I don't get it. This is the second time I have given this game a chance. I tried the PS3 version of the PS2 original about a decade ago, and I figured that maybe this newer version would remedy the problems I had. I feel like I'm being gaslit in to believing it's a good video game. This has got to be the biggest discrepancy in terms of critical acclaim vs. how I feel. I legitimately think it's a bad one. Without exaggeration, I'm giving it a 1/5. The only redeeming qualities are the lovely music and the sense of atmosphere/scale it provides. Outside of that, there's nothing to enjoy here.

The only feeling I felt while playing was frustration. And no, I don't think it's due to it being 'difficult'. It's just annoying. I got through the first 3 colossi without much issue. I just have no desire to continue on.

Agro is one of the worst controlling horses in all of video games. Imagine the absolute horror of using this thing after experiencing the perfection of the double-jumping horse that can turn on a dime in Elden Ring.

Jumping feels bad. Climbing feels bad. Orienting the camera is a pain. It constantly wants to shift the camera to behind you to give you a cinematic view. I want to put the camera facing behind me as I run away from the giant beast, game! Why can't I do that without it fighting with me to re-center?

This game is nothing but a lump of frustration covered in a thin layer of intriguing aspects like the world/ambience.

Yes, I know it's "intended" for things to be frustrating but that doesn't excuse it. That's a bad decision. Nothing should feel intentionally bad - this is a video game. If something is going to feel "intentionally difficult to perform" it should still be fun to try to figure out and overcome. There's no fun to be had here. That would be like someone sitting beside me as I play a Zelda game and punching me in the face every time I try to use a weapon against the boss. "It's immersive, bro!"

Like I said, this second attempt at playing this has solidified my opinion even further. This has got to be the single most overrated game of all time. It's not like other games such as Pikmin, Animal Crossing, or Microsoft Flight Simulator where I can look at it and go "you know what? That's a great game - it's just not for me." No, this is not a great game. I refuse to accept that people genuinely feel that way about this. It's bad.

Sorry for such a negative rant, but I don't know how else to put it. LOL

I like going in to games blind these days. It really does make them better experiences. This game was getting a lot of attention and I love Metroidvania's so I knew I had to check it out. After about 3 hours, I decided to put it down for good.

It's just puzzles. Puzzles are my least favourite type of game mechanic. They're the weakest part of every game they're in, and this game is almost nothing but them. I can be totally cool with them if they're well-paced in a game about other things, but that's not the case here unfortunately.

Don't get me wrong, I actually loved the way they implemented some of the items here and were going for a "just figure out how this works, we're not telling you" attitude. Love it.

I also love the theme of it being about animals.
I love the way it looks and sounds.
I kind of liked the sense of exploration, but at the same time it felt WAY too easy to get lost. That's no fun.

The absolute biggest red flag for me, which I realized quickly is...

no combat. Can't do it. If this game had a fun way of either fighting the animals or protecting them from other creatures, I'd probably have stuck with it til the end. Especially because of how inventive the tools you're given are! They're really cool, and could have doubled as fantastic weapons!

I know this is totally a 'me' thing and it's not going to matter to a lot of people, clearly, based on the other reviews. But I'm just pointing out my honest experience with it.

It's incredible that this is made by one person, and I'll probably still end up recommending it to people with an asterisk pointing out that there's no fighting, or real way to test your skills. It's all reliant on problem solving - which I'm sure is totally fine for many.

For me, after a few hours, the flow of this game was as follows:

1. Find something weird
2. Puzzle time.
3. Test some things to figure out how to do it
4. Get it right immediately because it's intuitive (happened often) OR fail to understand and just leave - it's important to note here that because this game is so obtuse it's hard to determine when you CAN do something but just don't understand and when you CAN'T because you don't have the right tool. That's a major issue for me. It's too vague. I like vague, but this is too vague.
5. Wander around some more, see something cool, but then realize you don't know where you are. The map barely helps with this.
6. Puzzle time.
7. Stumble upon a new item
8. Puzzle time.
9. Try to figure out how to get back to that one spot that may have required this item. This could take 1 minute, could take 20.
10. This one's important - potentially redo a puzzle (especially if you happen to die) because for some reason, certain switches reset and others don't.
11. Repeat

Again, the platforming is great. Comparable to other great Metroidvania's. It's just poorly paced because the reward for clearing a puzzle is having another one right afterwards. Let me breathe!

If this game was identical, but had Guacamelee or Hollow Knight combat, it would probably be incredible. I know that probably sounds stupid, but I really do feel like it needs it.

Anyways, I'm glad most of you are enjoying it. It's certainly an incredible accomplishment for one person. I wish I could enjoy it more!

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.

a superbly interesting and atmospherically resonant experience, i highly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of visual novels, narrative games, or horror in general.

the premise hooks its teeth into you early and just makes you want to keep going to unearth the secrets within it. i will say that once you sort of figure out what the gameplay loop is it loses a little bit of its grasp on you, it's a decently compelling narrative but not masterful enough to really get you thinking, and i also felt like the ending(s) were serviceable but not nearly as memorable as that initial burst of discovery.

Having to make my own decisions was a terrifying experience. I will never do it again. And before anyone asks, I did it, everyone! I fixed her! (I got the good ending)
It was one of the best visual novels I have ever played. Great voice acting, great story, and the voices in my head are accurate. It's impressive that they are still updating the game, and a big update that'll extend the game by 25% is on its way. It's also not a very long game; I finished it in 5 hours because I took my sweet time and wandered around.
There was a sequence where I refused to continue doing what I was told, and the game shut down after the entity told me, "I will be here when you are ready" or something. I was flabbergasted. Next time I opened the game, that same entity welcomed me, and I continued where I left off.
I just wished that the Voice of the Hero and the Narrator's voice wasn't so identical.
It is truly a unique experience and a must-play.

Just finished the game so i tought it would be fun to rank all main 28 minigames:

28 - Tap Troup
27 - Monkey Watch
26 - Tambourine
25 - Bossa Nova
24 - Catch of the Day
23 - Love Rap
22 - Launch party
21 - Shrimp Shuffle
20 - Exhibition Match
19 - Paking pests
18 - Working Dough
17 - Flipper Flop
16 - Donk Donk
15 - Hole in One
14 - Board Meeting
13 - Samurai Slice
12 - Cheer Readers
11 - Micro-Row
10 - Fork Lifter
9 - See Saw
8 - Double Date
7 - Build to Scale
6 - Figure Fighter
5 - Flock Step
4 - Karate Man
3 - Air Rally
2 - Screwbot Factory
1 - Ring side!!

While in the middle of my Cult of the Lamb playthrough, my power went out for 4 hours. In that time, I had nothing to do except go on my phone but eventually it died. I remembered my 3DS was fully charged and so I decided to look through my DS/3DS games to see if I can be productive and replay something I hadn't in a while. Decided on the original New Super Mario Bros, since I hadn't played the series in years. After playing through the first world, my power came back on not long after. Decided to continue replaying this even with the power back on so here we are.

The New Super Mario Bros games were not games I ever truly loved. Yes, by the time 2 and U came out, the series became super stale. But even with DS and Wii, I never found them amazing at all. Replaying DS, this seems to still be true for me. In fact, this may be my least favorite of the bunch, at least next to 2 for several different reasons. Even despite that however, it's still a fun time overall and worth coming back to for a certain addition I'll talk about later.

First thing you'll notice when playing the game, would be its graphics. Personally, I always thought the NSMB games had a fine enough artstyle tho I much prefer how the sprite-based games looked in the past. DS though is sadly the ugliest in the series now. It was certainly a marvel back then but nowadays, just looks kinda ugly a lot of the time compared to the other titles.

Level design-wise, the game has plenty of levels that actually are pretty memorable. The sewers level, the giant wiggler level, the pipe maze level, the fucking brutal 8-1 level with the birds. I wish more of the levels were memorable like these, since a large chunk can be forgettable but I was surprised just how many I ended up remembering. This game also added the star coin collectable and honestly, they can be a tremendous pain in this game. They don't hide them behind invisible walls like future game but some of them require a powerup from other levels or toad houses and it can be frustrating. Same with the secret exits (which came back from Mario World). Like a third of those require the aforementioned outside powerup and they're a pain. I do recommend going for 100% tho cuz once you beat the game, you can actually buy bottom screen skins with any star coins you have and I never knew this and it's awesome. Such a great reward for going out of your way to get them.

One more aspect of the gameplay I wanted to get into were the powerups. 80% of the game you'll be seeing the fire flower which is a good powerup of course. The other 20%, you'll see the three new ones (and the classic star I guess) and I gotta say they're not that great. The mega mushroom is a great concept and is fun to use but is barely in any levels naturally. The mini mushroom is also not used that much and I honestly never liked much just because it's so floaty. And the shell is just obnoxious since you start moving on your own the moment you hit top speed and you have to manually stop to get out of your shell. I'm sure it's super fun when speed running but alas, it just annoyed me more than anything. This is another thing I think future games did better, especially WIi, that one has a great selection of powerups.

I really don't have much to say about the soundtrack. It's alright at best I think and it doesn't help the 1-1 theme gets reused in Wii. I did actually like the map theme for world 7 though, something about that feels so nostalgic. This game is somewhat nostalgic to me since I remember seeing a classmate play this on field trip bus ride when I was 8 and thinking it looked so cool. Never ended up playing the main campaign until after I played the other 3 NSMB games but my memory of that bus ride is engrained in my memory, and part of me thinks that classmate was on world 7 that day which might explain why the song feels so nostalgic. Either way, besides that one song I really like, never cared for the game's ost sadly.

This is all fine and dandy, but the real reason I think someone should come back to this one is its multiplayer modes. Minigames are a blast to play, even if most of them are ported straight from 64 DS, but there are a couple new ones which is nice. I probably played these more than the actual game back in the day. The Mario vs Luigi mode was also a lot of fun back in the day too. The goal was to get the most stars and you could steal them from the opposite Mario brother. Was just really fun constantly screwing the other person over. Though I guess since (most of) the minigames are in 64 DS and future games had multiplayer in it's campaigns, these aren't amazing reasons to come back to NSMB DS specifically, but it's still a nice little package of multiplayer goodness overall.

Like I said, was never a huge fan of the New Super Mario Bros games, and while this still rings true...I'd say this was still a fun time overall. Would be fun to replay them all but I'd have to spread them out considering how samey they are lol.