Animal Well

Developer Shared Memory's stated goal is “to craft complete experiences that will be playable long after the world loses its internet connection,” and screen after screen, Animal Well excels in delighting your eyes and giving your brain something to stew on. It’s a riposte against a culture of post-launch updates in favour of a meticulously crafted, singular vision with potentially years’ worth of discoveries baked in. By all indications, Animal Well delivers on that long-term promise and does so with a one-of-a-kind elegance.

Animal Well is an atypical and irreverent metroidvania that makes a point to overturn the most trite conventions of a genre giving more and more often signs of fatigue. It's impossible to stop at the credits: at each screen you want to push the darkness a little further, gradually revealing a world that can be gentle and ruthless at the same time. Never unjust, Animal Well rewards the spirit of observation and critical ability, constantly putting lateral thinking and the natural curiosity of human beings into play.

If you like your games challenging, weird, beautiful, and a little unsettling, ANIMAL WELL should be on your must-play list.

A game that keeps throwing surprises and different puzzles at you, Animal Well is arguably one of the very best indie releases from 2024.

Animal Well is a little dream: an original metroidvania with unique mechanics that describes a world you will rarely forget. Its gameplay structure and puzzles undoubtedly make it one of the best in its genre, a must-play that you need to experience and make your own.

Much more than just another indie Metroidvania, as the intricate level design, gorgeous visuals, and clever item usage conspire to make one of the most entertaining puzzle adventures of the generation.

Animal Well kept me captivated from start to finish and long after. Fans of Metroid-likes NEED to play this.

Animal Well is a veritable feast of brain teasers that’s far more concerned with twisting your mind into knots than any grueling platforming challenges. It’s lovely to look at thanks to gorgeous pixel art and dynamic lighting, and an excellent use of haptics and well-tuned physics systems make it fun to touch, too. Animal Well’s steadily unlocked toybox of tools thoroughly rewards play, curiosity, and experimentation for hours upon hours after the credits roll. Though that late-game maze of mind-teasers might grate once in a while if you’re reluctant to ask for help, the massive onion of Animal Well’s secrets remains dense, clever, and thrilling even when you’ve peeled back as many layers as you think you possibly can… and then peeled a few more beyond that.

After pushing through the highs and the lows and finally rolling credits, I was pleased to find that the adventure didn’t end — so I just continued playing and rekindled the magical feeling that I had at the beginning. In Animal Well, there are apparently always more secrets to discover.

ANIMAL WELL is really unlike anything I've played. At first glance it looks like a stylish and gorgeous metroidvania that harkens back to a retro feeling. But under the hood, the game juggles so many ideas at once that slowly engrossed me into the experience. By the end, it felt like I've seen what the future of the metroidvania genre could hold. Even though it drops a few balls while juggling all these mechanics together, such as the boss battles. Still, ANIMAL WELL is a brilliantly put together game that I'd highly recommend to anyone who wants to get lost in a small but intricately designed game. I am quite convinced that both designers and players will be delving down deeper into this well over the coming years.