ANIMAL WELL

A dense, layered metroidvania puzzle box hiding secrets within secrets.

9 May 2024 · $24.99

About ANIMAL WELL

Hatch from your flower and spelunk through the beautiful and sometimes haunting world of Animal Well, a pixelated wonder rendered in intricate audio and visual detail. Encounter lively creatures small and large, helpful and ominous as you discover unconventional upgrades and unravel the well’s secrets. This is a truly unique experience that can make you laugh in fear, surprise, or delight. • Dense atmospheric puzzle box world with tons of secrets • Light candles for safety and gradually fill out your map • Nonlinear -- explore and collect items in whatever order you choose • Enemies, environment, and items interact in surprising and systemic ways • All items have multiple uses • Learn how innocuous details can become meaningful • The main game is just the beginning. Players will be discovering hidden puzzles for years • Assess for yourself what is safe and dangerous • Focus on tension and suspense rather than action • You are disempowered, but can make clever use of your environment and items

• Interconnected puzzle metroidvania
• Layers upon layers of secrets
• Minimalist tool-based abilities
• Ghost and egg collecting
• Atmospheric creature encounters
• Steam Achievements
• Full controller support
• Steam Cloud
• Family Sharing

Gameplay

Animal Well is a 2D Metroidvania video game incorporating nonlinear platforming and puzzle solving. It is presented in low-resolution pixel art graphics. The player controls an unnamed yellow blob creature which emerges from a flower at the beginning of the game and uses it to explore; no goal, plot, or backstory is given. The game world is divided into a sixteen by sixteen grid of underground rooms, or flip-screens, with one room visible at a time. The rooms are connected together in a labyrinth with multiple obvious and hidden connections. These rooms are typically murky areas with overgrown, crumbling architecture, machines and controls, and various animals generally much larger than the player character. The player character can walk and jump around the rooms, and can take and use items found in the game. These items are toys, including a slinky, frisbee, and bubble wand; these often have multiple uses, not all of which are immediately obvious. Portions of the game world can only be accessed by using specific items and many areas have hidden elements that require items to access. There are also firecrackers, which can be collected at points in the game and thrown to scare animals or banish ghost animals until the player leaves the room. Matches can also be found, which can be placed in specific locations to permanently banish any ghosts from that room. Animals and ghosts may ignore the player or harm them, either passively or actively, depending on the type of creature. If the player is attacked by animals or ghosts, they lose one of their hearts. The player starts with four hearts, which can be restored by finding and eating a pink fruit. Up to four additional blue hearts can be gained by eating blue fruits. If the player loses all hearts, they reappear at the last telephone they interacted with, acting as save points throughout the game. In four locations, colored flames are kept behind large animals, which must be defeated using the local environment for the flame to be collected. If all four are taken and brought to a central room, then a new passageway is opened to a previously inaccessible area. At the end of it is an encounter with a wraith-like…