Game Information

Game Title: Animal Well

Platforms:

• PlayStation 5 (May 9, 2024)
• Nintendo Switch (May 9, 2024)
• PC (May 9, 2024)

Trailer:

• ANIMAL WELL - Release Date Trailer

Developer: Billy Basso

Publisher: Bigmode

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 89 average - 100% recommended - 26 reviews

Critic Reviews

But Why Tho? - Charles Hartford - 9 / 10

Animal Well delivers a gorgeous art style paired with unique gameplay and an uncompromising vision

CGMagazine - Jordan Biordi - 9 / 10

Animal Well kept me captivated from start to finish and long after. Fans of Metroid-likes NEED to play this.

COGconnected - Jaz Sagoo - 80 / 100

Animal Well is a refreshing twist on the Metroidvania formula. Its tight platforming and clever puzzles make each exhilarating trek to distinct regions a blast. Although the retro-inspired art direction and odd presentation may not resonate with everyone, the originality and charm that imbues the game make this trip to the absurd a must for fans of the genre.

Checkpoint Gaming - Omi Koulas - 8.5 / 10

Uncover secrets, evade dangers, and embark on an eerie journey in ANIMAL WELL. Billy Basso has crafted a dark neon aesthetic and enigmatic gameplay that delivers a Metroidvania unlike many others. The mystery and cryptic puzzles won't be for everyone, but those who enjoy a challenge and a good platformer will be rewarded with a haunting adventure.

Destructoid - Jamie Sharp - 10 / 10

It’s one I’m grateful I experienced knowing so little, and urge anyone else sitting on the fence to wholeheartedly embrace until the darkness and biologically fueled light sources of its world envelop you in your beautiful, if slightly chilly, new home.

Digital Trends - Giovanni Colantonio - 4 / 5

Animal Well's deep secrets and arresting atmosphere will suck you down the rabbit hole.

DualShockers - Sam Woods - 9.2 / 10

Animal Well is sure to be one of 2024's surprise hits. It's Metroidvania gameplay plays second fiddle to a seemingly endless mystery

Eurogamer - Christian Donlan - 5 / 5

Explore a bright vision of subterranean nature in this astonishingly rich Metroidvania.

Game Informer - Charlie Wacholz - 9 / 10

Teeming with life, secrets, and charm that surprise and delight, Animal Well held my full, undivided attention

GameSpot - Richard Wakeling - 9 / 10

Animal Well delights with its non-traditional approach to Metroidvanias, combining unique items with a reactive and surreal world that's full of surprises.

GamesRadar+ - Jon Bailes - 4.5 / 5

Without giving anything away, it suffices to say that this rabbit hole goes a long way down, and if Animal Well is a Metroidvania, it's so much more besides.

Hardcore Gamer - James Cunningham - 4.5 / 5

Animal Well is a stunner of a metroidvania, usually charming but frequently creepy, mysterious but by no means unapproachable, and filled from top to bottom with secrets that are always satisfying to uncover.

Hobby Consolas - Alberto Lloret - Spanish - 92 / 100

Animal Well is one of the most interesting indie games that has been released so far in 2024.

IGN - Rebekah Valentine - 9 / 10

Animal Well is a beautiful, multi-layered puzzle box that’s both fun to simply play around with, and an utter delight to slowly crack open, secret by secret.

Nintendo Life - Nile Bowie - 10 / 10

Developer Shared Memory's stated goal is "to craft complete experiences that will be playable long after the world loses its internet connection," and screen after screen, Animal Well excels in delighting your eyes and giving your brain something to stew on. It's a riposte against a culture of post-launch updates in favour of a meticulously crafted, singular vision with potentially years' worth of discoveries baked in. By all indications, Animal Well delivers on that long-term promise and does so with a one-of-a-kind elegance.

NintendoWorldReport - Willem Hilhorst - 8.5 / 10

Even though it drops a few balls while juggling all these mechanics together, such as the boss battles. Still, ANIMAL WELL is a brilliantly put together game that I'd highly recommend to anyone who wants to get lost in a small but intricately designed game. I am quite convinced that both designers and players will be delving down deeper into this well over the coming years.

PC Gamer - Shaun Prescott - 90 / 100

A sleep-destroying puzzle metroidvania of baffling depth, Animal Well may go down in history as one of the genre's best.

PCGamesN - Lauren Bergin - 8 / 10

Despite its confusing fast travel system and misbehaving yo-yo, Animal Well is a bizarre yet brilliant neon-bathed adventure, characterized by tricky puzzles, intense platforming, and a host of cute animals - almost all of which are out to kill you.

PSX Brasil - Victor Vitório - Portuguese - 85 / 100

Animal Well is stunning and mysterious, a visual treat that offers open-ended and thought-provoking exploration. The total lack of explanations may put off part of the audience, but those who are willing to see how deep the iceberg, or rather the pit, goes, will have a lot to enjoy in this surrealist metroidvania.

Push Square - Stephen Tailby - 8 / 10

Animal Well is an extremely rewarding game — if you're willing to lose yourself in it. The sort of mysteries it's hiding go well beyond finding collectibles, giving you a rich and detailed world to unpack. If you have the patience and the curiosity, it's absolutely worth plumbing its depths.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Edwin Evans-Thirlwell - Unscored

A gorgeous and immensely absorbing metroidvania platformer that is both easy to get into and dense with secrets.

Shacknews - TJ Denzer - 8 / 10

Animal Well is one of the strangest metroidvanias I’ve played in a lot of very good ways. It’s pretty, funny, and scary in its atmospheric visuals and audio. Its platforming is also very satisfying and makes you feel good when you figure out how to use your tools properly to solve a puzzle. There are also secrets a plenty and a post-game to explore, as well. It's also just interesting to me that you don't directly fight with enemies and instead use your tools to work around them. The main double-edged sword here is the complete lack of context and hand-holding, which makes Animal Well charming and mysterious, but can make it difficult to keep track of what you were doing or where you should be going next. Nonetheless, if you want a solid and quirky adventure that will put your reflexes and puzzle-solving to the test, Animal Well is an absolutely fascinating journey.

Skill Up - Ralph Panebianco - Unscored

Video Review - Quote not available

TechRaptor - Andrew Stretch - 10 / 10

Animal Well is a game that promised platforming and puzzles and has managed to absolutely nail both in execution. Platforming fans will have an enjoyable time reaching the credits and will be content to set it down while puzzle gamers will be enamored by the depth that Animal Well has been able to achieve. You won't get more satisfied by a game solving puzzles like these.

TheGamer - Eric Switzer - 5 / 5

This is a game best played alongside friends who can go in without any expectations and work through obstacles together. Don’t expect to be able to solve everything on your own, but at the same time, do everything you can not to ask for help. If you can be comfortable with contradictions like that, you’ll find a lot to love in Animal Well.

Wccftech - Kai Tatsumoto - 8.6 / 10

Animal Well is a fantastic breakout title from both a new developer and publishing studio. Fans of Fez and Tunic will feel right at home jumping into this well.

The platform holder has repeated the same terrible mistakes for over a decade. The reason is simple: its priorities are back-to-front.

Xbox is offering voluntary severance agreements to producers, quality assurance testers and other staff at ZeniMax as part of a broader cost-cutting initiative

It seems like every other week a game studio is massively laying off employees; sometimes after years of development. What I'm reading is that it's a quick way to lower expenses and pad the investors' pockets, flooding the market with developers and reducing their value, to then hire them back a few months later at lower salaries.

So, what's holding back gamedevs from banding together to either unionize or start their own companies with better conditions that the purely money-driven studios? Why aren't they trying to be better? Nobody willing to invest in them? Does starting a company together mean they will now be the bosses who have to answer to the investors, ensure returns, and fire employees? Is the world just an entire shit-cake?

cross-posted from: https://swg-empire.de/post/921635

Does Arkham Knight get better?

I never completed Arkham Knight and only played the first two games which I really liked. But for some reason I can't get into Arkham Knight. I find myself overwhelmed by the controls that seem to do something different all the time.

Granted, I am much dumber now than five or so years ago when I played the first two. But as far as I recall they were relatively straight forward. But as soon as I reached the first tank segment in the beginning of AK I remembered when I gave up originally.

But this time I decided to soldier through. Until I got to a segment where I had to complete five or six boring ass tutorials which all showed me different unrelated things of which I needed exactly one to progress and which all could have been integrated into the normal gameplay. Three I already forgot and with one I didn't even know what I was supposed to be doing but somehow I completed it.

Is it worth it to go on playing? Do I have to know everything it's trying to teach me? I remember that it was pretty much needed to learn everything in Doom Eternal (as opposed to 2016). But at least all the controls were pretty consistent there.

Anyways. Should I keep playing? Or is Arkham Origins better? Maybe I should just replay Asylum and City instead.

Less DRM, smaller filesizes, no stupid anticheat, and no always online bs. Anyone agree with me?

Which do you prefer? Why?

I'll be honest, I prefer dpads, they are more compact, more tactile and more precise. If I could I'd not use an analog stick in smash bros and just use dpad.

It's nice to see the continued balancing and optimization work that they're doing, and more modding capabilities is always great.

Developing interactivity is effort and an investment. Most developers put up a simple loading screen, maybe some text like rotating tips, and a loading indicator. Until 2015 a patent on interactive loading screens may have made developers and publishers cautious and decide against developing interactivity.

High Hell, released in 2017, features fast gameplay, short levels, and interactive loading screens. (Linked Clip) (High Hell Steam page)

What's the best kind of loading screen? Do you have examples of good or bad interactive loading screens?

Gutted by this

It sounds dumb but my pick would be the SNES. There's just something about 16 bit games I love.

The SNES has so many good games, like sf2. The first party games and some good arcade ports.

It also has a lot of good RPGs, like chrono trigger

The controller is really cute

Tho, the PSP is a close second. Tekken dr running at 3x resolution looks beautiful

Yes I'm a sucker for dpad centric devices. Yes i love emulation.

16 bit stuff looks amazing

In the last 5-7 years I've noticed that mobile games have devolved info always online p2w shit

What the fuck happened?

The only good games on phone are now emulators and a few Foss games

Have you ever held a switch? Its long, flat and the controllers suck. Awful dpad and bad sticks.

Its almost comical, for a small stick the 3ds stick is better than any joycon stick.

And also, internal storage being only 32 GB, and cart games being downloaded in full to the system.

The switch is a mess. At least the games emulate well.

That's not even going into the online ransom shit.

And the dock sucks too. Would it have killed Nintendo to add like 2 more USB ports and an Ethernet port.

And not related but powera can eat shit

I grew up hearing all the talking heads (media), religious groups and parents strongly criticizing video games. You've, probably, heard some of this. For example, video games involving any type of violence causing people to become more violent, etc. As far as I know, the academic community has failed to produce any negative relationship between video games and real life.

At the age of 8 my son began playing Elden Ring with me. We were both new to Souls-like games. I, quickly, became disheartened by the difficulty of Elden Ring and stopped playing altogether. On the other hand, my son continued to play Elden Ring. He had several meltdowns, over the next two years, trying so desperately to advance in this game. One of his most recent meltdowns was so traumatic for him, that he smashed the PS5 controller into our brand new TV screen which caused a square inch of it to be irreparably damaged. He was punished severely for doing this.

Two weeks later, he continued his quest to overcome Elden Ring. I remember hearing him say to himself, his mother and brother "I am not going to give up until I beat this game".

Three weeks, and many more meltdowns later, my 10 year old son beat Elden Ring. I remember hearing him scream "YES! YES! FINALLY!".

I ran into the room and found him sobbing with tears of joy. I hugged and congratulated him. I ran outside to tell his older brother and he ran in to congratulate him. His mother was overjoyed with his accomplishment.

For someone so young to persevere, spending over 300 hours, trying to overcome a tough game like Elden Ring is a huge accomplishment.

I am so proud of my son to have learned such a valuable lesson, on his own, at such a young age.

So, I have some switch controllers and I wanna try set then up to work with my Linux PC, is this possible?

They are 2 third party pro controllers that are made mainly for switch

"Dominion of Darkness” is a strategy text game in which the player takes on the role of a Sauron-style Lord of Darkness with the goal of conquering the world. He will carry out his plans by making various decisions. He will build his army and send it into battles, weave intrigues and deceptions, create secret spy networks and sectarian cults, recruit agents and commanders, corrupt representatives of Free Peoples and sow discord among them, collect magical artifacts and perform sinister plots. Note – one game takes about 1 hour, but the premise is that the game can be approached several times, each time making different decisions, getting different results and discovering something new.

Game is avalaible for free, online: https://adeptus7.itch.io/dominion

I am constantly improving the game, adding new content and mechanics, so Your feedback would matter.

If you are hesitant to play the game, I invite you to watch/listen to the reviews:

Indie Sampler (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM6f4UCEgWU

[BOKC] BlancoKix (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgNpSKToOSg

Hey whatcha all been playing! I finally finished Alan wake 2 after a long hiatus. Maybe a tad too long but damn what a game. Cannot wait for Control 2 and whatever else Remedy has cooking