fuckin great! movement feels soooo good, jumping, sliding, swinging, skiing, just a joy to navigate the environment

music is charming, graphics have a nostalgic appeal to em without feeling dated (ymmv)

where i gotta dock points is two different areas:

1) the environments got a little exhaustingly... samey? which is weird to say cause each of the ruins does have variety, you're climbing towers or dodging bird bombs or whatever, but the veneer on top kinda makes it all smear together into one kinda boring flavor over time? like taking your entire dinner and just pouring some nondescript brown sauce over every separate piece so it all tastes basically the same

2) i think the level design is mostly great, except that it's just short of perfect!! so many elements are JUST at the right distance, everything is JUST a little too hard to get to... it's the kind of thing that is great when you're doing one level after the next and they're shorter and disconnected experiences, like super meat boy etc, but when you're in this big open world and there's no Break between challenges really, it gets frustrating, especially with the sparse and tedious checkpoint fishing hook system they've got going on here

it's not something that was too hard for me, but it's definitely too hard for me to recommend to many of my friends who i think would otherwise love it

To start, while I feel value/pricing belongs more in a Steam review, it really can’t be overstated how great a value $6 for this game is.

With that out of the way, I had a great time with Pseudoregalia. My first formative memories of games landed right in the N64/PSX era, and this delivers that vibe in spades.

My wife, who hadn’t played anything on 5th gen hardware when she was young, always comments on how unsettling she finds SM64. Something about the low poly look + draw distance + sound design of that era has a dreamlike quality that skeeves her out- and honestly if you distance yourself from any associated nostalgia, she has a point. Pseudoregalia capitalizes on that mood. The game itself takes place in a dream, so the odd architecture and different locales all come together into a really cool ethereal space that, while somewhat difficult to navigate, actually feels great to experience. NPC dialogue is almost 50/50 split between innocuous and dark/ominous lines. I adored the sound design, especially the sound Sybil’s sword makes when thrown. It’s surprisingly weighty and that sound alone changed how I experienced the game’s atmosphere.

I’m playing after the map update, so my qualms aren’t as major as people who played prior, but I still had some issues figuring out where I was situated within a room without a character marker on the map. Some of the rooms are quite large and accidentally exiting the wrong door got a bit frustrating. Could be a personal issue, but that’s the only difficulty I had with the game.

As I’m sure everyone’s mentioned in their reviews, the movement is what makes this game great. Momentum feels good, and the powerups build on each other to make for a really fluid, complex system. I kept telling myself I was ready to finish the game but found myself completing nearly every time trial.

Combat isn’t anything to really write home about, but the game is obviously more about exploration and wears that on its sleeve.

I’d say I completed about 85% of the game- missed a few collectibles and one major powerup, but I was really satisfied with what I played. The game doesn’t overstay its welcome, but doesn’t leave you wanting too much more (at least in the space it provides). I can’t wait to see what else this dev has in store.

Also if I ever end up getting a fursuit it’s 100% gonna be a Sybil cosplay. We love a weird goat-bunny-lady

Sights & Sounds
- Excellent pixel art all around. Gave me warm fuzzy memories of playing Super Metroid as a kid and Zero Mission on GBA in high school
- Similar to those games, you'll be fighting weird biomechanical monsters and giant bosses (most of which look pretty cool)
- The music runs the gamut from good to stellar. The music from Kur is going to be stuck in my head for a while
- Even the menus are nice. All in all, the presentation feels well-crafted and faithful to its inspirations

Story & Vibes
- The music and visual style do great job setting the tone of the game, which is largely mysterious and a little ominous
- To give anything away about the story would do a disservice to the game. Let's just say that it's heavily sci-fi with some parallel universe/time travel elements, and is decent enough on its own
- What really makes the world feel more interesting is the environmental storytelling. You'll find yourself clamboring over and shooting bad guys on a bunch of weird scenery. Stuff like piles of skeletons, corridors of cages, and weird incubation tube looking things. If you take the time to explore for notes and pay attention to the dialogue, you'll figure out why most of it is there

Playability & Replayability
- The game's Metroid inspiration obviously bleeds into the gameplay
- Exploration is the centerpiece here. Drill everything, jump everywhere, and use the glitch mechanic on anything that looks slightly out of place. If you can't access a location yet, note the room. You'll be rewarded with some cool stuff
- That "cool stuff" is indeed really fun to use. The drone teleport and labcoats were notable highlights that really open up movement throughout the environment. Some of the weapons are also very fun to use, even if some are only situational or gimmicky.
- The equipment and upgrades are almost enough to balance out all the backtracking they require to obtain, but not quite. Enemies respawn if you move more than two rooms over, and there is no teleport option to speed up traversal in the huge world. This is really my only gripe about the game, though
- Don't think I'll be back for a replay, but I will certainly be tucking into the sequel at some point

Overall Impressions & Performance
- I played the game on the Steam Deck to up the GBA Metroid nostalgia factor. Also, it's way easier to play with the d-pad on the Steam Deck, which is great for 2D games
- Ran very well the whole way through

Final Verdict
- 9/10. I know "metroidvanias" have saturated the indie game scene for several years, but this is definitely one worth playing though (especially if you lean more towards the Metroid side of that portmanteau)

A wholly enjoyable puzzlicious exploration game. The search action conceit works well with the more puzzley keys—the idea of doors and locks is a lot more interesting when the act of unlocking takes thought. The world, while not particularly dense with lore or plot, is nevertheless aesthetically and thematically compelling. I appreciate that the game generally guides you towards the most important thing to focus on for the current layer, while also allowing you to skip ahead in spots if you're so inclined. An awfully fun game all around!

(Played through layer 2 and the second credits and tapped out there.)

I feel like that talking fully about Everhood with the respet it deserves its almost impossible, but I'll try anyway. Some people would call it pretencious, but that would implie that the game pretends to be more than it really is, and Everhood has a lot of interesting things to say. It feels proud to be a videogame, with all that carries: being a happy experience and a sad one, funny and scary, relaxed and challenging... And it tackles the theme of death and how it gives meaning to life, albeit being a pretty common theme in certain movies and books, unlike any other game I've seen.
Does anything I'm saying make sense? I don't know, nor I care, but please, play Everhood, even if you don't end up seing its themes and story the same way I do, it's still a fun an unique experience, on that should be at least tried by everyone.
Also the gameplay it's incredibly fun, challenging and the music is out of this world, I almost forgot to say that

One of the rooms in this game has the shape of a heart and is full of capybaras, and if that doesn’t prove to you that this is the clear GOTY of the year of the decade of forever so far then I don’t know what will.

Despite being a highly anticipated game for me, probably one of this year’s releases that excited me the most this year… I had no fucking clue what Animal Well really was. By that I don’t mean that ‘’I didn’t know what to expect’’, there have been a ton of games I didn’t have expectations of what they would be prior to playing them, but at least I had a small idea what they were about, their mechanics, and overall ideas. But with Animal Well, I had no clue about how it could even play like.

It was supposed to be a Metroidvania? Is it Puzzle-Platformer? Or perhaps an immersive-atmospheric experience? Maybe a highly experimental take on open spaces and secret finding? I didn’t really know before I hit ‘’start game’’ to be honest, and yet, even before that point there was something that called me, that fascinated me. This world of blues and greens seen through the lenses of an old CRTV is an aesthetic I didn’t know I missed this much, or maybe is that it’s done so effectively here; the surround sound and flickering lights that accompany such abandoned yet beautiful looking structures and the nature that melds perfectly with it… I don’t know, it reminisces of feelings and memories I don’t think I can properly put into words, but still filled me with a desire to explore this rabbit hole.

Well, I finally played it, and I have finally found the answer to all of those questions that once plagued me:…

…Yes.

Animal Wells is an experience that feels like it takes inspiration from a million different places and ideas, and yet it molds them together to create something unlike any other game I can think of; is the idea that surrounds the ‘’Metroidvania’’ genre distilled in its purest form, yet it’s far from being simple.

The well is a place of few words; none of the areas have a proper name, there are no NPCs to chat with, and it’s not like the small slime-like creature we play as has a mouth to begin with. The only text present is one found in menus, small one-word prompts, and the name of the items, and that’s more than enough… because the rest speaks for itself. Each area and the animals that live in them chant a different song, each room a part of a puzzle of their own; I didn’t know for them to have a name for places to stand out vividly in my mind, like the Lake of the Cranes, or the Giant Bat’s Cave, or even smaller locations like the Peacock’s Palace or the Disc’s Shrine. The world of Animal Well may be quiet, but everything speaks volumes, like visting an abandoned virtual zoo: every encounter with a new-found critter, whether friendly or aggressive, every new interaction like distracting dogs using the disc, or every major tense moment like running away from the Ghost… Cat? Dog? I actually don’t know which of the two is supposed to be, nor do I need to know that the entire sequence and puzzle is an amazing highlight and super satisfying to overcome completely on your own… No wait, that’s also the rest of the game!

Managing to create a world that feels so well thought-out and designed so every puzzle feels intuitive, while at the same time offering such fun to use and multi-purpose items that can break open the game completely and taking ALL THAT into account is honestly worth getting up and applauding. The Bubble Wand is the clear star of the show for me; being able to create temporary platforms is already a game changer, especially when pairing it with fans and wind currents, but then you realize you can ‘bubble hop’, as I like to call it, by pressing the action and jump button both at the same time and completely bypassing many parts and sections that otherwise would have required other actions, and best thing is that even if it seems that it breaks the game at times, the dev clearly accounted for it since some rooms have passages too thin for you to maneuver or create bubbles or even animals like hummingbirds that immediately pop them once you make one. I normally wouldn’t like when a game makes a tool completely useless for the sake of a puzzle, but in here it makes total sense and balances out the moments were you make out your own path with pre-designed puzzles this amazing, and it’s not like that’s the only tool that lets you get creative anyway.

The moment you get any item, about two seconds is all you need to realize the possibilities it can offer, yet, as in the rest of the caverns, nothing is ever spelled out; you yourself and your own imagination and problem-solving are the ones that need to overcome the challenges this wildlife imposes; I’ve never felt so rewarded in such a long time than when using the Yo-Yo effectively, learning the code to fast travel to the main hub with the animal faces —which remind me of a certain game, I think it starter with ‘’Super’’ and ended with ‘’2’’… can’t put a finger on it tho—, or skipping completely the Ostrich escape sequence and its puzzles, near the bowels of the map, by using the Spring, Yo-Yo and myself. It honestly comes really close to feeling like the levels in Mosa Lina, now that I think about: you have incredibly useful tools that serve a clear purpose, but ones you can also use whichever way you like to, only with the difference that Animal Well is an already built, profoundly engaging and interesting world, and using all this arsenal while interacting with the animal and the curse that seems to affect the well is amazing, and little things like fall or water damage aren’t taken into account to incentivize and reward experimentation even more than it would have otherwise.

If I had to point out a flaw, and one that may honestly be a ‘’only me’’ thing, is the inconsistency with how it handles some switches and shortcuts. While I get and really enjoy some gauntlets of puzzles, he fact some of them reset, like the ‘’On and Off’’ switches, reset every time you teleport or get out of a room, just makes things a tad more annoying, in contrast to how the yellow door switches stay activated even if you don’t press them all or die, which makes other rooms kind of a joke and strips them from the tension found in the boss encounters, for example. I understand that this won’t be that big of a deal for many people, but when the rest of the game is so impeccably designed and each room amounts to so much, these little annoyances are noticeable.

A game that otherwise… I still don’t think I can say I've come close to experiencing all of it. In a way, it’s kinda interesting to have played this so close after beating Fez for the first time, because while both of those games have a similar sense of wonder and are brimming with secrets, that game created its mysteries through the tools you can find within a same room and code-finding through a fragmented world , while Animal Well is an ecosystem on its own, with the complete freedom that entails. Even after finding out what dwelled at the bottom of the well, it's insane how much there’s for me to find, not only the Eggs, but I’m convinced there are things that I haven’t even seen yet, and I know for sure that there are far more items than it seemed at first.

At this point, it shouldn’t be a secret that one of the things I love the most in games, or in any form of art for that matter, is when they give so much food for thought, letting the imagination run wild and feel so massive and grand even if their locations are small; Animal Well is only a 30 MB game, and it’s the perfect representation of all this, the wild desire to explore, to have fun, and to fear the unknown, even when it's scary as all hell.

I’m obsessed with Animal Well, and its ambience, roars, and silence speak to me in a way few games do, and I’m happy to see that’s a sentiment already being shared by so many people.

Hit credits after about four hours or so and thought to myself "this was a nice short little game, I wouldn't mind grabbing the rest of the collectibles before moving on". Like five sessions, ten hours, and several pages of notes and ciphers later, I can confidently say that I've had my fun here - and that is to say that there are still more things left to find!

This game's got layers, man.

If you like games like Super Metroid or Tunic and are looking for a densely atmospheric puzzle adventure, this is not a game you should be missing. With a few more fast travel points and a little less platforming precision in some areas (if you found all the bunnies, you'll know what I'm talking about), this would be an easy five star for me. But even with those few minor shortcomings, it's on my 2024 Game of the Year shortlist and I am confidently inducting it into my indie game hall of fame. I can already feel that this'll kick off another wave of indie game fever for me like Outer Wilds did a while back, too.

TL;DR: Animal Well is a fantastically unique experience from start to finish and it is absolutely worth all the high praise you've been hearing.



...still can't believe a donkey published this game...

After years of drift towards third-person action, survival horror finally returns to its roots: dunking your entire arm into every single trashcan you can find and showing disobedient vending machines and lockers the righteous fury of your boot heel.

Thank God the indie market is so robust these days, because the increasing homogenization of the modern big budget game and shrinking genre space therein means you wouldn't get proper survival horror otherwise. Crow Country and others like Signalis have been filling that void, but despite clearly playing to the charm of PlayStation era horror with its visuals - especially with its character models, which look as though they've been unearthed from an old Net Yaroze kit - Crow Country is no tired pastiche. It's safe rooms, puzzles, and resource management might harken to a design ethos that was at one point more commonplace, but these elements feel authentic and borne from a place of appreciation and understanding.

Nowhere is this more strongly felt than in the park's layout and the way in which the player navigates it. The amusement park theme allows for neatly defined areas with their own theming and unique attractions, with hidden passages, back rooms, cast tunnels, and a subterranean network serving as the connective tissue between each "land" in a way that feels appropriate for the setting while serving to make the park feel highly interconnected. Crow Country is great at providing a sense of space while conveying where the player should go and what to do next. I never felt lost or completely stumped by a puzzle and was consistently engaged and encouraged to revisit old locations to explore - the part of my brain that starts processing how I want to route my way through a game activated pretty early, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a sign that a survival horror game is living up to the promise of its genre.

The setting is also small. Crow Country is less Disneyland, more Santa's Village, so one way developer SFB Games succeeds in making repeated loops through the park threatening is by gradually introducing more enemies and traps to familiar locations. As the time of day progresses, rain and darkness further obscure the player's vision, and boobytrapped pick-ups begin to litter the map to prey on the sense of trust they've developed with their environment. I sprinted my way through the opening two hours, juked most enemies and picked up any crap I saw laying on the ground. By hour five, I was walking everywhere, stopping frequently, side-eyeing boxes of ammo, and finding that I actually had to conserve what I had due to the increased expectation that I shoot some damn "guests."

I also appreciate Crow Country for telling a complete and coherent story, something I think a lot of horror games have pushed away from. I think the Five Nights series has poisoned the genre and led a lot of other indie horror creators to believe a complex and intentionally vague narrative is the best way to ensure franchise longevity. Keep posing questions, provide no answers. I get it, sometimes it's best to let the audience fill in gaps, you don't want over-explain horror, but in the hands of a weak writer, the "unknown" can just be a euphemism for "nothing."

That's not to say Crow Country fails to raise any questions of its own, rather that in true PSX survival horror fashion, you're given all the clues you need to form the big picture through memos, context, and dialog. How well you do that is entirely dependent on how much you're paying attention, and whether you view Crow Country as being so cliched that its horror can be explained by way of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. I was extremely satisfied by the ending, which leaves just enough unanswered that you'll still have something to think of without feeling like you'll need to consult a YouTube series or read like, seven fucking books and play a dozen more games. An indie horror game with a conclusion that is both cogent and earned, thank christ.

So make the most of your Memorial Day weekend and bring the whole family down to Crow Country. Come ride our newest attraction: The Seven Seas, and discover new types of bacteria. Remember, vets and children under 6 get in free!