Animal Well Review (It might not be Metroidvania, but it's an excellent game)
Animal Well Review
Animal Well is not a Metroidvania. It’s unique and it doesn’t fit neatly into a box. Trying to put a label on Animal Well feels inaccurate in many ways. There isn’t combat, your attributes don’t increase permanently, you don’t gain traditional abilities like double jump and exploration never feel gated or laborious.
Animal Well feels less like a Metroidvania and more like something from playdead: a world full of mystery, a strong atmosphere and a dark undertone. The experience is somehow unsettling and intriguing at the same time.
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POSITIVITY
If you decide to take Animal Well at face value, you have a mysterious exploration game filled with gorgeous pixel art, challenging puzzles and at times, difficult platforming. Getting to the end took about seven hours, but if you choose to take the blue pill, you will find yourself spending plenty more hours looking for secrets, attempting devious platforming sections and trying to decipher what the world of Animal Well means.
Few games accomplish making you feel lost and always in the exact spot you need to be in as constantly as Animal Well does. Objectives are malleable and not having an end goal leads to time melting away as you just want to solve one more puzzle or figure out how to reach the next room. In the process, four other things will pique your interest and before you know it, ten minutes has turned into an hour.
As simplistic as the visual might seem, there are still moments that leave you in awe. Setting off firecrackers and dynamite never got old as the visual effects on the light and the smoke danced around the room gorgeously. Animal Well is best played with the lights off and the sound up as the rich atmosphere makes you feel immersed in this haunting world.
The sound, or absence of, allowed you to appreciate everything Animal Well had to offer including each bird flutter or drop of water. It also made special moments quite impactful when the music kicks in.
There are also plenty of little details. Some that help immersion and some that are just smart game design. Not being able to read your map in dark areas due to lack of light furthered the immersive nature of Animal Well, and then smart choices like having the low health only beep a few times before going away asked the question: why haven’t more games done this in the past forty years?
NEGATIVITY
Near the end of the journey, the puzzles in Animal Well became less about the brains of the player and more about the skill of the player with precise platforming and timing demanded. Up until this point in the game, the solution was usually a balanced blend of brains and brawn. This skill shift did lead to some frustration at the end of the experience, which was slightly exacerbated by some of the locations of the telephone. Placing telephones just outside of challenging areas could have lead to a more pleasant experience.
VERDICT
For a game where you never quite understand the world, where you are or even what you are, the experience is quite welcoming. Animal Well always leaves you in the dark, both figuratively and literally, but it constantly rewards the player with new items, new areas to explore and most importantly, new knowledge.
If you must label Animal Well a Metroidvania, then its a Metroidvania for people who don’t love the genre. You almost never feel like you are being gated by skills or items you haven’t found, exploration never feels limited as there is constantly a new path to venture down and there is essentially no combat. Whatever box you put Animal Well in, the experience feels unique and refreshing.