Animal Well kinda took me by surprise, what I thought would be a short little metroidvania turned into something more vast than I ever could have imagined. There are so many secrets and hidden areas to discover. Even after collecting all 64 eggs and getting all the secret bunnies, I find out there’s even more that I’ve missed. Plus, I’m sure there are still more hidden secrets out there yet to be discovered. It’s clear how much thought and time went into making this game and It’s hard to believe this game was made by only one person. That, plus the fact this whole game is a measly 30MB, absolutely blows my mind.

Off the rip, I appreciate that you’re immediately thrown into this world with no tutorial and forces you to figure out how this game works. It made exploration a blast and gave you a real sense of discoverability. The use of colour in this game is simply astonishing. Neon pixel art paired with dynamic lighting completely immerses you in this dark and mysterious world. Additionally, the fluid dynamics and physics are outstanding. As enemies disappear and blocks get blown away by TNT, the wisps of smoke left behind lingers ever so beautifully. I’ve never seen better smoke effects than in this game.

The puzzles in this game were super engaging and made good use of the tools you find along the way. Instead of the usual attack, bomb and double jump in your standard metroidvania; you are instead treated to the yoyo, slinky, and bubble wand. Each expanding your moveset and allowing you to unlock even more of the ever growing map. I never felt stuck as there was always somewhere else to explore and by the post-game, there were countless rooms that I felt I exhausted everything it had to offer until I found a new tool.

Slowly pulling back layer by layer, this truly is the lasagna of gaming.

Thank you Animal Well.

I find this game incredibly difficult to pin down to a star rating and it might actually inspire me to ditch the stars on BL altogether.

I think I got kinda screwed with this one and my expectations of it. I knew about this game for awhile but I wasn't really interested until I saw all the comparisons to things like Outer Wilds and Tunic. I definitely understand why people make those comparisons but going in to this game thinking of those experiences really put me in the wrong frame of mind. This seriously is just a really good Metroid with some super neat ideas. It's only when you get to the discord study group required sicko third layer that the game becomes something truly mind bending and unfortunately, everyone who got early copies of the game talked about it like that was the entire experience.

The first layer of the game is really fun though! Finding your way through these areas and collecting the four flames is super rewarding, especially because the major items are so esoteric and multifaceted. There were more than a few times that I picked up a new item, thought it was completely worthless, and then realized it was so important in ways I never even considered. On top of that, you can have that sort of discovery multiple times with the same item! It's nuts!!

The main thing held me back from really falling in love with this game though was the save system. For me personally, I think the saving in this game completely fights against what makes it so special. Once you get past the credits the game becomes about collecting hidden eggs throughout the map (which feels extremely similar to collecting missed energy tanks in Metroid). I was pretty excited to dive in to this after getting to the first credits but I quickly came to the conclusion that getting around the map just felt tedious and unexciting. I constantly had the sensation of brain blasting a new idea to try out being undercut by the realization that I had to find my way back to wherever that room is. I think this would immediately be one of my top games of this year if it just had the same screen respawn from Celeste. I know that would completely ruin some bigger parts of the game but I think it could just be temporarily disabled for those sections. Once you've gotten to the egg finding portion it is just so bothersome to mess up a platforming section you've already done and be sent back to some phone that is 20 screens away.

I had a lot of frustration with this game but I always felt like I wanted to be playing it when I was away from it. When I play a game like this I think a huge draw is the narrative mystery behind the puzzles that is being chipped away it. When you play something like Tunic it always feels like you're getting closer to a revelation about its world as you get deeper in to the puzzle web it's made up of. Animal Well feels purely mechanical to me. The atmosphere is truly incredible in this. I especially love the lack of music for a lot of the game. But it took me a bit to realize that the reward for completing all of these puzzles would be more complicated puzzles. There wouldn't be some kind of eye opening moment that made me view the would world differently. It would just be different ways to look at these rooms.

And that's ok!! I want to be clear that this game is incredibly impressive and that I probably am not even capable of having a conversation with Billy Basso and his gigantus style brain. I just think it's not my flavor of whatever this genre of game is and I mostly wanted to share these thoughts because I disagree with so much of the messaging I have been seeing about it. This game is for puzzle freaks ONLY who also can put up with a lot of backtracking. I think that would have been me if there were the promise of something a bit more there along the way.

IDK tho! Part of me loves Animal Well and I think I would like to revisit it some day in the future with the right mindset.

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.

Disclaimer - I know the developers and (shortly) playtested a couple of early builds.
I'm a fan of their work and I think this finished game is fun and impressive but not without faults.


Toodee and Toodee is a hybrid of block pushing puzzle akin to Baba is You and a puzzle platformer/precision platformer-ish.

It has asymmetrical co-op which I think is the best way to play this game and is overall not a common trait in these genres.

I had fun through most of it, it does lose steam towards the end and there are a few difficulty spikes here and there. The game is fairly short and has a modular difficulty settings that helps smooth things out.

The game shines in puzzles that requires the players to spot the shtick and work with it to a quick solution.
late stages of every world become much more complex and require some reverse engineering and a lot of trial and error. This sometimes feel like a natural progression that's satisfying to crack but sometimes it feel like I'm playing a different game.

I think the game's biggest drawback is that it didn't lift quality of life features from similar games. - There were more than a few times I wished for Baba is You quick undo feature. Soft locking a level is common and is often attributed to a slip of the hand rather than miscalculations.

Similarly, the platforming sections are often very lethal and require precise timing and quick reactions. Games like Super Meat Boy or Celeste counter this by instantly bringing you back to the action, Toodee and Topdee is relatively slow and punishing.

The game's hybrid nature may not allow it to move as fast forementioned titles but it could allow checkpoints in levels. The game already does something similar during boss battles and it works great.

The game's art style is very cute, there's a lot of soul put into these little characters' animation.
Music is an absolute banger!


Overall I had a good time with it, co-op being the highlight - figuring out puzzles with your partner's literally different perspective is a lot of fun.