Game's cool. You play as Meatwad. It’s filled with smartly designed puzzles, making engaging use of an oddball toolset that rewards out-of-the-box thinking… but only so much. Beyond manoeuvrability skill checks that are satisfying enough to clear, and a few cool mechanical revelations, there wasn't a lot of head scratching here for me. Animal Well is tremendously well-accomplished for a solo project, I had a great time with it! It's just lacking a certain star power for it to really raise the bar.
For complete transparency, I had this game sold to me as an ‘Outer Wilds-like’ - and upon seeing that it was a sidescrolling metroidvania, I was beside myself with hope that I’d get a few notes of La-Mulana in Animal Well, too. In practice however, I think the more apt comparisons for Animal Well would be games like Environmental Station Alpha, Super Junkoid, A Monster's Expedition, or Knytt. The distinction is important, to me at the very least, because I approached Animal Well with pure intentions but spent most of my runtime hoping for an experience that never actually came. This isn’t a game about losing yourself in the sprawling tendrils of a world’s unfolding internal logic - Animal Well is an array of screens containing pressure plate puzzles. The world feels utilitarian, and even with the animal themed ruins that politely aim to conjure a sense of dread and mystery, it’s all misaligned and mismatched in a way that lacks the cohesion of a place with a history worth learning. The latter end of my runtime was characterised by backtracking through areas to collect the final few tools, but it was made excruciating by way of the fact that practically all of the screens merely become desolate roadways once you’ve solved their focal puzzles. I don’t think I spent any more than five minutes on any given puzzle in the first ‘layer’’ of the game, and for as much as I like how left-field the player toolset is, their interplay with the puzzles themselves is usually shockingly obvious and leaves very little room for doubt.
There is, undeniably, an inclusion of outtadisworld ARG-like puzzles that at the time of writing are still being unfolded by dedicated Animal Well researchers, but I’d be lying if I said I value things like that remotely as much as game content I can be trusted to learn and master on my own. Will the community uncover a secret back half of the game that turns the whole joint on its head Frog Fractions-style? I kind of doubt it lol. I’m a sicko that completed La-Mulana 2 on launch week before any guides were even written, the distinction here is that that series takes great pains to contextualise its puzzles in multiple ways - through cryptic hints and also through things like inferred historicity and synergy. Animal Well doesn’t do this, it scatters codes and event flags around the map in obscure nooks in the hopes that a friend group is putting together a Google Doc.
For complete transparency, I had this game sold to me as an ‘Outer Wilds-like’ - and upon seeing that it was a sidescrolling metroidvania, I was beside myself with hope that I’d get a few notes of La-Mulana in Animal Well, too. In practice however, I think the more apt comparisons for Animal Well would be games like Environmental Station Alpha, Super Junkoid, A Monster's Expedition, or Knytt. The distinction is important, to me at the very least, because I approached Animal Well with pure intentions but spent most of my runtime hoping for an experience that never actually came. This isn’t a game about losing yourself in the sprawling tendrils of a world’s unfolding internal logic - Animal Well is an array of screens containing pressure plate puzzles. The world feels utilitarian, and even with the animal themed ruins that politely aim to conjure a sense of dread and mystery, it’s all misaligned and mismatched in a way that lacks the cohesion of a place with a history worth learning. The latter end of my runtime was characterised by backtracking through areas to collect the final few tools, but it was made excruciating by way of the fact that practically all of the screens merely become desolate roadways once you’ve solved their focal puzzles. I don’t think I spent any more than five minutes on any given puzzle in the first ‘layer’’ of the game, and for as much as I like how left-field the player toolset is, their interplay with the puzzles themselves is usually shockingly obvious and leaves very little room for doubt.
There is, undeniably, an inclusion of outtadisworld ARG-like puzzles that at the time of writing are still being unfolded by dedicated Animal Well researchers, but I’d be lying if I said I value things like that remotely as much as game content I can be trusted to learn and master on my own. Will the community uncover a secret back half of the game that turns the whole joint on its head Frog Fractions-style? I kind of doubt it lol. I’m a sicko that completed La-Mulana 2 on launch week before any guides were even written, the distinction here is that that series takes great pains to contextualise its puzzles in multiple ways - through cryptic hints and also through things like inferred historicity and synergy. Animal Well doesn’t do this, it scatters codes and event flags around the map in obscure nooks in the hopes that a friend group is putting together a Google Doc.
8 Comments
I watched a friend play much of Void Stranger and it sadly crushed much of my anticipation to give the game a shot myself. Game's very cool and I did definitely shoot myself in the foot there, but alas!!!
i can't help myself but cynically interpret a lot of the recent indie wave of incredibly cryptic ARG-like puzzles meant to attract a crowd of collective solvers as bait for journalists, especially as large media companies have embraced ARGs as a form of guerilla marketing. a glorified knowledge gate to access dark souls DLC is one thing, but very often the act of "submitting the solution" in this sort of game is treated like the pinnacle of the game's challenge, and end in of itself, whereas for most players it will be the most blithely frictionless part of the entire game.
the key difference between animal well and environmental station alpha for me is that the latter never stops revolving around the player's personal journey. you can certainly argue that most people that seek out ESA's most esoteric secrets do so with the help of a guide but I feel that the game never relents on its integrity to provide a personally enthralling mystery-solving experience (even if some of the things it asks you to do can be a bit ridiculous lol)
the key difference between animal well and environmental station alpha for me is that the latter never stops revolving around the player's personal journey. you can certainly argue that most people that seek out ESA's most esoteric secrets do so with the help of a guide but I feel that the game never relents on its integrity to provide a personally enthralling mystery-solving experience (even if some of the things it asks you to do can be a bit ridiculous lol)
@Swiggle Been batting this around in my head all throughout my playthrough of Animal Well. I only learned of this game when people were sharing articles that spoke of it as having puzzles that "MAY NEVER BE SOLVED" etc., it's certainly great marketing to include stuff like that if that's your intention. (If I was making a game, I'd put that stuff in, no doubt).
Animal Well is a game with a handful of endings; a main path anybody can complete - a second that will call for a guide if or when your patience wears thin - and a third that is explicitly incompletable on your own. Layering these increasingly esoteric puzzle solving design spaces on top of each other is a difficult balancing act. I can't speak accurately on Environmental Station Alpha (I didn't finish it, 9~ years ago) but my reference point will always be La-Mulana. A game where its cryptical puzzles are tied to the main progression path. When you finish La-Mulana, you finish La-Mulana, because you've solved everything it throws your way. When you finish Animal Well... you don't finish Animal Well - you uncover the next layer, and see how far your patience takes you... Then you get to the final layer, from which you basically have to throw your hands up and spoil for yourself.
I won't lie, I have a staunch preference in design. La-Mulana captures the feeling of a deeply fulfilling puzzlesolving adventure, its devs demanding a lot out of its players, but giving plenty of ingame tools and hints to nudge them in the correct direction. Animal Well's adventure is one designed to sputter out until you go "I guess that's the end?".
Animal Well is a game with a handful of endings; a main path anybody can complete - a second that will call for a guide if or when your patience wears thin - and a third that is explicitly incompletable on your own. Layering these increasingly esoteric puzzle solving design spaces on top of each other is a difficult balancing act. I can't speak accurately on Environmental Station Alpha (I didn't finish it, 9~ years ago) but my reference point will always be La-Mulana. A game where its cryptical puzzles are tied to the main progression path. When you finish La-Mulana, you finish La-Mulana, because you've solved everything it throws your way. When you finish Animal Well... you don't finish Animal Well - you uncover the next layer, and see how far your patience takes you... Then you get to the final layer, from which you basically have to throw your hands up and spoil for yourself.
I won't lie, I have a staunch preference in design. La-Mulana captures the feeling of a deeply fulfilling puzzlesolving adventure, its devs demanding a lot out of its players, but giving plenty of ingame tools and hints to nudge them in the correct direction. Animal Well's adventure is one designed to sputter out until you go "I guess that's the end?".
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@BeachEpisode really astute points!
i'd have to get around to finishing la-mulana (only beat a few areas before life dashed my playthrough and mental understanding of its clues against the rocks) and then mull it over before i was comfortable definitively saying that la-mulana's approach is more conducive for this variety of game overall, but i will absolutely say that its confidence in immediately submerging the player into the flow it intends to broadly keep them in throughout is way more conducive to embroiling the player in actually doing the damn puzzle-solving, and there's strong logic that that should be the end-all be all. after all, it should be a game about actually cracking cryptic shit- not a game about feeling like you're cracking cryptic shit.
the moment you chip away a layer of a game to reveal a completely different kind of thing underneath is undeniably cool, but because of that the parts where you peek behind the curtain can start to feel like bonus stages. it also acts as a shield of criticism of sorts because it's easy to fall into the mental trap of "i shouldn't be complaining, all this stuff exists under the surface!" but like come on now. everyone knows that this esoteric shit is a core part of animal well's broader mystique at this point. it's fair enough to expect it to actually be substantive. at worst, sometimes a game can feel like a monument to its own intrigue.
i'd have to get around to finishing la-mulana (only beat a few areas before life dashed my playthrough and mental understanding of its clues against the rocks) and then mull it over before i was comfortable definitively saying that la-mulana's approach is more conducive for this variety of game overall, but i will absolutely say that its confidence in immediately submerging the player into the flow it intends to broadly keep them in throughout is way more conducive to embroiling the player in actually doing the damn puzzle-solving, and there's strong logic that that should be the end-all be all. after all, it should be a game about actually cracking cryptic shit- not a game about feeling like you're cracking cryptic shit.
the moment you chip away a layer of a game to reveal a completely different kind of thing underneath is undeniably cool, but because of that the parts where you peek behind the curtain can start to feel like bonus stages. it also acts as a shield of criticism of sorts because it's easy to fall into the mental trap of "i shouldn't be complaining, all this stuff exists under the surface!" but like come on now. everyone knows that this esoteric shit is a core part of animal well's broader mystique at this point. it's fair enough to expect it to actually be substantive. at worst, sometimes a game can feel like a monument to its own intrigue.
Void Stranger isn't all perfect and kind of up its own ass sometimes but I'm confused why didn't it generate as much fervor as Animal Well when its execution is just, so much more interesting from what I've seen
@Cakewalking In complete honesty I think it's as simple as the Dunkey name association and the Switch Port
thanks for putting into words what i couldnt. i also had it sold to me as an Outer-Wilds-like and was severely disappointed to find that the bulk of what people seemed to get out of both is “it has secrets.” its certainly cute and good and admirable as you said but there was absolutely nothing for me to chew on and i sincerely doubt any of this exterior meta story is gonna amount to much either, at least anything that’ll extract any emotion besides “huh, neat”
aguamte622
13 days ago