, trying to memorize anything that looked in anyway, memorable. I used tags on the map to make a mental note of something of interest being there, then with how multi-layered the puzzles could be I also took to writing personal notes. That went into much more detail about the ideas and solutions I had going through my mind to help tackle it later when I was better equipped in-game and mentally.
The world map is vast and meticulously detailed throughout. The open-ended design means that getting stuck just leads you back onto another secret that further builds your understanding of the well. Journeying deeper into the well I couldn’t fathom how one person made a game so multi-layered and vast on his own. I became engrossed in just trying to understand Billy Basso’s psyche, and how he even had the ideas for world design.
Passing the same hallways and dark caves for the umpteenth time and finally seeing a secret that was there the whole time was such a eureka moment that bled into how my videogame knowledge grew itself. A major trope of Metroidvania games is to backtrack with newly acquired items, to access new areas or hard-to-reach upgrades. But with Animal Well, I was doing the same but with new knowledge of my preexisting items.
Progress is open-ended, with nothing but four flames to track down marked on your map. I explored every area with a mighty fine-toothed comb looking for the way forward and being rewarded plenty of times with collectable eggs, which do have some use if you gather enough of them and take them to a peacock, who in return rewards you.
I gained a fair few of these while trying to follow the golden path and further tested your understanding of the many layers of Animal Well with how smartly placed they are. The telephones you’ll come across in the Well, act as the game's way of saving progress. These are so scarcely placed, leading me to big sighs of relief when I came across one.
It’s a world I quickly became accustomed to and reminded me of 2005’s Shadow of the Colossus. The world and monsters are the focus here, you are an alien in their world. That even blends into the puzzle designs with manipulating animal movements to solve a fair few of them. Locked impassable rooms of enemies are a written staple of Metroidvania’s and while that works for those, barring a few unavoidable boss battles, Animal Well doesn’t feature combat encounters. There are enemies roaming about the well, but they are easily avoidable and only pursued if antagonized.
Progression in modern video games is usually romanticized, with easy/meaningless obtainable tasks and constant pressured urgency towards the next objective which feeds a feeling of empty accomplishment. Games like Assassins Creed and many GaaS (Games as a service) titles do this. Even other Metroidvania games have moments where they rail-road you onto the right path, then without forethought take it away which can lead to frustrating lapses of immersion. It’s become an overreliance that has plagued games recently, diluting the purity of exploration. Just to appease a larger group of players that have short attention spans. Animal Well on the other hand, like the recent Zelda games and even Elden Ring, have an unmatchable novel feeling of self-discovery. Which is becoming a relic of a bygone era.
I saw a post online that stated; that some of the game’s puzzles would require cooperation and new ideas from the other players to help figure them out. This community research reminded me of the zeitgeist moments with Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its follow-up, Tears of the Kingdom. Players online came together discussing how each person tackled a certain puzzle, realizing there were many ways of doing it.
I did get super stuck at one point in my playthrough, the easy resort would be to look up a walkthrough for the solution. Instead, I jumped to Reddit to ask other players for hints, not on-the-nose solutions, more like a nudge in the right direction. The responses while limited in words, pushed me to view my situation in another light. It’s great to see a game so early in its infancy already having a blossoming community, that realizes that the charm to Animal Well is self-discovery. With only their mind, limiting the solution.
Even though my playthrough took about 8/9 hours, while short for modern Metroidvania standards, it’s not at all bloated/padded like many now are. I came across the endgame by mistake, after dealing with the 4 objectives marked on the map, I naturally got funnelled into seeing the end through. I had an inkling that even after credits, I’d be able to carry on. Most times nowadays once I hit credits, I lose any motivation to play further, but with the countless secrets and more importantly, eggs to find. I’m not intending to put it down anytime soon. This might be the single-handed biggest compliment I can give it.
It’s an intimidating task to approach Animal Well, with it being so hands-off and the vagueness of what you need to do. The inter-connected world, masterful puzzle design and the self-discovery that comes with it led to one of the purest video game experiences I’ve had in a very long time. Something so rare in games nowadays. It’s a game I’ve thought about for many days after completion. I’m eager to return, discover more hidden secrets and join in with the community to uncover other layers to the incredibly deep world Billy Basso has created. It’s been hard to put into words how much I enjoyed my time without going into spoilers, the less you know the better it is.
Animal Well is a game I’d recommend to anyone even an inclining interested in the genre. It might be a slight tad of recency bias, but to me, Animal Well is a nigh-perfect video game and among one of the best I’ve ever played.
Played on: Playstation 5
Hours to beat: 9
Pros:
Clever puzzles
Intricate inter-connected world
Many moments of self-discovery
Thick, tense atmosphere
Cons:
May be to hands off for certain players
Score: 9.5/10
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