Review – Animal Well

It might just be my age showing, but while scouring the dark, dense labyrinths of Animal Well, I could picture a whole issue of Nintendo Power dedicated to its sprawling map. That’s how deep this well goes.

Animal Well pays homage to the delicate craft of putting together a brain-tickling, immense Metroidvania with an equally big hat tipped to the kind of clever puzzles you may find in Zelda dungeons. It’s safe to say there is plenty of ‘Nintendo’ in its ingenious 2D pixel schematics while also boldly eschewing combat completely. Animal Well not only nails the reverence for the explorative 2D AND 3D platformers it kneels down to, it stands up to the household names of the genre and threatens to exceed them in sheer brilliance.

No time is wasted on cutscenes or elaborate setups of any sort. The way Animal Well begins is the same as how it ends: With you, the well itself and an assortment of animals that share that space with you. That’s all you need to know. You’re controlling a tiny green blob with beady black eyes. A surefire palette swap for a Dragon Quest Slime? Debatable, but there’s no denying the little blob has charm. It hatches out of a flower and occasionally decides to show that it actually has legs. 10 out of 10 neutral character design. There’s no allegiances implied, no weapons held. It’s just enough to get you from point A to point B. That is the goal of Animal Well, after all: Navigate the labyrinthian well while discovering more of its map and numerous mysteries just waiting to be solved.

Animal Well is a Metroidvania in a class of its own. It sells itself as “a game of secrets”. And that’s an entirely accurate title that doesn’t take long for the game to earn. These secrets vary in method of discovery and rarely repeat the same idea in the same way twice. This pillar of design also ties perfectly into a puzzle-centric means of progression. Animal Well’s map can be explored in any order you see fit. The nonlinearity makes for constant discoveries which usually require you to interact with something in the room. See that gate blocking a new room you haven’t explored yet? There’s a switch or four that opens it. That lever? It can’t be reached by ordinary means but there’s definitely an item that could hit it.

Where most Metroidvanias quickly power down your character and reward you with abilities you already had at the beginning of the game, Animal Well instead gives you items that you haven’t seen until you pick them up. You are never shown how to use the bizarre trinket you’ve found either, but you are quickly put into situations that make use of your new toy. Each doo-dad you find has multiple uses, making for a layered learning experience. While I don’t want to spoil the majority of your growing toolkit, the flying disc in particular is utilized in such clever ways. I much preferred the surprise of finding a wacky item and figuring out what it can be used for over the familiarity of regaining previously held abilities that were taken away from me.

Of course, there’s the animals. Rather than being used for combat opportunities, they’re obstacles that you have to outsmart. They’re puzzles to be solved all on their own. Like Rain World before it, each animal you encounter in Animal Well has its own AI programming for when you’re not around and reacts accordingly when you arrive on the scene. They’re full of life and can surely be interacted with, leaving you to use any items you’ve found to try getting a reaction out of them. This feature takes common sense into account too, so throwing a frisbee at a persistent bird is not going to end well, for example. I found such joy in encountering a new animal in my travels and existing in the game’s varied ecosystem. The animal appearances are plentiful and never just simple cameos. They tend to serve a purpose or safeguard a particularly important part of the map. Like the well you’re exploring, the animals are fun challenges to overcome. And have the potential to be quite terrifying.

Getting around in Animal Well feels good, however that doesn’t mean it’s a breezy time. Tricky platforming and treacherous encounters are abundant in the game. I can recall several rooms in which I breathed a sigh of relief once I made it out alive, only to die shortly before getting to a telephone (the game’s equivalent of a typewriter in Resident Evil) to save my game. This old-school design sensibility is understandable given the genre. Thankfully, Animal Well is a bit more forgiving than the classics it takes inspiration from. If you’ve managed to solve a door puzzle and lose all 4 of your hearts after completing it, the door will remain unlocked. However, you will have to navigate back to where it is from your last save point which can be its own challenge. Save rooms are spaced strategically, with most sections of the map containing 1 or 2 telephones. It can be daunting to navigate new areas with no offensive capabilities and the looming threat of death but that only adds to the thrill.

While the gameplay and exploration alone make Animal Well worth playing, it’s the visual style and atmosphere that stuck with me past the credit roll. The usage of striking purples, greens, pinks and yellows that stick out amongst the throes of the cavernous blues and blacks is stunning. Animal Well adds vibrancy to its darkness. The language of the visuals is clearly communicated. One area I explored was darker but got brighter the further up I climbed. By the time I arrived at the area’s peak, it was almost entirely lit up and greeted me with a save point. Sometimes the safety of light isn’t without its own obstacles. I definitely felt like I had to endure in order to get to save points. The journey is always full of beautiful details though. Pools of water reflect what’s above them as you enter and towering stone monuments rise into the darkness. I was rewarded constantly with the beauty of nature in my treacherous journey.

A large part of traversing Animal Well’s depths is figuring out what you’re looking at, where you are and what you’re hearing. Playing this game with headphones on is a must. Unknown eerie sounds echo around you, cutting through the environment. Beeps and chimes that at first don’t make sense reveal their reason for being there over time. And even with the promise of such ear candy, the well is often tranquil. Music is rarely used, being reserved for specific encounters. Ambient echoes are the bulk of what you hear in Animal Well with the music being treated more like a discordant sound effect cutting through. This unique approach to building what you hear in Animal Well’s world harkens back to the chiptune days of the NES.

Numerous Metroidvanias provide the illusion of a large nonlinear map to explore only to make the experience straight-forward and the rewards not even the least bit gratifying. Animal Well does not fall prey to this. For starters, there are no difficulty settings to flip through. Instead, multiple playthroughs are encouraged through exploring the map differently each time. Items can be found in any order, kind of like choosing the order of the Robot Masters you fight in a Mega Man title. And just like in those games, there is probably an intended order that makes for a smoother experience. For example, the item that I found first made such a huge difference in my first 17 hour playthrough that I wanted a second playthrough to see just how much more difficult the game could be if I instead found it later.

I always felt incentivized to utilize my MacGyver-esque inventory to explore. Around every corner and in numerous crevices you can find treasure chests that reminded me of Kirby Super Star’s The Great Cave Offensive. The game’s items (upgrades) are found in golden treasure chests while the eggs (Animal Well’s form of collectibles) are found in black chests. I won’t spoil why finding the eggs is worthwhile, but seeking them out and seeing their variety of designs was always fun. Lastly, you can come across matches as well which serve their own necessary purpose. Because Animal Well can tend to be a dark place to navigate you can imagine the kinds of terrors that occupy its depths. The deeper you get into the labyrinths the more this idea is tested, lending Animal Well somewhat of a survival horror feel at times.

If Animal Well happens to be your first Metroidvania, it makes an interesting case. You’d be missing out on certain staples of the genre such as the intense combat, the loss of your abilities at the beginning of the game, and the incremental ammo and health upgrades. However, while playing Animal Well, I didn’t feel like I was missing any of those tropes. In fact, Animal Well’s fundamental core is that of discovery and gaining rather than losing. Most Metroidvanias trick you into the illusion of powering up by giving you back what you already had. Animal Well rewards you with items that you are seeing for the first time and the process of figuring out how and where to use them. In spite of the occasional difficulty of its platforming, I never felt like I was being punished and even in moments of frustration I was compelled to keep going. Puzzles always gave me the “Aha!” moment I was hoping for and the run-ins with the titular and unsettling animals gripped me. And even beyond the credit roll, the game keeps you playing with new discoveries and dangling unearthed secrets just out of your reach. I can’t say much, but this is one game where 100% completion isn’t the only end goal.

I played Animal Well across 2 consoles for this review. On both Steam and Nintendo Switch, the game ran flawlessly without a hitch. I have to give the edge to Nintendo Switch, specifically the OLED. The neon-esque colors pop and made playing in handheld the way to go. I never thought I’d be saying this about a 2D pixel art game, but the first few moments of playing Animal Well on the Switch OLED rivaled the jaw-dropping beauty of the first time seeing the horizon of the Great Plateau in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild. Not content with being one of the most stunning games on the console, Animal Well also makes fantastic use of HD Rumble. Something as simple as coming across a firecracker in the opening moments sticks out on Nintendo Switch that much more over the Steam version.

Animal Well takes a well-worn and beloved subgenre of gaming to new places by focusing on what makes it so good: The sense of always finding something new. I daresay that I can’t think of another game that handles backtracking, item utility and the feeling of entering an unexplored room for the first time as brilliantly as this. Animal Well is that rare game that doesn’t need a story to become a classic, just great game design, a compelling world and understanding what gamers have loved about video games for decades. Your reward for exploring Animal Well is definitely the journey, a spelunking adventure you’ll want to embark on again and again.
 

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