Animal well

2024-05-17

Review

Might as well get it over with I've seen most of what the game has to offer and im not particularly interested in digging any deeper because at this point it's just me gnawing on sinew and cartilage.

But.. despite the seemingly negative wording before

this game is awesome!

Seriously, the amount of secrets packed into it is astounding. The level design, the artstyle, the atmosphere, the technical detail, the implementation. This is as solid of a platformer as they come. Not even joking. If you liked celeste, you're gonna like this. This is just.. another one of those classics to put among greats. That's how Animal Well feels to me. Everything about it just.. shines. It's a game that will not age. The artstyle is both equal parts timeless and beautiful.

In short, all I can say is that I have enjoyed playing the game as a whole. As of the time of writing, I can say that i've enjoyed about 10 hours of the game, without 100%-ing it. I am far from knowing every secret the game has to offer and it's likely that no single person in isolation can find out (without resorting to decompilation). The game is well worth the asking price.

That being said. The game takes an old fashioned approach to difficulty. Or, to put it more like a critic would, the game can feel punishing at times. There are challenges in place that take minutes to setup for a single attempt. Some times you have to spend 1-2 minutes getting back to a place just to attempt a difficult challenge. That being said, the game does not have massive difficulty spikes, and when compared to something like [Armored Core VI], it offers a very smooth difficulty curve instead of the cliffs and valleys of other games.

I guess a good way to define how the game felt for me would be 'Celeste meets VVVVV'. That being said, i'm no metroid player so i dont have an inkling as to what this game means to the metroidvania gang. ow my index finger hurts.