Animal Well Review: A Beautifully Disturbing Puzzle Platformer

Описание: A review of Animal Well, a Metroidvania available on XBOX, PC, Switch and Playstation

Follow and support me!
Twitter/X: https://x.com/ItsAllstar
TikTok:   / itsallstar  
Twitch:   / itsallstar  

TRANSCRIPT
Animal Well by Billy Basso, published by Big Mode, to cut things short, is a puzzle based metroidvania with a retro style that is sure to excite fans of experimentation and discovery. It’s a celebration of life but also a stark reminder of how dangerous it can be as well as a pixelated masterpiece with modern trimmings, but it’s not going to appeal to everyone.
It’s deeply intuitive, if you like that sort of thing, but it also manages to be utterly mysterious in a way similar to a FromSoft game as there’s environmental storytelling galore and the various areas of the game can be completed in any order, depending on what ultimately suits you

You play as a cute, squishy ball like creature with proper “come eat me” eyes, maybe a bit like some distant cousin of Kirby who’s gone off the rails a bit, and you’re ultimately put into a 2d world where after a brief tutorialisied linear path, you’ll have four directions to go, with each leading to different upgrades and different bosses. A bit of Mega Man here, a bit of Dark Souls there, with a bit of Metroid thrown in. So far so good, a recipe for success.
Your goal of course is to explore these four corners of the world and defeat the bosses in whichever order of your choosing, but I did find on my first play that I accidentally wandered into what is generally considered the “hardest” area, and the one that requires you to have tools from the other areas, and I had a horrible time, while even struggling to make my way out of it to try a different area.
But a restart later, and after a quick replay of the intro, I chose a different path and from that point onwards it was generally smooth sailing. I suppose the order in which you do the stages is almost like a custom difficulty and it’s definitely cool to give the player that choice. But I can see where people might have some bad experiences due to the path that they just so happen to go down. As much as I generally love games that do give the option of doing things in a different order, that is always one of the downsides of it.
Sometimes the various animals you meet will be friendly, and sometimes they’ll be hostile, and I personally found it a fun experience to learn the difference between the two as you first meet them. Generally, most of your interactions with them result in single screen platform or item puzzles, but there are some who will follow you from screen to screen in a terrifying manner.

All the way throughout your journey, as you’d expect from a good old Metroidvania, you’ll get various tools which can help you with your platforming, item gathering, general animal defense, and even to be used for secret things that I don’t want to spoil because if you do play this game then really you’re better knowing as little as possible. I’m not spoiling anything massive or anything, but even the footage is technically little spoilers of fun, cool things. Just go play it, if you want. But if you already have, or if you just never plan to play it, then hello you, thanks for staying.
A single playthrough of the game may only take about 4-6 hours depending on how skilled you are, and what path you take. But there are secrets galore meaning that to really get 100% you’re talking more in the region of 10-15 hours, and as such, there is a decent amount of gameplay and puzzle solving on offer as you’ll find yourself revisiting old areas with new tools to unlock hidden secrets
One of the things that slightly frustrated me, but which I also totally understood from a retro and design perspective is that there are no real checkpoints, as you always respawn back at your last manual save, and they can only be done at certain points. It can get frustrating if you find yourself struggling at a section which is a few challenging screens away from the last save, but it only ever is just a few screens and I suppose it all ultimately makes you better.
Because I went into the game deliberately not knowing much about it, other than it was a Metroidvania that I was told I’d probably like, I actually expected it to have combat but you rarely do find yourself as the aggressor, instead, you just have to avoid various predators who’re trying to hurt you while you go about your business. It’s interesting, and definitely more of a puzzle platformer experience than any sort of action game
Despite that puzzle focus though, and many leaps of faith, there are some challenges that will require marvellous dexterity, such as the optional climbing of narrow chasms using your bubble wand, just as one example. There are things here for fans of accurate, twitch based gaming.