Sulphur on 13/5/2024 at 07:48

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those henke eggs had better be free range or I ain't eating that lasagna

henke on 14/5/2024 at 12:33

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Egg update: I have 50 eggs



edit:52! Tho I did resort to a walkthrough to find the last CAT CODES.

Tip for new players: whenever you find something that looks like it might be SOMETHING, mark it with an icon on the map. Your future self will thank you.

Aja on 28/5/2024 at 00:59

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In some ways Animal Well feels like the Super Metroid spiritual successor we've never really received.

When I played Super Metroid as a child, I'd see some unique detail in a room and, without the benefit of game-design savvy that I would acquire over the subsequent decades, would assume it was significant and try everything I could to manipulate or activate it. Animal Well encourages this with well-hidden secrets often discovered using undocumented abilities (another nod to Super Metroid). Its atmosphere of mystery and horror is expressed mostly indirectly through environmental details. It's unafraid to be obscure. As an adult with probably less patience than I used to have, this can be frustrating, but I try to get back into that old mindset, where anything could be possible and could be the solution. It's a great piece of art in that sense and a great homage to a style of game that isn't made very often anymore.

However, it's not as fun to play as I would like. I think I'm appreciating it more than enjoying it. Traversal feels good, and (again) like Super Metroid it includes some advanced movement techniques that are satisfying and challenging to execute. But it's missing some primary interaction to make the moment-to-moment gameplay more compelling. In most Metroid-type games that would be your attack. Animal Well mostly eschews violence, which is an admirable design decision, but the act of moving around and solving puzzles doesn't quite make up for the absence of something more immediate and visceral. I've had it for a week now and am a few hours in, and it's not for lack of time to play.

It's good. It's worth playing. I'm not sure I'd herald it as a classic, yet.

Aja on 28/5/2024 at 08:34

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Now I feel like I might've been too hard on it, so I guess I'll reserve the right to change my mind once I've finished it. One thing is for certain, though: it's an aesthetic triumph.

demagogue on 28/5/2024 at 19:18

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I think it was fair since I felt the main game is a full game.

Having finished it but not too much beyond it, I don't think I'm missing out on anything important.
But I'll sometimes hop into the game to see if there's anything else I could do, and usually I can find something new. I've been playing Sable like that too... Cruising around after finishing it and looking for something to climb or look into, and often there's a new secret.

I thought Noita handled it cleverly just in the sense that the extra stuff was literally out of the normal game world, so there was no confusion what was the game and what was this bigger world out there doing its own thing. But that doesn't mean having post-game stuff built into the normal game world is bad.

Ultimately I think the way to put it is that it caters to a specific type of gamer that likes to look over the map and their notes and think of things to try... It's for young people that can blow an afternoon just thinking about a game without knowing if it'll mean anything, which is something people may lose patience for as they get older and busier. I like it in a drip feed kind of way, something that lets me come back to the game every now and then to look for one more new thing for that session; usually there is, and that suits me well. But I recognize it's catering to a type, and people differ on that.

Edit: What I like about it as a metroidvania platformer is that very many of the scenes have different kinds of platforming or conceptual puzzles to handle, and it keeps the novelty going basically through all of the core game. In that way it doesn't get stale. There is the part as you get towards the end where you're looking over the map thinking about ways forward, that could be considered tedious compared to other games of the type, but I think the pros still outweighed the cons, since you usually had a good idea of what you might try next... And if nothing else, you could just start going back through old areas, and chances are you'd run into something else you could try. The game never really stranded the player completely; so that's how it could pull of that kind of design.

That said, I wouldn't say it's better than Ori & the Blind Forest, both on the aesthetics & creativity or fun of the platforming, so I don't think it's the best of the metroidvania type or anything. Animal Well is a minimalist version of that, which is cool in its own way, and more my speed anyway, since Ori was more intense as a platformer too.