The framing and language surrounding the prerelease/promo material for Animal Well gave me vibes similar to Yume Nikki or Rain World. I thought it would be a game centrally about wandering about a cool place in search of weird stuff to look at. I was a bit skeptical about that impression - it seems like too niche of a premise to be the flagship title for a big-name Youtuber's publishing company - but I allowed myself to hope anyway.
In retrospect, Animal Well is much closer to a typical puzzle-metroidvania than it is to either of those games. Luckily, it was very good at tricking me into thinking otherwise.
(If you similarly wish to be tricked, stop reading now. No specific spoilers here, but some technical discussion that might ruin the mystique)
I think this mostly comes down to its overall world design, which is quite adept at feeling "exploratory" even within the confines of its structure. Progression is arranged in a tier-like structure: you start with access to a few areas that you can clear in any order, and later areas gate access through puzzles that require one or two tools from these earlier areas, which adds up to a huge array of permutations for possible routes through the game.
Another good design choice is constant recontextualization. Many times, a mechanic will be available to the player long before a puzzle requires or tutorializes it. Bringing these revelations back to earlier areas tends to reveal plenty of secrets. This keeps the earlier tools from becoming too stale, and it rewards savvy players who experiment and grasp these mechanics early with early access to these secrets and less backtracking as a result.
Speaking of the secrets, the rewards for finding them are one of my other favorite design choices in the game. These rewards are centered on making navigation and backtracking easier, meaning they feel very substantial to the players who want to go secret-hunting without feeling like a necessity for normal progress.
However, I find that Animal Well has the same major problem I have with other "secret-focused" games, like Fez and Environmental Station Alpha, where inching closer to 100% completion means pitting yourself against increasingly brutal challenges, in both the cognitive and normal gameplay senses. This style of game tends to create a weird valley of experience: the people who don't engage with the secrets at all hit credits and leave satisfied, and the ARG freaks can obsess over that last puzzle for months, but anyone in the middle just finds their enjoyment slowly petering out as the game gets further and further from what they signed up for. In my Void Stranger review I tried to intercept this criticism by urging people to remember that this sort of stuff is all optional in the end, and I'm doing my best to approach Animal Well with the same courtesy. But now that I'm back in the valley, I have to admit it kind of sucks down here.
In retrospect, Animal Well is much closer to a typical puzzle-metroidvania than it is to either of those games. Luckily, it was very good at tricking me into thinking otherwise.
(If you similarly wish to be tricked, stop reading now. No specific spoilers here, but some technical discussion that might ruin the mystique)
I think this mostly comes down to its overall world design, which is quite adept at feeling "exploratory" even within the confines of its structure. Progression is arranged in a tier-like structure: you start with access to a few areas that you can clear in any order, and later areas gate access through puzzles that require one or two tools from these earlier areas, which adds up to a huge array of permutations for possible routes through the game.
Another good design choice is constant recontextualization. Many times, a mechanic will be available to the player long before a puzzle requires or tutorializes it. Bringing these revelations back to earlier areas tends to reveal plenty of secrets. This keeps the earlier tools from becoming too stale, and it rewards savvy players who experiment and grasp these mechanics early with early access to these secrets and less backtracking as a result.
Speaking of the secrets, the rewards for finding them are one of my other favorite design choices in the game. These rewards are centered on making navigation and backtracking easier, meaning they feel very substantial to the players who want to go secret-hunting without feeling like a necessity for normal progress.
However, I find that Animal Well has the same major problem I have with other "secret-focused" games, like Fez and Environmental Station Alpha, where inching closer to 100% completion means pitting yourself against increasingly brutal challenges, in both the cognitive and normal gameplay senses. This style of game tends to create a weird valley of experience: the people who don't engage with the secrets at all hit credits and leave satisfied, and the ARG freaks can obsess over that last puzzle for months, but anyone in the middle just finds their enjoyment slowly petering out as the game gets further and further from what they signed up for. In my Void Stranger review I tried to intercept this criticism by urging people to remember that this sort of stuff is all optional in the end, and I'm doing my best to approach Animal Well with the same courtesy. But now that I'm back in the valley, I have to admit it kind of sucks down here.