Ultros is at its core a Metroid-Vania but it doesn’t quiet follow a lot of the core mechanics that you’ve come to expect from the genre. Ultimately it excels at its presentation being one the most beautiful games I think I have ever played; the sound design is fantastic and the visual language is breathtaking. Unfortunately, Ultros is held back by a few odd mechanics and lack of clarity in its requirements of the player.

The first few hours of gameplay and exploration are honestly some of its best. You wake outside a crashed space pod in a hallucinogenic strange world with no direct and merely a puddle to view yourself in. Your only immediate option is to venture out into the organic depths below you and hope to make sense of what is going on. This is when you will be introduced to the games narrative and one of the few character that seem to be lurking in this ship of some kind. The narrative is present in written format where other characters will talk at you and you can see reactions from the players sprite. The story is generally quiet intriguing but seems to lose focus throughout the game. I had a general idea of what was happening but some of the characters and hidden lore seemed a little random or to vague for me to understand on a first playthrough.
The premise is some kind of time loop where you and everyone else is stuck re living a moment while a big ball creature (Ultros) grows in the middle of the ship. Almost ever character has no idea they are in a loop with the exception of one who seems to remember you after you progress the story. I believe there are possibly 2 or more endings to Ultros but unfortunately, I wasn’t particularly satisfied with the outcome I received.

The core objective seems to be killing or reviving 6 of these mummies that are linked to the big ball thing but I’m not really sure why. Once one of these mummies has been slain you go back to the big ball and the loop restarts with some dialog and cool visuals beforehand. Your options are to either slay all the mummies and end the game or once they have been killed bringing some kind of organic tether to them which will cleanse them in some way. Ultros expected you to figure out that this is an option purely by trial and error which could very easily be missed. I do like that this allows the player to pick if they want to put the effort in for an alternative ending but it becomes beyond tedious and for a smaller game there are very little resources online to help.

The exploration in Ultros is similar to your average Metroid-Vania but less focused on upgrading manoeuvrability and unlocking shortcuts. This became one of the first major problems I had with the game, it took so long to get anywhere fast and it was quiet exhausting to explore new paths. Instead, you are encouraged to use seeds that will grow into different kind of plants / trees providing vines to swing on or platforms to jump on. In concept, this is a really cool idea and it defiantly had moments that were quite impressive. However, some plants will take a time loop to fully grow meaning you are not able to use the new “shortcut” until you progress to the next loop. Similarly, this also became a problem when you are not sure what plant to grown where or you do not have the correct seed available to grow the required tree.
The previously mentioned tether that unlocks the alternative ending requires a strong knowledge of what plants to grow and paths to take. This is because you will be leading a tether from 1 area of the map to another in a plant-based daisy chain. Unfortunately, after a few hours of trying to figure out how to make this chain, the slow movement speed and lack of clear direction made me quit this endeavour and instead get the “bad” ending.

Initially while playing Ultros I was quiet impressed by the combat and encouragement to play well and with variety. The system they use rewards new combos and variety by giving better rewards based on how well you perform in combat. There's a mix of different doges, backsteps, stealth attacks, parry’s and much more which was initially quiet exciting. You unlock these moves and other abilities by leveling up your skill tree from eating a variety of grown fruits or carcases from the enemies you kill. However, the skill tree is very limited and you will quickly be maxing everything out as the consumables are also your healing items and there is a lot of them. I believe this is intentional though as when a loop is completed you will be returned to 0 skill points and no weapons as if you just restarted the game. Unfortunately though you can mitigate this almost completely, as with the use of additional hidden skill points found in the world this will keep any chosen skill permanently unlocked. This then feeds into another problem where you become either to strong in combat or you use a skill tree ability where most enemies will completely ignore the player; this allows you to waltz on right past them completely ignoring all future combat.

As I think back on my time playing Ultros I feel honestly more disappointed about what could have been than what has been. The beautiful visuals paired with some great combat ideas and an intriguing set up for a story sounds like a recipe for a brilliant game. But unfortunately Ultros just doesn’t deliver in the execution and that makes me really sad. I hope the small team continues to make games and refine their craft as there’s absolutely passion poured into Ultros and I would to see what’s next from the studio.

I'm tempted to hold off on review because I hear the postgame is so robust, but I have to many thoughts, so here I am after hitting credits. I apologize for the unstructured ramble; I'll update this review when I've done postgame stuff.

Metroidvania is the genre that I think I like way more than I actually do like: I used to call it my favorite genre, and I STILL have plenty of games I consider favorites and replay over and over. But in truth, I feel like I'm in love with an idealization of the genre that rarely gets met by any game not called Super Metroid: Sequence being only a suggestion, with alternate paths and sequence breaks accomplished not just by glitches and wall clips, but mastery of mechanics and their nuances to master the environment. For whatever reason, the whole genre seems to have collectively decided that abilities, a persistent map, and collectibles are all that matter, with most of them feeling like tightly linear affairs pulling you on a string through a world that feels like it's begging to be truly trekked through, but disallowed by the developer for a myriad of reasons that I probably understand but think are silly.

Animal Well is Super Metroid 2. Not the only Super Metroid 2, but certainly one of the rare ones. (I would not be surprised if the solo developer was VERY inspired by my favorite Super Metroid 2, by the way. I'll leave it unnamed and see how many people guess it. Hint: It's not even a real metroidvania.)

The atmosphere? Moody. The ability upgrades? Unique to the point that I'm not sure I've seen a single one of them in another metroidvania, AND most of them with multiple hidden uses. The handholding? Nonexistent. The "intended" sequence? Hell if I know; I legit could not tell you how much of what I did on my one run so far was the path of least resistance or a sequence break.

There's just so damn much in this game that encourages you to get creative with what you have to see what works, and chances are if you can logically conceptualize something working within the bounds of the game's rules, it will, indeed, work (with or without tons of retry and maybe some luck). The result is the best metroidvania I've played in an absurdly long time, meeting my idealization of the genre in a way almost no others do.

And the fact that what I describe seems to have been a near-universal reaction among people playing it, that this game that doesn't tell you anything and expects you to get creative to progress is based? Man, oh man, I really hope metroidvania developers take note.

I think it's a good game, but I don't see why everyone was making such bold claims about it. I think it has really unique visuals and aesthetics that separate it from most other games, and that's probably it's strongest attribute. The combination of the music and ghastly visuals really contribute to make a somewhat scary otherworldly jungle of an environment, very befitting its name. The player slowly gets access to a few really interesting tools that tend to have multiple uses that you discover through experimentation, which are all pretty fun. I think the game is a short but definitely good ~5 hours. But even with the innovative multipurpose nature of the tools you get, they don't actually lead to multiple solutions for any puzzle. For anyone one puzzle there's only solution, so those seemingly hidden features of a tool just become the norm. It's level design is pretty good with overlapping routes and going over the same part of a map because you unlocked a new route, and when you got stuck it was relatively straight forward to figure out where you needed to go. The world of animal well is pretty interesting, but no one part of it sits with me long enough that I feel super invested or connected to it.

I think the game is good don't get me wrong, but is more of a sign that we should be on the watch for the developer's (and publisher's) future endeavors as this is a good first showing that only shows promise for what's to come.

a common refrain among Games People is that gameplay is paramount to a title's success and should always be placed first at the expense of everything else. I'm not so shortsighted as to think there's no merit to this line of thinking, at least in that developers should understand their priorities for the health of their game. it's understandable why this idea has gotten so popular in opposition to the Grafiks Craze of the '10s, because that method of advertising and understanding games is actually even worse. however, Animal Well is not a game that puts gameplay first. it is blisteringly obvious when you play it that the bulk of the developers' passion went into the art, animation, and sound design, culminating in an incredibly memorable journey. I had a ton of fun with this one even if I was a little too stupid for all the puzzles. I certainly won't be 100%ing it, but the sights and sounds of the ending especially will stick in my mind for quite a while.