Publisher BigMode and Developer Billy Basso recently dropped Animal Well. I played this in a single sitting, taking about six hours to complete the main game. Animal Well is a surreal metroidvania style adventure with minimalistic storytelling. You play as a small blob that must find four flames that are guarded by animals in the mysterious “animal well”. During your journey you will find several fun and varied power ups (my favorite is the slinky).
Art Direction
Animal Well uses a pixelated style with minimalistic, neon pallets. It does a good job conveying the concept of a dark and mysterious cave system. The pallets change up for different areas, providing a good visual indication that you have entered a different part of the well. This pixel style is juxtaposed by more complex background art and a heavy use of shader effects for enemy movements, and sometimes the enemies themselves.
Music
Animal Well has a very atmospheric soundtrack. Most of the audio in the game comes in the form of far off cries from unseen animals, paired with low humming synthesizers. The game uses the soundtrack to enhance story beats, and overall is very pleasant. I think they may have set up a sound booth in a Rainforest Cafe to get some of these sounds. It certainly reminds me of that kind of setting.
The music also has some very sinister tones. Some of the areas put my nerves on edge, especially when my building fear was broken by a far off screech or cry. If the game was longer, I think some of these sound effects would become a little overbearing, but it works well for this game’s length.
Gameplay
Do you like Super Metroid? You’ll like this. Of the metroidvanias i’ve played, animal well did the most to recall my early memories of playing metroid and super metroid. Animal Well provides a feeling of isolation that most modern games seem to stray away from, but which is a hallmark of the early metroid series games. This game features essentially zero combat, instead focusing exclusively on puzzles, and puzzle bosses. For me, that’s a big win. Bosses in these games can often become slog fests of shooting a large sprite for ten to fifteen minutes (i’m looking at you Ridley from Super Metroid!).
The game features a handful of usable items that are, more or less, specific to each of the four areas that you encounter during the game. Award for most broken item goes to the bubble wand, which can be used indefinitely to jump upwards. Even then, the developers did this in order to reward the player for experimenting with the item, placing secrets in hard to reach places that require this very technique.
Also, check out this slinky. I love this thing:
Bottom of the Well
Animal well is great contained experience. I’ve been told that there is a significant amount of post game content, some of which has yet to be fully discovered! It’s on sale until May 23rd, and still a great buy at regular price. I see this game as being one to revisit in the future, and I rank it with other great metroidvanias like Symphony of the Night and Hollow Night.