It's all about the mood.

Animal Well, to me, really distinguished itself with its atmosphere. The almost total absence of music, replaced by a myriad of sounds and wobbles. The sparkling colors and dancing smoke effects moving across the scan-line post process. The weird animal designs and encounters where random otters can jump on screen to mess with your plans.

It also has very interesting power-ups which are all thematically consistent as a toolkit and really creative in how they shape your relationship to the environment.

It's a bit of a bummer that the game offers almost no tools to hunt down all the remaining secrets once the game is over. I would have loved to get to the true ending, but there's no way I'm scouring every inch of a gigantic map (where it's tough to fast-travel) with no pointers to get to that point.

It still is a fantastic little game for what it is and I'll mostly remember it for it's unique art direction and thick ambiance.