Animal Well

Release Date: May 9, 2024

Arcade, platformers, logical elements, 2D, indie games, side-scroll, Surrealism, PS Plus Premium, PS Plus Extra, singleplayer

9.0

OpenCritic

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Animal Well is a puzzle game with platform game elements. We explore 2D maps, avoid dangers, collect objects and most of all solve puzzles.

Videos and Screens

[1:04] Animal Well Xbox Partner Preview Trailer

[0:52] Animal Well Animal Well - Accolades Trailer

9.0

OpenCritic Rating

Top Critic Average: 89 / 100, game is Recomended by 99% of Critics. There are 54 Critic Reviews.

OpenCritic

TheGamer: 5 / 5 by Eric Switzer

This is a game best played alongside friends who can go in without any expectations and work through obstacles together. Don’t expect to be able to solve everything on your own, but at the same time, do everything you can not to ask for help. If you can be comfortable with contradictions like that, you’ll find a lot to love in Animal Well.

Full Review

Shacknews: 8 / 10 by TJ Denzer

Animal Well is one of the strangest metroidvanias I’ve played in a lot of very good ways. It’s pretty, funny, and scary in its atmospheric visuals and audio. Its platforming is also very satisfying and makes you feel good when you figure out how to use your tools properly to solve a puzzle. There are also secrets a plenty and a post-game to explore, as well. It's also just interesting to me that you don't directly fight with enemies and instead use your tools to work around them. The main double-edged sword here is the complete lack of context and hand-holding, which makes Animal Well charming and mysterious, but can make it difficult to keep track of what you were doing or where you should be going next. Nonetheless, if you want a solid and quirky adventure that will put your reflexes and puzzle-solving to the test, Animal Well is an absolutely fascinating journey.

Full Review

Eurogamer: 5 / 5 by Christian Donlan

Explore a bright vision of subterranean nature in this astonishingly rich Metroidvania.

Full Review

Animal Well is a retro-style 2D puzzle game with platform game elements. It is a debut project of Shared Memory studio.

Game mechanics

In Animal Well our task is to overcome challenges on 2D maps. The game world is huge and its exploration takes place in a non-linear way, allowing us to freely choose the order of tasks.

Our hero is defenseless, so to survive we have to rely on dexterity while avoiding threats and, above all, on cunning. The most important element of the gameplay here are puzzles. During the exploration we find a variety of items that interact with objects in the environment and creatures inhabiting the game universe.

Each item we get can be used in many different ways, and most puzzles have several alternative solutions.

The game world is initially plunged in darkness. Along with the progress, the player fills the map with candles, revealing successive segments of the land. An additional attraction is a rich set of optional secrets waiting to be discovered.