Rating
Animal Well
What lurks beneath the surface of this deceptively minimalistic adventure? In Animal Well there is more than what you see. Explore a dense interconnected labyrinth, and unravel its many secrets. Collect items to manipulate your environment in surprising and meaningful ways. Encounter creatures both beautiful and unsettling, and try to survive what ...
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Animal Well Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
I’m not a metroidvania guy. My frustrating and infuriating attempts at Super Metroid, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Hollow Knight, arguably the three most notoriously excellent games in the genre, should communicate all you need to know about my feelings on these kinds of games. Behold! Animal Well.
Animal Well is a game that promised platforming and puzzles and has managed to absolutely nail both in execution. Platforming fans will have an enjoyable time reaching the credits and will be content to set it down, while puzzle gamers will be enamored by the depth that Animal Well has been able to achieve. Solving puzzles like these will give you a level of satisfaction that other games just can't match!
Explore a bright vision of subterranean nature in this astonishingly rich Metroidvania.
Animal Well is a game that’s clearly been built with passion. It's a masterclass in puzzle design, with tight platforming, set in a beautiful, oftentimes perilous world. It's actually at its weakest when it's just a Metroidvania, and instead, its world and the genre serve as a way to deliver some of the most intricate, interconnected puzzles of any game I've ever played. Steeped in mystery, Animal Well is a title I can't help but recommend, and one you should go into as spoiler-free as possible. It has the potential to be this year's Inscryption.
Animal Well achieves a new level of explorative gameplay by making the bold choice of trusting the player to be smart. Not a single portion of Animal Well is fed to you. You must explore and figure things out for yourself. And there's nothing more refreshing.
Animal Well delights with its non-traditional approach to Metroidvanias, combining unique items with a reactive and surreal world that's full of surprises.
A sprawling puzzle metroidvania with a bottomless well of mystery.
Animal Well is one of those works that seem to have been scooped out of a single skull: a chilly clump of sweet dreams and obsessions, pleasures and manias.
Explore a dense, interconnected labyrinth, and unravel its many secrets. Collect items to manipulate your environment in surprising and meaningful ways. Encounter beautiful and unsettling creatures, as you attempt to survive what lurks in the dark. There is more than what you see. Switch version reviewed. Review copy provided by company for testing purposes.
“Animal Well's deep secrets and arresting atmosphere will suck you down the rabbit hole.”
I think that a good chunk of the discourse surrounding Animal Well is being directed towards the owner of its publisher, the one and only Jason “Videogamedunkey” Gastrow, and not the star of the show, sole developer Billy Basso. Whilst I will commend Dunkey on his brand new venture, with an emphasis on curating indies and giving developers fair shares in an increasingly hostile environment, I want to focus my review on the game itself and the impressive work coined by Basso. With that bei...
Find a friend or two, and make a blood oath to solve as much of Animal Well as possible among only yourselves, without getting help online. The true magic of this game is sharing discoveries and theories with friends; having a faceless internet person tell you the mystery of the eggs without working it out on your own is to deny yourself a feeling of satisfaction that few games can offer. It harks back to the early days of Zelda, when the oldest among us tried to figure out what the hell “Dodongo dislikes smoke” meant. Consider it a trial, a badge of honor that you can wear when you’re 30 hour...