I play A LOT of Metroidvanias. It’s become somewhat of a go to genre for me. The exploration and discovery factor really scratches an itch for me, a person who almost never leaves the house. I always get excited when a new metroidvania releases, which makes what I’m about to say kind of weird. Even though there has been plenty of hype, especially with an entry in the Nintendo Indie World Direct this past month. I wasn't originally all that excited about Animal Well. Although it did seem interesting, I wasn't going to buy it. At least not right away.
On launch day my timeline on X was absolutely slammed with posts about Animal Well. Some content creators were even talking about how it was one of the best games they've played. That definitely seemed like an exaggeration to me but I figured it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot. I promptly purchased the game on Steam and never looked back.
I was hooked from the start
If there’s a single word that would be best used to describe Animal Well, it would be “clever” and even that feels like an understatement. You start out the game knowing absolutely nothing about what’s going on or how you’re supposed to play. When you pick up a new item you’re not told what it does or how to use it. You need to experiment and figure that all out on your own. That’s the thing that’s absolutely wild bout this game, figuring it all out is so satisfying.
I had so many moments where I literally had to stop playing and go talk it out with anyone who would listen. Sometimes even speaking out loud to myself. All just to work out a puzzle that seemed impossible with the tools I had available to me. I watched a few streamers playing the same parts that I had gotten stuck on and it made me absolutely giddy to see them figure it out in the same way that i did.
Fight the good fight – Or don’t
Some of the main aspects of a good metroidvania include: Platforming, Puzzle Solving, multiple branching paths, and combat. Animal Well is fairly unique in that regard as there’s actually no combat at all. You pick up tools that help you solve puzzles but none of those tools are weapons. Thinking back on other titles in this genre it’s pretty uncommon to have zero combat but it’s been done before. Another title that I think of is Teslagrad 2 where your abilities help you escape danger instead of confronting it head on. The same happens here in Animal Well.
I personally found it a bit hard at first to not try and take enemies on head-on. Especially after playing games like Hollow Knight where you’re literally rewarded for being aggressive. Once you get into the flow it becomes second nature. It also leads to plenty of hilarious moments where you bump into an enemy and have to high-tail it out of there.
Also very unlike Hollow Knight, Animal Well is very forgiving. If you die you just end up back at the last save point you interacted with. You still get to keep anything you found as well so you don’t lose progress. At times this meant that I didn’t interact with any save points between the last one and where I was so I respawned on the other side of the map. You’ll learn quickly that saving (or not saving) can be a strategic choice.
Small but mighty
The art style is very minimal and almost holographic/psychedelic in the choice of colors and in the effects. So minimal, in fact that the total file size on Steam was only 33MB. That's not hyperbole, 33 MEGABYTES. With the most recent big titles, such as Call of Duty and Starfield, easily swallowing upwards of 150GB of your storage it's nice to see smaller games like this.
It also looks stunning on the Steam Deck OLED (I imagine it would also look great on the Switch OLED model). The contrast between the dark backgrounds and the bright and colorful assets works perfectly with an OLED screen.
The small size also has a huge impact on the performance. This thing could run on a potato and never drop a frame. I never once had an issue with the game stuttering or having any graphical issues.
All in all Animal Well is a fairly short experience. I completed it, with quite a bit of exploration, in just under 8 hours. If you focused on just doing what you need to complete the main game itself, you could probably squeeze by in 5 or 6. There are even speedrun guides to complete the entire game in less than 90 minutes (for those who enjoy that sort of thing). I still have plenty left to collect so I will probably be sinking plenty more hours into exploration.
Dense, atmospheric world with tons of secrets
There’s plenty to explore and loads of secrets to find. I would love to go into greater depths about what I love (and don’t necessarily love) about Animal Well but the issue with that is, well, this is a game where you need to discover it all on your own. So if I went on describing all of the cool stuff about the game I would pretty much be spoiling it for you. This makes writing a review incredibly difficult.
What I will say is that Animal Well is definitely the kind of game where you’ll want to spend a lot of time exploring, taking chances, and using every tool you have to solve puzzles in the most unique ways possible. Now I know what those content creators meant because It quickly became one of my favorite games to play.
(Animal Well was reviewed on Steam via a Steam Deck. It’s also available on Playstation 5 and Nintendo Switch. Limited Run Games will be releasing a physical copy of Animal Well as well as a collectors edition on both Playstation 5 and Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, there isn’t a physical copy option available for PC.)
