Animal Well is good! FEZ like puzzle platformer

Legend · Jun 28, 2024, 08:21 PM

I heard good things about it and people talking about secrets, so I bought it on a whim.

2 hours in and it's really really good. Tight metroidvania world yet it's a puzzle platformer.

10% off at the moment.

Legend · Jun 29, 2024, 03:32 PM

I wonder how long the game is. It feels like I'm getting to the end. I'm just over 6 hours.

Gonna go for 100% of non stupid secrets so that'll sure take a long time though.

Legend · Jun 30, 2024, 12:19 AM

I'm kinda stuck

Progress was pretty easy. As you can see in my previous post I thought I was about to beat it. I'm pretty sure I am about to beat it but I think I missed something earlier in the game. I have just been exhaustively searching the map and solving all the minor secrets hoping one will open up something new to do.

Legend · Jun 30, 2024, 04:44 AM

Lol. I was literally 5 minutes away from finishing the game for over 5 hours. I was a bit too good at platforming and skipped a step, making something look impossible. Thus I spent over 5 hours doing end game secrets because I thought one of them would have the thing I was missing.

Ending was nice. I wasn't loving it that much since it had become a difficult grind, but that ending brought back my smile. Now I can go for 100% completion with purpose!

Spoiler for Hidden:

Legend · Jun 30, 2024, 09:14 PM

I'm ever so slowly making my way to 100%.

One puzzle is an audio one with a timed element and I'm stumped. Can't peacefully sit there all day trying different options. If it has a good reward that'll help with other puzzles then I'd just commit and try over and over again but that wouldn't be worth it for just an achievement.

No sure how to continue playing. I have a few open conundrums but all of them except the sound one feel like I'm missing the tools for the job.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Legend · Jul 03, 2024, 03:10 AM

Only had a bit of time to play but I made a bunch of progress.

Spoiler for Hidden:

19 hours in game.

Legend · Jul 04, 2024, 02:32 AM

Heck yeah. Very close to 100%

One big puzzle was so lame.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Legend · Jul 04, 2024, 06:49 AM

So close to 100% of the stuff that is tracked. Then there are more puzzles that I don't really understand yet. Might be a bit hard to know when I am done and it's safe to read up about the game online.

So glad I stuck with my "no hints, ever" plan. Some puzzles have kinda sucked and not everything is that rewarding, but I would have lost my drive a long time ago if hints were an option. I've explored every inch of this map 10 times over.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Legend · Jul 04, 2024, 07:46 PM

I got the true ending.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Legend · Jul 04, 2024, 08:52 PM

Since I got the true ending, I felt comfortable looking at some hints for some bigger puzzles.

One of them really sucks. I can't believe that the game would have such an intriguing puzzle with such a non solution. I loved the early game, I liked getting the true ending, but going for all these loose ends would just make me end up hating the game by the end. So I'm switching over to freely using hints since I'd like to still like Animal Well

Spoiler for Hidden:

Legend · Jul 04, 2024, 11:45 PM

Wow I really lucked out. So glad I "gave up" on not using internet hints.

The last act of the game is specifically designed to be solved as a community. One puzzle I was trying to solve is impossible without working together as a community.

Legend · Jul 06, 2024, 08:52 PM

Here's my final review. No unmarked spoilers.

The first few minutes were amazing. Maybe just because I played on PC using my ps5 controller as the speaker, but it had an ethereal feeling. Great art style, great feel, great sound, etc. This pure amazing joy continued for many hours as I explored the map. After around 5 hours however the map was pretty well explored and it started to get a bit restrictive feeling. Instead of just exploring, I was forced in a specific direction. Not a bad thing, all games have to come to an end, but it came way earlier than I expected and was a bit jarring. I tried to avoid the ending while I worked on other secrets but then once I embraced the ending, I couldn't solve it.

Thus I started "level 2" as the community seems to call it. This is where the map is mostly explored but there are still a lot of secrets to be solved. I spent a long time doing these harder secrets and getting frustrated. Progress was just so incredibly slow and it was really disappointing when the reward for solving one puzzle offered no help in solving another. It felt like I just kept searching and searching for the puzzle that would break the game open and make it exciting again. Then I found that I had missed something and I could have finished the game hours ago. I got the credits and felt pretty good. 9/10 game at that point. Not too long and no amazing puzzles but most of it was really fun.

In a way, maybe I should have stopped there. Instead I continued with "level 2." The community and/or dev describes the game using levels. Level 1 is reaching the credits, something all players should enjoy. Level 2 is going really deep into puzzles and collecting things, something only a few players will enjoy. I am the target audience for level 2 and I liked it a fair amount, but man was it frustrating. There is not one, not two, but five times you are given something new and told to re-explore the entire map. It is just not fun. Almost all the difficulty comes in the form of finding things, but at times this was enjoyable. There are also more contained puzzles that were also enjoyable. I spent around 5 hours total on level 1 stuff yet all my level 2 stuff took around 20 hours. I was so close to finishing it, I had 97% of level 2 finished, but I couldn't justify spending more time combing through the map for my missing collectables. I found a location hint online and then finished up level 2 on my own. I liked this ending a fair amount.

If that was all the game was, then it'd be a solid 8/10. Searching for stuff sucked but most of the time there was enough scattered around to keep it fun.

Sadly there is a level 3.

I encountered level 3 content pretty early on and by far it is the most intriguing stuff in the game. I loved trying to solve this stuff and I managed to solve 2-3 on my own (the third was when I was looking for level 2 hints. A random online screenshot spoiled which room the puzzle started in but nothing else). Turns out though that most of these puzzles are not really puzzles. Six of the ones I spent hours thinking about were nothing but a waste of time. Here are some spoilers for some things in level 3. I am including all cosmetics in level 3.

If you plan to play the game, you SHOULD read this spoiler in my opinion. It sucked spending so much time thinking I could solve these as puzzles. I will put puzzle solutions in a second inner spoiler tag.

Spoiler for Hidden:

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/SnqgwiF.jpeg" alt="" class="bbc_img" loading="lazy"><br><br>I spent such a long time returning to the area to try and solve the lower chest blocked by skulls. The purple color made me think it'd be really special.<br><br><div style="margin:20px; margin-top:5px"><div class="smallfont" style="margin-bottom:2px"><b>Spoiler</b> for <i>Hidden</i>: <input type="button" value="Show" style="width:60px;font-size:10px;margin:0px;padding:0px;" onClick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = ''; this.value = 'Hide'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.value = 'Show'; }"></div><div class="alt2" style="margin: 0px; padding: 6px; border: 1px inset;"><div style="display: none;">You get a skull every time you die. I had already died the max amount so this room never changed for me.<br><br>The "solution" is to start a new save and reach this spot without dying. It's not even a puzzle. It's just a cosmetic reward for beating the game without dying.</div></div></div><br><img src="https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/wm/2024/05/animal-well-bunny-mural-featured.jpg?fit=crop&w=480&h=270" alt="" class="bbc_img" loading="lazy"><br><br>I found this pretty early on. What could it mean? What secret could it hold? I found everything in game that relates to this puzzle yet I still couldn't solve it.<br><div style="margin:20px; margin-top:5px"><div class="smallfont" style="margin-bottom:2px"><b>Spoiler</b> for <i>Hidden</i>: <input type="button" value="Show" style="width:60px;font-size:10px;margin:0px;padding:0px;" onClick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = ''; this.value = 'Hide'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.value = 'Show'; }"></div><div class="alt2" style="margin: 0px; padding: 6px; border: 1px inset;"><div style="display: none;">It's an online puzzle. Every player gets a different piece of it in their game so only by comparing pieces online can the puzzle be solved.</div></div></div>

The game really needed a way to clearly communicate to the player what was what. Level 3 stuff often presented itself as level 2 stuff, and during playing I had no idea what levels even were. There is a clear in game distinction between level 2 and level 3 content but you can't tell them apart until after the puzzle is solved. The collected items for level 2 are very different than the collected items for level 3 but oftentimes they are stored in the same chests. I had just two level 2 puzzles left yet I spent hours trying to solve level 3 stuff that I thought was level 2.

The game also really needed a way to clear rooms from the map. FEZ was great at guiding you towards unsolved content yet here it's ridiculous how often the game expects you to explore everything looking for a clue. It's especially bad since there are so many red herrings. For example the game is all about analyzing the map with a fine tooth comb to find rooms and passages you missed, yet there is one room that is impossible to reach.

Lastly it just needed better progression. Even during the early game it felt like I was doing things in the wrong order.

The platforming was mostly amazing. There are two items that assist with platforming in a significant way and they feel great and versatile. I was able to cheat my way into a lot of areas and the game wants stuff like that. Others found even more ways to cheat the platforming. Some things feel like genuine exploits/oversights yet the dev obviously intended for them. It's mostly very well done.

With that review complete, it's pretty funny just how similar it is to Hapax in regards to the things I didn't like

Hapax is also divided up into "levels" but I call them "acts" instead. The first act is just reaching an ending while the second act is more like a true ending. Every player should be able to finish act 1 while act 2 is there for the people that really like it.

I hope Hapax's system works better though since there are a few key differences. First of all, all Hapax puzzles fit the same thematic world. Act 2 is harder than act 1 with a new drive and perspective but the "rules" taught to the player in act 1 are carried over. Animal Well really struggled because later puzzles ignored the conventions established earlier in the game yet never communicated this with the player. The later Animal Well puzzles aren't just harder, it's as if most belong to a different game and there's no way to know that until you spoil yourself online. Secondly, Hapax's act 2 is essentially a diversion from act 1. Players should have a better sense of what goal they're working towards at any given time.

Another similarity is how both games involve a lot of searching. I feel pretty good about how Hapax handles this though. Since the ship is so massive it's pretty much impossible to blindly search like you do in Animal Well. Instead Hapax is more like targeted searches where in game tools and puzzles give a large amount of assistance.

A third similarity is that both games hide quality of life features behind missable puzzles. This is actually one of the things I'm most worried about. In Animal Well there is a great quality of life feature that speeds things up but I didn't discover it until fairly late. I saw the puzzle, thought the solution was trivial, but I misunderstood the controls so it didn't work. I worry a lot about similar stuff happening in Hapax. Like for example with the searching tools mentioned above. If the player doesn't use them, it's going to suck. My experience with Animal Well wasn't that bad though. I made do without the QOL feature and I guess Hapax players will just adapt their playstyles to fit what tools are at their disposal. I put in a bunch of redundant QOL features hopping players will find at least some but I guess even finding zero is not the worst thing in the world.

Legend · Jul 07, 2024, 07:57 PM

It's cool. Finding all of these would absolutely suck but I like the way the solution comes together. That's how I thought the snow leopard solution would work.

kitler53 · Jul 08, 2024, 04:43 PM

so i started playing this before vacation. like 3-4 hours in a think. not past stage 1 but i saw this promoted on era so i knew about the "3 stages". i'm glad i did because if i can't figure something out quickly i just bounce on the assumption i'm not supposed to do it yet.

i like it. the platforming as a bit hard at points. i don't like that i lost all my fireworks when loading the game up though. i stopped at a point just after getting them and had to redo that entire section again because i needed the fireworks to proceed onto the next section. then later i was in a section where there was no fireworks to be found but it seemed like i needed them to proceed. i got my way out eventually but i basically was forced to nearly kill myself to do it.

good. ...not great so far imo.

Legend · Jul 10, 2024, 11:39 PM

Quote from: kitler53 on Jul 08, 2024, 04:43 PMso i started playing this before vacation. like 3-4 hours in a think. not past stage 1 but i saw this promoted on era so i knew about the "3 stages". i'm glad i did because if i can't figure something out quickly i just bounce on the assumption i'm not supposed to do it yet.

i like it. the platforming as a bit hard at points. i don't like that i lost all my fireworks when loading the game up though. i stopped at a point just after getting them and had to redo that entire section again because i needed the fireworks to proceed onto the next section. then later i was in a section where there was no fireworks to be found but it seemed like i needed them to proceed. i got my way out eventually but i basically was forced to nearly kill myself to do it.

good. ...not great so far imo.

I didn't have too many issues with fireworks since I didn't like them and hardly used them.

I went through the same areas over and over and over when looking for secrets so be prepared to redo a lot of stuff if you keep with the game. I think it really could have benefited from a map like the pond in the witness. Maybe there is and I just didn't realize it, but knowing where to search for stuff would have made the game a lot nicer.