Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/813230 £20.99
Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/ANIMAL-WELL-2371610.html £20.99
Still here? Okay. I should stop starting my knowledge based games like that lol.
Animal well is a tiny and visually simple and refreshing game about exploring the titular Animal Well. The whole game is full of various interesting biomes and ambiances, drawn with this incredibly well done CRT filter that just sums up to an incredible aesthetic. Of course you’ll encounter lots of animals, some background props (I think,) others are puzzle elements or obsticles. The whole game is 22 MB, it really is a lot of stuff for such a small game.
The game is full of various platforming puzzles and challenges, but to start with it’s just a few jumps to get used to the controls, a ladder, a crank wheel that raises a platform to use, and a ghost that instakills you if it touches you, oops, maybe try exploring a different path (most enemies only ever stay on the one screen they live on.) But of cousre, those ghosts are killable, you can use your firecrackers to light up the room and kill them, and what is this unlit candle here? Can you light that down the line somehow?
Yes you read right. Unfortunately, unlike most puzzle games I’ve played, this one does involve a health/checkpoint/enemy system, as well as a few vaguely horror elements, so if that’s not your jam, this one might not be for you.
I don’t want to spoil more of the puzzle elements here. The game is mostly about discovering new items through your exploration, and then figuring out various interactions those items have with you and the world you’re in. How can they be used to reach stuff that you can’t platform to, or help you through an area.
Your stated goal is going to be to release the four flames from their place on the map, they come automatically marked for you, and then return them to the center of the well. But that would make for a pretty short game. The main main goal is all the optional collectables. I think there is 64 of them? not sure, haven’t found them all, but the last door says it wants 64 so thats what I’m going with. And this is where the real puzzling starts. How can you combine 2 or 3 or 4 items to reach somewhere else, what new interactions can you discover, lots of experimentation to work through, lots of new things to find.
Lots of puzzles that lose their magic if I were to spoil the solutions.
I’m going to call it here, at least you got more out of me now than about Outer Wilds.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/813230 £20.99
Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/ANIMAL-WELL-2371610.html £20.99
Leave a Reply