Hello and welcome back to my blog!
I've been playing and testing a lot of Metroidvania games recently, but few have captured the same sense of mystery and suspense as Animal Well. You are a little creature in this vast world full of mysteries, hidden secrets and of course 'animals'. Who are we, or what is our goal? The game tells us nothing about it. We quickly figure out that there are four flames that we need to collect from this eerie world, and each of those flames ignites a big statue of an animal.
What will happen after that? I am not sure, but this thing about not knowing and the game teasing us with locked doors and places just out of reach makes me want to explore more and find all the secrets. Everything is a mystery here.
For example, there is a room filled with water with a big frog-like creature coming out of the water just for a split second. There seems to be nothing else in this room other than this guy, no cracked wall or locked door. Only one way to enter and exit.
Things like this make me wonder what the purpose of this room is. Am I missing an item that will make me control this frog later? Or perhaps, somehow, the water level will come down, exposing some hidden paths. Or does this room have no purpose, but why would the developer spend his time making it? Not like this frog is found anywhere else.
But then we have many rooms with friendly animals like birds or rabbits, serving no purpose other than making this game world feel so lively at all times.
Whatever the case, this game constantly makes you question everything, often because past accidental discoveries proved just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
I am in love with the pixel art of this game. It looks so good. I have not played anything like this. The lighting in this game is so well done. This dark and eerie atmosphere required some clever lighting, and they nailed it.
Even the animation is so well done. One of my favourite animations is the explosions of firecrackers. I have no clue why this explosion feels so fluid, even though it is just pixel art.
I am going to make a lot of GIFs in this game. They come out good.
Gameplay-wise, it has some of the cleverest puzzles I have seen. They are well thought out, and as you get more and more items, they start getting more complex too. The game does not believe in telling you anything; it just shows you things. This way of teaching puzzles without saying a single word is not an easy task. You can't go directly to a complex one without teaching players basic ones and introducing them to different mechanics one at a time.
Many times, these puzzles span multiple rooms on each side. At times, a level in this room opens a door in the subsequent room too, so you can never be too cautious and go back and forth to see what changed. Also, as you get new tools, more and more paths that you thought were inaccessible before just open up. Or even those who were hidden can be accessed. I have gone back to the starting position twice, and each time I found something unique, a new hidden station, a match stick to light up some rooms (no idea what these will accomplish).
I found the second flame, too. The area around this flame had many water-based puzzles. Why? Because this flame corresponds to the Seahorse one. Each section seems to have a themed animal or zone based on that animal. But they usually overlap, too.
Just two more flames to go now! Hopefully, they won't be too tough.
Some rooms are very mysterious and almost pitch black. Thankfully, you have a flute which creates some magical music notes that light the place temporarily. There is always a surprise as to what you will find in the next room. Not many games invoke that feeling anymore. In the times of copy-paste games, this one feels very fresh and unique. I am so impressed with it.
And the coolest thing about this game is that its game size is less than 40 MB. I have some surface-level knowledge about game development and a good knowledge about software development, and this fact just blows my mind. Bro went all out on optimisation. I heard this guy created his custom engine using C or something.
- All the content is mine unless otherwise stated.
- Screenshots are from the game, "Animal Well".