Animal Well

How to describe this game? It's a puzzle... metroid-vania, I think is the best way. It's open pretty early on, giving the player four paths they can ultimately go down, but even that's just the start. Animal Well excels at having a lot of things hidden away and giving a great feeling of exploration, without any dialogue or combat. Well, mostly no combat. On the few instances where you're hurting an enemy, it's more of a passive act.

The items you find over the course of the game are fun and interesting. Something I didn't notice until it was pointed out to me is that they're all kids toys - a throwing disc, a bubble wand, yo-yo... Despite this, baring a few later game items, they all are robust items with hidden ways to use them. It gives the game a lot of depth.

Visually, it's purposely retro in the older, more 8 bit way. Got the fake scanlines and everything. Despite this retro aethsetic, it uses modern... particle effects? Shaders? for great effect. The 'enemies' are also typically made of individual, rotatable parts (there's gotta be a better way to describe this). But it's done in a very smooth, effective way where each part can bend and twist as well. There's some otters as part of a puzzle which are splashing about in the water and messing with your attempts to solve the puzzle which are simutanously cute and annoying.

The colours are simple and effective, it's dark and moody with small bright bits which provide a certain ambiance to the experience. it's also uses a lighting system, which more naturally obscures hidden areas while adding to this ambience as well. To complement the visuals, it's got similarly simple sound design, with a focus on using ambient sound effects to enhance the experience, for water. also the 'enemies' - maybe i should just call them animals?

The developer does a good job with rewarding exploration. Apart from the mandortory items, there's collectibles in the form of eggs. 64 in total. Something like that can be pretty common, but I like how each one is unique and you get lil bonus items as well at certain milestones.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with it. It's a really impressive game, especially as someone's first (i think?), and it's apprarently made in a cutsom engine as well. I really can't recommend this enough.