Spelunking Has Never Been Cuter (Or More Psychedelic)
HIGH Inventive puzzles and charming aesthetics.
LOW Save points too far apart, especially near a certain ghostly creature…
WTF Cats in cages meowing to be set free. Why, Billy Basso? Why?
At first glance, Animal Well would appear to be an aesthetically pleasing but simple platformer. Between its bioluminescent environments, cute animals and the Kirby-like avatar that the player controls, one of my friends who watched me play said it was “very lofi girl.”
Soon after beginning, however, I discovered how very wrong I was to think it was just a cute platformer.
Some have labeled Animal Well a metroidvania, which is a type of platformer involving a difficult, lonely journey through the dark. While it could be argued that it fits that description, its vivid, 2D neon rendering of a subterranean world teeming with life and its surreal, even psychedelic, atmosphere make for a unique experience that sets it far apart from others in the genre, both visually and tonally.
Animal Well starts when the player hatches from an egg and finds themselves alone — but they are never truly alone, as they come to discover that they are surrounded by animals from all over the world. Some are friendly and others hostile, but all have characteristics or abilities appropriate to their species. Monkeys will throw stuff at the player, rodents will hide whenever the player approaches, and so on.
From this humble beginning, Animal Well does not hold the player’s hand, but neither does it have unreasonable expectations — it simply challenges the player to think outside the box by enlisting the help of various animals while using found tools to solve puzzles and overcome platforming challenges.
Billy Basso, Animal Well’s sole creator, spent nearly seven years working on it. The level design, the music, the sound effects, the graphics engine, all the way down to the code itself. Thus, Basso imbued it with his essential spirit of creativity, inviting the player to be as creative as they come up with solutions too.
As Jason Gastrow, better known on YouTube as videogamedunkey (or simply dunkey) said in his video review, it’s all about “figuring it out for yourself and it’s so rewarding to do so.”
Of course, Animal Well is the first game that dunkey and his wife, Leah, have published under the Bigmode Games label, so his review (featuring an interview with Basso himself) may be a little biased. However, I ended up agreeing with almost everything he said about it.
With that in mind, although I did my best to follow dunkey’s advice, it probably took me less than an hour to get hopelessly stuck on a puzzle and wishing I had someone to help me.
I would eventually come to rely on help from people in the Animal Well discord for many more hurdles to come, and this is the sort of experience that may require multiple brains, or perhaps multiple types of brains to fully unravel.
Once I found the map, I had a much easier time figuring out where I needed to go next, and I was amazed by the vastness of the well as I continued to fill in the gaps between new areas and those I had already visited.
As I continued to collect items, I was especially amazed by the variety of ways that certain tools could be used. Firecrackers can light up an area, but also deter enemies. A slinky can trigger or weigh things down. A frisbee can distract dogs or hit switches, and more. In fact, one of my favorite moments was the first time I got a snake to eat one of the bubbles from my bubble wand — that trick allowed me to hop in its mouth and travel through a series of pipes to a new destination!
I only figured out these properties by cycling through my tools and trying them out in different ways until something happened. I’d feel like I was banging my head against a wall until I’d suddenly get a new idea, try it out, and be blown away by the results. I can’t count the amount of times I said “whoa!” or “what the…” aloud after I reevaluated how to use physics to my advantage, or did something I didn’t know was possible.
However, there was one case where Animal Well got me so frustrated that I wasn’t sure I would finish it before reviewing it.
My first encounter with the ‘ghost cat’ was annoying, but the hardest part of the experience was the second time — it was an absurdly long backtrack as I retrieved an item from the central part of the map and took it all the way back to the northeastern corner with the ghost cat at my heels, smiling hideously as it unleashed ghost dogs to harass me.
It wasn’t the first nor the last time that Animal Well felt more like work than actual work — on more than a few occasions, I would put the controller down after a failed attempt to solve a puzzle and feel relieved to go back to compiling data or finishing an assignment for school.
It was also often irritating to feel stupid by what (at the time) seemed to be inscrutable or impossible challenges. That said, once I finally got on a roll, I found it hard to put down.
I was glad to have Animal Well on my Switch (it looks especially pretty on an OLED screen) and it took everything I had to pull myself away from a puzzle when I’d figured it out, but needed more time to solve it. It especially shined in moments when something finally clicked about how to use a tool, or when I found a precious item – it’s a bit like finding a roast turkey hidden within a wall in Castlevania.
After pushing through the highs and the lows and finally rolling credits, I was pleased to find that the adventure didn’t end — so I just continued playing and rekindled the magical feeling that I had at the beginning. In Animal Well, there are apparently always more secrets to discover.
Rating: 8.5/10
— Thom Stone
Disclosures: This game was developed by Billy Basso and published by Bigmode Games. It is currently available on PS5/Switch/PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed for the Switch. Approximately 17.5 hours were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was finished. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game was rated E by the ESRB, and contains Mild Fantasy Violence but No Interactive Elements. The player-controlled pink blob might have to bonk a few critters with a yo-yo on the way to the finish line (and they might try to retaliate) but there is never any blood. No blobs or animals were seriously harmed in the making of Animal Well.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are no voiced lines in the game, it’s all text. There are no audio cues. This game is fully accessible.
Remappable controls: The controls cannot be remapped.
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I gave up after four or so hours. The thing with Metroidvanias is that either the traversal needs to be really satisfying, or the backtracking needs to be minimal and/or effortless, and in Animal Well, there is so much goddamn backtracking, and the traversal is just . . . bland. I mean it’s not bad, but there’s nothing particularly fun about it. The fun is what you do when you get somewhere new, but at a certain point, it’s just too excruciating to make the effort to get somewhere new.