Stray if it was good. This is what happens when you actually stick to a vision instead of blowing your entire budget on Sonymaxxing.

It's a delightful mixture of Untitled Goose Game and Goat Simulator–with a little Breath of the Wild for good measure–wrapped into a delightfully dense, vertical, but manageable open world.

While the controls are a bit janky, it's hard to complain when the game purposefully lacks friction and instead gets by on the strengths of its exploration, tone, and quest design.

Super cute, sometimes funny, and usually pretty wholesome chungus. But this is definitely a game by people who actually understand cats. I remember soyfacing extremely hard when I came across a cucumber, and the cat jumped 16 feet into the air.

It's concise, confident, and a great way to spend an afternoon.

Animal Well really is a thing you need to experience with a controller in your hands and full focus because it is a living, breathing art piece that sucked me in. I bought this game 5 hours ago and I haven't put it down since. The way everything animated is like drinking cool water on a hot night. Refreshing.

Seeing the previews of this game, I thought "ok big youtuber videogamedunkey is firmly in his 30's and wants to expand beyond making shitposts and make money by becoming an indie publisher". I wasn't moved at all by any of the promotion for Animal Well. I am bored to DEATH of 2D platformers and this game only teased a pleasant art style which is not enough to make me care. Most 2D games all mostly play the same. I'm sleep.

Thing is I got 24.68 on my Steam Wallet, so why not give it a try.

It is a Metroidvania logic puzzler. There are no tutorials in Animal Well. You are left as to guess how you progress forward. It's not Baba is You go FUCK yourself hard. It is quite simple and natural gameplay that leads to bigger and bigger "ah-HA!" moments. The kind where you feel dumb and smart. Smumb. Darmbt. I felt like I was one of those things.

The gameplay mixed with the environments and ambient music just clicked with me hard. I was 45 minutes into the game after being cynical about the whole thing and my brain just snapped after a certain puzzle solution and I realized this game has a hidden power level of cleverness. It is so meticulously well thought out. It's not trying to reinvent the wheel. It just was catered for you to have a good time.

I recommend this game for everyone. I've been in a gaming slump where no new game releases has really excited me, but Animal Well is the game that pulled my brain out of that fog. Not saying it will do the same for you, but if you give it a shot, it just might.

It ain't as good as Hollow Knight, but this is right under that (so far) as a jaw dropping 2D game with content that keeps upping the ante in amazement.

Jamal Dunkey picked a banger to kick off his publishing venture.

This is a much better game than its predecessor, but I can't help but feel like it lost some of its uniqueness in becoming that better game. You can feel those five years between games, and what came out during them. Let's start with the positives, movement is much better. Triple jumping and being able to stick to walls help mitigate some weird movement, and launch is such a fun ability. Combat is better too, you have more options than you did in the first game.

I think I prefer the story of the first game, but the beginning and ending sequences in this game were both beautiful and touching. However, having NPCS to talk to did nothing for me. They feel tacked on, this game is always strongest when there are no words. Their quest system and purchasing upgrades instead of having a skill tree also feels tacked on, more an obligation than something that really suits the game. It's very... video gamey. And there's nothing wrong with video gamey, I love video games, but it's out of place here in Ori's world of beautiful simplicity.

It's frustrating when there are two pieces of art that could become something more fantastic than either of them if they just married their best traits (the 2003 FMA anime and the manga/Brotherhood is my go-to example) and I think this is another case of that. Ori is best enjoyed one game after the other I feel.