This game came as a big surprise to me. I hadn't heard of it during its development and it dropped out of nowhere being published by a youtuber that I'm not fond of. Still, it looked interesting and the word of mouth was good. I decided to dive in.
Animal Well is polished to a gleaming sheen; it takes advantage of every feature of modern controllers, from the colored lighting to the touchpad of a Dualsense and a high level of attention to detail with the rumble giving the game a tactile feeling. Despite lacking a musical score for all but a few moments, the sound design is immaculate and makes the world feel alive; I never felt the urge to put on music, and indeed the game often provides audio cues that serve as hints. Every pixel is placed with care, and everything that looks like a cryptic puzzle really is one.
After about a week and close to 20 hours of gameplay I finally finished collecting all the eggs, the main collectable in the game; it took only about 8 hours for me to hit credits playing at a leisurely pace, but I knew I had only scratched the surface at that point and I wanted to get closer to its core before writing about it. I knew early on in my experience that this was going to be an all timer, and my intuition proved correct; this is easily a GotY contender, and one of the best puzzle platformers I've ever played. In a year where we already saw Balatro as a solo developer's debut and GotY contender, I wasn't expecting to see another one so soon. Hats off to Billy Basso; the love that went into this shines through every pixel.
I'd also be remiss not to mention how much of a technical achievement this game is; clocking in at a bit over 30MB, it runs on a custom engine. The old school DIY approach adds to its charm, and reminds me of the projects that inspired me to want to get into independent development back in the pre-Braid era of freeware. The only nitpicks I have with the game are that it can't be fully appreciated as a solo experience - playing concurrently with, or talking to a friend who has already played the game is definitely the way to go - and that, by quite late into the game (the second or third 'layer' of puzzles), traversal goes from being wonderful to somewhat tedious; but this only happens after you've exhausted many of the wonderful puzzles this world has to offer, and going this deep down therabbit hole Animal Well is absolutely not necessary to experience this gem.
A must-play for puzzle platformer fans, those intrigued by solo development, or anyone who loves exploration.
Animal Well is polished to a gleaming sheen; it takes advantage of every feature of modern controllers, from the colored lighting to the touchpad of a Dualsense and a high level of attention to detail with the rumble giving the game a tactile feeling. Despite lacking a musical score for all but a few moments, the sound design is immaculate and makes the world feel alive; I never felt the urge to put on music, and indeed the game often provides audio cues that serve as hints. Every pixel is placed with care, and everything that looks like a cryptic puzzle really is one.
After about a week and close to 20 hours of gameplay I finally finished collecting all the eggs, the main collectable in the game; it took only about 8 hours for me to hit credits playing at a leisurely pace, but I knew I had only scratched the surface at that point and I wanted to get closer to its core before writing about it. I knew early on in my experience that this was going to be an all timer, and my intuition proved correct; this is easily a GotY contender, and one of the best puzzle platformers I've ever played. In a year where we already saw Balatro as a solo developer's debut and GotY contender, I wasn't expecting to see another one so soon. Hats off to Billy Basso; the love that went into this shines through every pixel.
I'd also be remiss not to mention how much of a technical achievement this game is; clocking in at a bit over 30MB, it runs on a custom engine. The old school DIY approach adds to its charm, and reminds me of the projects that inspired me to want to get into independent development back in the pre-Braid era of freeware. The only nitpicks I have with the game are that it can't be fully appreciated as a solo experience - playing concurrently with, or talking to a friend who has already played the game is definitely the way to go - and that, by quite late into the game (the second or third 'layer' of puzzles), traversal goes from being wonderful to somewhat tedious; but this only happens after you've exhausted many of the wonderful puzzles this world has to offer, and going this deep down the
A must-play for puzzle platformer fans, those intrigued by solo development, or anyone who loves exploration.