When it comes to video games, it’s difficult to stick to the release schedule. Well, not difficult. Rather, it is impossible. There are so many games coming into gamers’ hands every day that it would take several lifetimes just to complete the games on one generation of consoles. In addition, in recent years we have become accustomed to events and presentations from large publishers and manufacturers that offer us a huge selection of titles, large and small, arriving within weeks or months, sometimes even days (or hours). I’m in no way justifying my mistake in overlooking Animal Well in its pre-launch appearances, but it makes me very uneasy when I think about how many exquisite games like this can be left out of the spotlight. At least I can rehabilitate myself with Animal Well today.
Animal Well was a personal project developed from the ground up by Billy Baso. The developer recreated the engine, character designs, all levels, game mechanics, scenery, lighting effects, and even the animal sounds from scratch. A feat that took him more than seven years to compress a story that fits into just 40MB of space on your hard drive. It goes without saying that in addition to a beautiful pixel design, the game also offers excellent performance and is ideal for the portable version of the Nintendo Switch.
Animal Well is a puzzle metroidvania in which we advance through a dark cave, encounter strange creatures and try to climb a well… At least that’s how it looks in the first parts of the game. Because as its creator said, Animal Well is a multi-layered game. First there is the part with the game systems, then there is a level of setting and then there is the third part which is much less obvious and unravels a much deeper story.
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I’m not the biggest fan of the Metroidvania genre, but the truth is that I found few frustrating moments in Animal Well and the game always runs smoothly. The puzzles are challenging, both in their solution in coordination with the environment and in their complexity when introducing the various tools you find in the chests, but at no point do you feel that they are unsolvable. Usually it is enough to try another way to quickly find the appropriate way or use of the tool to proceed with. And as far as tools go, there are some that put a twist on the usual systems we see in other similar games. Firecrackers that can stun some creatures while illum inating a dark area to help find the way. The problem? There are only a very limited number of them and they can only be found in certain areas that are quite far apart.
And if one tool doesn’t work for you, try another, because the game allows you to experiment and search in more or less creative ways to advance. I’m sure using the disk allowed me to climb places much sooner in certain sections, but that’s also the magic of Animal Well. It’s brilliant in its simplicity, and the feeling of solving the spatial puzzle in your own way is just as satisfying as if you had “skiped” the shrine puzzle in Tears of the Kingdom. Yes, that is the level.
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All of this is also accompanied by extremely fine-tuned game controls. One jump button, another for actions, another for using objects and your control abilities. Everything can be solved with movement and use of the environment, and although it still took me a few hours, I’m sure a first round can be completed in around 4-5 hours the first time. I say the first because the game also provides an additional incentive for “finishers” with a healthy helping of collectibles in the form of eggs, which are usually hidden behind the most ingenious puzzles of all. Since one of the few things I could improve in a patch might be adding more save slots, I could have tested my “route skipping” theory more closely without having to quit the entire game. That and maybe a soundtrack. The sounds of the fountain (and its inhabitants) create an excellent atmosphere, but perhaps the whole thing would have been perfect with a minimalist ambient soundtrack.
Not only is Animal Well one of the best indies of this year, it is also a reminder to open up as gamers and step out of our comfort zone, choose other games and come up with new ideas in these times when there are more vectors for games support more economically than playfully. Animal Well is a game with a lot of soul and for me the surprise of this month of May.