ANIMAL WELL

I love the sound design, graphics, and tools/puzzles. It's just a shame that the game does not respect your time. It felt like almost every section that had any degree of difficulty or felt particularly time-consuming had a ridiculous runback, much worse than I've seen in Silksong or Elden Ring. The first few hours of the game I was fully immersed in the atmosphere and felt committed to finding every secret and 100%ing the game. By the last hour or so I was praying for it to be over so I never had to touch it again. I still think it's a beautiful game and I enjoyed my first couple hours of exploring the world and its gorgeous visuals. I just cannot recommend it because it is an utterly frustrating and tedious game to complete.

Trying to remember playing Animal Well is like trying to remember an acid trip: You can intellectually recall things happening, but those things evoke feelings you can't quite comprehend anymore. Truly a unique experience, with a frightening degree of freedom. The game also does an amazing job of not teaching you anything, whilst nudging you to learn. A masterclass in games as an art form. (But I so wish I could rebind controls on KB)

Animal Well is as much a puzzle game as a set of ten keys is a puzzle to one lock. As long as you have the correct key, you’ll know exactly how to open that lock. The complete base game of Animal Well is just that. Very few puzzles attempt to cross a line of connecting visual elements or item behaviour to a unique solution. Instead, the game relies on the player noticing a hole in the wall or a picture in the background. There was never a feeling of cleverness and this added a level of tedium compounded by the metroidvania aspects of the game. The game may be the worst metroidvania unlock design I have seen. Only two items provide a movement ability benefit and the order you get them in can not only negate the already simple puzzles, but also halt any platforming challenge. One of the benefits of metroidvanias is that they can make re-treading a previous path feel new when movement abilities are unlocked as they change the pace of exploration. Animal Well unlocks fail to do this, making exploration monotonous. This issue is made worse by how certain items are required to see puzzle answers, requiring the player to re-tread rooms with each items activated to get the true ending. Some of the items are also majorly underused, with only two to five rooms to use it total, and lack multi-purpose functionality that metroidvania upgrades tend to have. Explorations is unrewarding with any capacity apart from sight seeing. The game is beautiful, that’s undeniable, but the journey to get there is boring. There is no narrative and almost no lore, not helped by the creator saying there was no confirmed lore to begin with. I have very little positive to say about this one and I’m surprised by the overwhelming reviews. The price is way too high for an 8 hour main experience and 4 hour true ending content. A regrettable purchase with no key bind options, 3/10

The best game and gaming experience I have ever had. This game respects your intelligence and free-will. Do not look anything up, go in as blind as possible. Everything outside the community ARGs are completely doable on your own.

不够完美无瑕（传送点还是少了，跑图有点累，还有键盘不让改键位），但是优点极其突出：前无古人后难有来者的神级地图设计，迂回辗转最后连成一整张的大地图，主次分明的同时紧凑而不失美观，组成一个不可多得的一个严丝合缝的奇幻世界。另外自研的引擎手感也出奇的好。

favorite puzzle game i've ever played, with a unique and beautiful art style. encourages you to explore everything 100x over. found myself literally writing stuff down on paper to keep track of clues across the map. 10000/10

Not bad, nor great. An enjoyable platformer consisting of solving puzzle rooms using various tools you find, it's pretty looking, with smooth gameplay. However, it did not keep me immersed for very long, It can get a little tedious and repetitive at times, and will often involve a LOT of backtracking and attention to detail, particulatly if you're planning to reach the true ending. You often feel like you're just back-and-forth searching for things over and over rather than advancing at a fluid pace through levels. In my opinion the game is overrated. It's a cool little experience if you have the patience for it, but nothing ground breaking. Had I known this before I started, I would've probably invested my time in a different game, but for what it's worth, I had an ok time playing it.

More games need to start using children's toys as funky little items, having a strong identity helps too I guess.

Incredible metroidvania. Art direction is wonderful, music is amazing, item variety keeps everything fresh, and the puzzles are fun to solve. You'll enjoy this one from start to finish!

This games does puzzles reall well - albiet, some last little ones are near impossible to find yourself but I guess they're not really supposed to be. With that said, very addicting and rewarding puzzle game overall.