Animal Well Reviews
Check out Animal Well Review Scores from trusted Critics below. With 24 reviews on CriticDB, Animal Well has a score of:
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.
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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...
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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.
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Explore a bright vision of subterranean nature in this astonishingly rich Metroidvania.
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“Animal Well's deep secrets and arresting atmosphere will suck you down the rabbit hole.”
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A gorgeous and immensely absorbing metroidvania platformer that is both easy to get into and dense with secrets.
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Animal Well delights with its non-traditional approach to Metroidvanias, combining unique items with a reactive and surreal world that's full of surprises.
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A sprawling puzzle metroidvania with a bottomless well of mystery.
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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...
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There's a lot to say about Animal Well, but the nature of the game is that most of it beyond basic mechanics is best left unsaid. The level design is excellent, the platforming controls perfectly after a short time to get a feel for it, and the moody art is far more detailed with fancy effects than its pixely nature shows in screenshots. The heart of the game is its mysteries, though, whether that be something as basic as scanning the map for breaks in the wall that indicate a missed secret passage, or realizing that one of the tools...
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With the influx of Metroidvania titles flooding digital stores, the genre is at risk of saturation. Although the aesthetics differ, many titles stick firmly to fundamentals that evoke a sense of familiarity. Animal Well looks to buck the trend with its quirky take on conventions, helping the retro-inspired adventure carve its own identity. While maintaining the essence of the genre, Billy Basso’s unique approach to design captures an original, fresh, and exciting take on the formula.
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Animal Well delivers a gorgeous art style paired with unique gameplay and an uncompromising vision
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While the first part of Animal Well was a clever puzzle adventure with Metroidvania mechanics that just about anyone could work through without too much difficulty, working together with peers to uncover these truly esoteric secrets quickly enshrined Animal Well as one of my favorite gaming experiences in recent memory. That said, as the mysteries grow more complex and the discussions more intense, I’ve decided to bow out lest I melt my brain further.Perhaps I’ll return one day to solve these mysteries for myself or hop back in with a friend who is simultaneously playing to see if we can’t...
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Animal Well is stubbornly traditional in keeping you in the dark as you embark on your adventure, but that's firmly to its credit as you unravel the mysteries sprinkled around its map. Puzzles involving animals, toys and mechanical devices demand creative thinking, while the sense that nothing is quite as it seems never lets up. This is an endlessly inventive Metroidvania with unfathomable depth.
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Animal Well kept me captivated from start to finish and long after. Fans of Metroid-likes NEED to play this.
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Animal Well is packed with more things to do and secrets to find than most other games, yet retains a distinctly indie charm. It feels so much bigger than what I thought was promised by initial impressions, enchanting me with a world I could listen to and watch all day, and boasting some of the most satisfying gameplay of 2024. It’s one I’m grateful I experienced knowing so little, and urge anyone else sitting on the fence to wholeheartedly embrace until the darkness and biologically fueled light sources of its world envelop you in your beautiful, if slightly chilly, new...
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Animal Well is one of the strangest metroidvanias I’ve played in a lot of very good ways. It’s pretty, funny, and scary in its atmospheric visuals and audio. Its platforming is also very satisfying and makes you feel good when you figure out how to use your tools properly to solve a puzzle. There are also secrets a plenty and a post-game to explore, as well. It's also just interesting to me that you don't directly fight with enemies and instead use your tools to work around them. The main double-edged sword here is the complete lack of context and...
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Despite its confusing fast travel system and misbehaving yo-yo, Animal Well is a bizarre yet brilliant neon-bathed adventure, characterized by tricky puzzles, intense platforming, and a host of cute animals - almost all of which are out to kill you.
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Metroidvanias are one of the few genres that I strive to play above all others. The joy of discovering a new ability and trying it out everywhere across the map to discover hidden pathways never fails to bring a smile to my face. In Animal Well, a solo project by one Billy Basso and published by Bigmode, the combat is instead replaced with creative ways to use all of the tools in hand. This was a title I had gotten hands-on with at various media events over the past couple of years, and every time, I found myself drawn back...
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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!
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Animal Well pleased, surprised, or scared me with something new at every turn as it confidently jumped from one idea to the next up until its conclusion. That novelty lost its luster near the end of its 8-to-10-hour runtime as I treaded the fresh sheen off familiar ground, but it never lost its lively, naturalistically wild heart – even when occasional difficulty spikes compounded that staleness. Still, its tense atmosphere is inherently compelling. Illuminated by dangling lanterns and brought to life with lovingly animated animals and Rube Goldberg-like puzzles but dimmed by an ominous synth tone reminiscent of Twin Peaks’...
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Animal Well is an incredible, unique metroidvania that is a must have for those with or without a Steam Deck.
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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.
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