Animal Well (PS5): COMPLETED!

What if Jet Set Willy was a Metroidvania and it was a still all pixels but all the pixels had thousands of colours and there was amazing light and shadow effects and you got special toys that gave you new skills and it was all creepy and weird and there were ghosts and rooms in total darkness and there were puzzles and switches and you could warp around the map by climbing into the mouths of animals? Animal Well.

Well, maybe it’s not too much like Jet Set Willy but it definitely felt like the natural evolution of it had 3D gaming never existed or something.

The story in Animal Well is seemingly thus: You are a blob which hatches and then for Reasons have to find four mystic flames to light candles on four totems and then defeat some big evil. Bit of an ask for a day-old baby blob but games not have to make sense. The game plays out as mostly a platformer, where you explore a world which, in Metroidvania style, becomes larger as you gain skills that let you open pathways to new or previously unreachable areas.

These skills come in the form of toys, like a yoyo which lets you hit buttons from a distance (or round corners), a slinky that can “wall” down steps or drop through certain platforms, and a flying disc (not a Frisbee for legal reasons) that can hit switches across large gaps, but can also distract dogs that would like to eat you. You can also jump on the disc and use it to travel across chasms.

These skills make for some usual puzzles and gimmicks to navigate round the world, which is beautifully drawn with some amazing pixel art. It looks pretty good in screenshots but it’s when everything is in motion that you really get the benefit of the lighting effects. I also liked the tiny little controller rumbles and feedback you get from jumping around.

Although there are plenty of baddies in the world, including a few bosses, you can’t really damage most of them with your “weapons”. You can with some, and stun others, but most of the time you have to either avoid them, trap them, or cause environmental damage by dropping rocks on them or something. There are also quite a few benign creatures that you can coax into use as platforms, switch triggers, or blockers in various ways too.

As well as the main goal, there’s a lot of hidden stuff to find. Markings on walls, shapes, oddly lit things. Some unlock secrets, others seem just for fun. They reminded me a bit of Fez, although Animal Well isn’t quite as deep and complex as that.

There are also a load of literal Easter Eggs to collect, mostly hidden in secret places, which unlock a few extra, but optional, items. I suspect for some the real end game is to get all of them, and I got about 55 of the 64 but just couldn’t find any more and didn’t want to resort to a guide. I did have an amazing time playing Animal Well though, and love the fact it was a PS++++++++ free rental because I was this close to buying it on the Switch when I noticed it was on PSN!