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2D puzzle platformers are often very similar. I’ve played enough to know that I’ll probably unlock a double jump at some point, eventually find a new item to beat enemies I can’t harm yet, or likely find some sort of lantern if there are areas obscured by darkness. Animal Well has many of these things, but not quite as often as I would like. Instead of a double jump, you’ll be blowing bubbles to hop on top of, and instead of a lantern you’ll get a glowy yo-yo. It surprised me at every turn and continually delighted me as it revealed more of its quiet, pixelated world.
Animal Well has you hopping around as a little blob, exploring the branching paths of its map to do… something. It’s rarely explicit with its explanation of pretty much anything you are doing, but I never felt like I was lost or didn’t have a drive to find more either. I simply picked a path and explored what I could, and it was rare I wasn’t rewarded for doing so. That freedom was a great thing, even though sometimes it left me wondering if I should’ve gone up or down.
As you explore, you’ll run into interesting boss encounters that reward you with new items, but even these bosses were not what I would have expected. While there are enemies that want to do you harm, Animal Well doesn’t really have any sort of combat for you to retaliate with. This makes enemies more like puzzles or obstacles to overcome than direct confrontations. Many boss encounters will be no exception, once you have figured out how to get past them. This includes using bubbles from a seahorse or trying to avoid an ostrich’s long neck underground to reach buttons at the ceiling.
Once you do slip by, you’ll be rewarded with an item that allows you to reach new areas, very similar to a Metroidvania. The bubble wand, which I mentioned earlier, allows you to make large bubbles anywhere and jump on top to get a boost to places otherwise impossible to reach. That’s a familiar action, but the method is fresh in the context of other games like this, and that’s true for pretty much every item I found in Animal Well.
You can also determine the difficulty of every new area you explore by how you order these items. The bubble wand was the first item I found, and it allowed me cleverly to skip certain screens on other areas of the map. Had I visited those places first I wouldn’t have had the means to do that, but what I eventually realized is that the item I got there frequently had the same effect on the area I initially got the bubble wand. This world is a fascinating, interlinked puzzle that can be solved in many ways but still reward you with the right choice.
Scattered throughout that world are plenty of secrets to uncover too, be that false walls to walk through or clever uses of your items to reach a spot you didn’t think you could. The main collectibles of Animal Well are dozens of multicolored eggs hidden in chests all around, which are fun to find on their own merits but also reward you in a way I won’t spoil as you grab more of them. It was fun to find out where they were stored, and I enjoyed getting new items that would allow me revisit old areas with fresh eyes.
That’s fairly quick to do as well, because Animal Well doesn’t necessarily have a huge map. It’s not tiny, but it’s intimate and interconnected enough that backtracking didn’t feel laborious if I wanted to return somewhere I’d previously been. It’s not trying to be as grandiose as something like the world of Hollow Knight, and I enjoyed the size and scale of this adventure from what I’ve seen so far. Animal Well is a charming platformer that puts fun little spins on one of my favorite genres, so I’m excited to see just how much deeper its caves might go when it comes to PS5 and Steam either later this year or early next.
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