Animal Well is a magical metroidvania with a big soul and an auteur project that has become a shining example of the correct use of genre cliches. We invite you to dive into this well with a double bottom – and perhaps you are destined to reveal its secrets.
Animal Well was released on May 9, 2024, on PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 5. It’s not like the project immediately gained popularity. The peak online on the Steam platform was 8,133 people, which is not bad for a pixel game, but not great either, considering who is the publisher of the project. The Bigmode publishing house was founded by blogger videogamedonkey. The latter, with 7.5 million subscribers, is capable of organizing a large-scale PR campaign to promote the project. However, this did not happen.
It’s unlikely that it’s a matter of inexperience, but a fact is a fact. After the announcement in 2023 that Bigmode would be the game’s publisher, the next video about the game came out after the project’s release. All promotion was limited to a banal distribution of keys to Western publications, which for a long time in their articles have been more willing to focus on the topic of diversity and gender equality, mentioning game design only in a few words.
Billy Basso is no ordinary developer from the streets of Chicago, with a career at NetherRealm Studios, Phosphor Games, Level Ex and more. He has spent most of his career working with game engines, which has certainly left its mark on Animal Well. While working for third-party studios, he began to yearn to create something of his own, filled with his own creative vision.
And so in 2017, having joined Level Ex, Basso simultaneously began developing a game engine for his future project (this guy doesn’t look for easy ways). Initially, Billy wanted to make something in the spirit of the first Resident Evil and Silent Hill — an adventure in the survival horror genre — but in the end, we have a multi-layered Metroidvania pie without a combat system. What does it taste like? Let’s find out.
“Purgatory” for the restless
“Halfway through my earthly life, I found myself in a ghostly forest.” On the first layer, we find ourselves in a gloomy, unfriendly place – a well, reminiscent of a dark fairy-tale forest. Our hero – a lump of unknown origin, wakes up from sleep inside a water lily and all that remains for him is to move forward. No one teaches the newborn “Luntik”, like the player, the local rules – figure it out yourself.
The first point in the recipe for a good metroidvania is freedom of exploration. From the very beginning, we are free to go in all four directions, except that the hero does not have any outstanding abilities except for jumping. On the still dark map, there are four lights that need to be found.
On his way, the hero meets various animals: chinchillas, chameleons, dogs, hedgehogs, seahorses, ostriches and many others. There is enough room for everyone in this ark – even ghosts with bizarre grimaces. Some animals are an obstacle, others will become a tool for solving puzzles.
Despite the lack of a combat system, “battles” with bosses have not gone away. Some battles take place in an arena, where you need to solve a puzzle as quickly as possible to defeat the boss, while others are presented in the form of a chase. Escaping from a ghost cat completely transfers the game to the horror platformer genre. By the way, about this.
Hand in hand with the entourage of the magical forest goes the oppressive atmosphere of a surreal world, framed by unobtrusive ambient. The music here does not draw attention to itself, but emphasizes the mood of each biome and individual events. The project is related to the survival horror genre by the feeling of helplessness of the main character, some gloomy segments and rare “screamers”, as well as soothing music in the local save room. However, not all of these rooms will protect you from the tenacious paws of enemies.
Because the game deliberately does not limit the player’s capabilities, the difficulty curve is impossible to assess objectively. Some puzzles are simple – press a button and get a result; others will make you think hard, encouraging you to think beyond the available screen. Primitivism sometimes borders on genius, but you don’t pay any attention to it while playing.
This is also true for the platforming. Most of the segments won’t require incredible reflexes or pixel-penetrating, but there are a few moments that, due to their difficulty, stick in your memory – you remember them with a special warmth in the lower back. But it’s not so much the difficulty, but the fact that after death, the state of the world can roll back several steps, which can take an extra tens of minutes to complete difficult sections.
Step by step, exploring this world, we get various objects at our disposal – a flute, a yo-yo, a spring, a frisbee, a bubble stick. The list of objects is much wider, but these are the objects that belong to the first layer, and what comes next – you will soon find out.
Often in metroidvanias, each new item or tool is designed to perform one specific task. But Animal Well encourages ingenuity, and almost every “gadget” can be used in a non-obvious way. For example, with the help of a frisbee, you can destroy spikes, distract dogs, switch levers and buttons, and also use it as a means of transportation and a platform. At the same time, tools can be combined with each other to get to certain places, even if you do not have a specific item that allows you to get there easier and more “legally”. I learned about many of the non-obvious interactions only after completing the game, since at the basic level it is possible to complete it without being Leonardo da Vinci.
And so, fifteen hours later, the bosses were defeated, the lights were found, some of the collectibles were collected. The final credits. I pick up some interesting key from the floor, which opens the door to a very interesting place, and I understand that this is not the end. In fact, you can get to the first “ending” much faster, but I was so engrossed in exploring this labyrinth-world that I was in no hurry to hunt for the “lights”.
Nine circles of egg “hell”
At this point we come to the first and only problem that catches the eye. To get the “true ending” you need to collect all the eggs – local collectibles in the amount of 64 pieces, having previously obtained the remaining tools.
In my opinion, this decision to stretch out the gameplay is extremely questionable, but far from new (I send greetings to 60 rainbow shells from Sea of Stars).
The thing is that to get the remaining tools and eggs, you need to wind more than one circle around this huge world. Getting a new “gadget” is a reason to make another circle to find new items. It is worth saying that in the game you can mark chests, interesting places and even write directly on the map, but you do not come to this right away, which is why I did not have pre-prepared marks with “suspicious” places on the map, since they are either reliably hidden or too unobvious. Found a top that can dig the ground – make a circle. Found a remote control that can control switches remotely and scan the area – make a circle. Got a wheel to roll on spikes – make another circle and so on.
It continues to captivate for a while, but gradually the events fade away, discoveries become rarer and you simply begin to get tired of the game. I was not ashamed to look for the last items using screenshots kindly left by community members, which eventually allowed me to get the “true” ending. In fact, the game hides many secrets and most players, like me, will find it incredibly difficult to complete the entire playthrough on their own.
Paradise” of the fourth wall
Another layer of the game is finding secret rabbits, the exact number of which is still unknown. If you play on a PC with a printer connected to it, at a certain point the game can print out an origami model of a rabbit, which, when assembled, can give you a hint to solve another riddle. This breaking of the fourth wall brings back memories of Metal Gear Solid and the famous battle with the Psycho Mantis boss.
One of the rabbits is completely impossible to find on your own, since you need to assemble a picture from 50 pieces, but each player can only get one of them. Thus, even with the assistance of major Western publications and the developer himself, it took the community more than 24 hours to solve this riddle. At the time of writing, all the secret rabbits have not yet been found, the community is actively working on this. It is unknown what kind of “trick they will do after they get together, but one thing is clear – the world of Animal Well still holds many secrets and mysteries, because the community is already struggling with a new riddle – mysterious encrypted messages that can be received after the “true” ending, but that’s a completely different story.
Diagnosis
Animal Well is a project with a deep soul. Billy Basso gave us an amazing, original adventure that can leave an indelible mark on anyone who gets to know it better. This is one of those rare cases when you want to close your eyes to possible shortcomings and just enjoy the gameplay. At a basic level, the project is a benchmark metroidvania that rewards the player for exploration and a desire to experiment.
Some may be put off by the pixelated graphics or lack of combat elements, but these are minor things. Animal Well’s graphical style is more of a creative decision than a consequence of a small budget. High-quality backdrops, smooth animations, and dynamic lighting allow the project to look decent even on a 50-inch TV. At the same time, the game’s size on PlayStation 5 is a modest 145 megabytes by today’s standards. And on PC, I heard, it’s only 38.
The project can be safely recommended to all fans of the genre, but let me give you one piece of advice: do not delay in searching for lights. This will allow you to quickly gain access to new tools, and also leave enough room for new impressions, so that your path to the “true” ending will be a little more exciting than my own.
Independent developers, like Atlas, hold the creative side of the gaming industry on their fragile shoulders. Animal Well is a true work of art, reminding us that established standards, genre cliches, and pixel art are not always a sign of laziness or lack of skill. They can surprise.
The price of the project is 999 rubles in the Russian Steam or 630 lira in the Turkish PlayStation Store, which is a bit too much if you look at the cost of Hollow Knight (550 rubles) and other similar projects. But for owners of PlayStation 5 consoles, there is an opportunity to join the project with a PlayStation Plus Extra subscription.
Pro
- Lots of mysteries and secrets
- The standard world-labyrinth
- Magical atmosphere
- The game knows how to surprise
- Non-standard toolkit
Contra
- Backtracking Overload
- Inability to complete 100% on your own
- Lack of clear “autosaves” before difficult sections
- High price compared to other games in the genre