Indie Making of Animal Well Documentary

[Kamako]

I'm a bit late on this, but the Animal Well documentary just dropped:

Really cool indie game imo

 

[Graw]

Animal Well was pretty awesome I just wish it didn't focus so much on community puzzles. Everything had been solved by the time I played it so when it came time to do those puzzles it was just looking up the solutions on the internet. There's actually no way to do some of the puzzles otherwise. It really killed the latter half of the game for me. It went from being cool and mysterious to just following a guide to find all the stupidly hidden stuff that requires multiple people with their own copies of the game to share things with eachother to actually solve.

Still. It's definitely up there on my list of favourite metroidvanias. It's just such a unique game and the world and aesthetic is great.

 

[HextarVigar]

Animal what?

 

[Kamako]

Animal what?

"Animal Well", cool indie metroidvania. Very purple, very cosy, pretty tricky

Post automatically merged: Feb 27, 2025

Animal Well was pretty awesome I just wish it didn't focus so much on community puzzles. Everything had been solved by the time I played it so when it came time to do those puzzles it was just looking up the solutions on the internet. There's actually no way to do some of the puzzles otherwise. It really killed the latter half of the game for me.

I'm really torn about this, because on one hand, I love the fact that modern game devs are still putting puzzles in their games that only a handful of diehard obsessed fans will put the effort into solve and how cool it is that communities can be built around that, but on the other hand yeah I thought the game was fantastic my free time isn't endless and solving some of the tougher puzzles (the ones I could possibly solve) solo was too big an ask. It would have been really cool if they added a very late game item that let you warp to any explored room, instead of bouncing between the same checkpoints

 

[Graw]

"Animal Well", cool indie metroidvania. Very purple, very cosy, pretty tricky

Post automatically merged: Feb 27, 2025

I'm really torn about this, because on one hand, I love the fact that modern game devs are still putting puzzles in their games that only a handful of diehard obsessed fans will put the effort into solve and how cool it is that communities can be built around that, but on the other hand yeah I thought the game was fantastic my free time isn't endless and solving some of the tougher puzzles (the ones I could possibly solve) solo was too big an ask. It would have been really cool if they added a very late game item that let you warp to any explored room, instead of bouncing between the same checkpoints

I don't necessarily mind tough puzzles I just don't like that in order to even access the tough puzzles you need to do a community puzzle. It's great if you can get into the game the same time as everyone else and you've got time to mess around on forums all day comparing things with other people but I tend to just chill and relax with my games I don't necessarily want to play it with all the people. Fez was the same way for me. I started it then I learned to really get into all the things you had to have been there at the time or just look everything up.

 

[bjork]

Animal Well was pretty awesome I just wish it didn't focus so much on community puzzles. Everything had been solved by the time I played it so when it came time to do those puzzles it was just looking up the solutions on the internet. There's actually no way to do some of the puzzles otherwise. It really killed the latter half of the game for me. It went from being cool and mysterious to just following a guide to find all the stupidly hidden stuff that requires multiple people with their own copies of the game to share things with eachother to actually solve.

I agree with this. I thought a lot of the early stuff was pretty clever, but then when I realized that it's not possible to do everything solely on your own, it really put me off the end game stuff. I still like the overall presentation of it really well and thought what I played was fun, but when it gets into

Spoiler: the weirder stuff

all the stuff with collecting rabbits or whatever and needing a printer?

, that's just a weird thing to put on the player that wasn't there all the way through.

 

[Graw]

I agree with this. I thought a lot of the early stuff was pretty clever, but then when I realized that it's not possible to do everything solely on your own, it really put me off the end game stuff. I still like the overall presentation of it really well and thought what I played was fun, but when it gets into

Spoiler: the weirder stuff

all the stuff with collecting rabbits or whatever and needing a printer?

, that's just a weird thing to put on the player that wasn't there all the way through.

Spoiler: re:weirder stuff

Yeah that and the thing where you basically have to do pixel art based on random fragments of a picture you get from multiple copies of the game. I spent a bunch of time trying to figure that out then eventually gave up and looked it up only to learn it was impossible for me to have figured out and I just ended up alt-tabbing between the game and the finished picture to complete it.

 

[bjork]

^ this was the exact moment where it started losing me, heh