It definitely has its strengths and weaknesses. It can't live up to the geniuses of games it clearly took inspiration from that are Hollow Knight and Rain World but it is still innovative in some aspects and fun all throughout. A little shallow in terms of philosophical depth and story though. Cryptic story games can still be very emotional, Animal Well isn't. The CRT filter on the pixel art is a nice twist from the art direction.

If you're somewhat into metroidvanias or explorational games at all you will definitely have a blast with this one for the 10 to 20 hours you can spend on it.

To give Animal Well anything above 4/5 it would need either more depth or scale. Both and it could possibly reach a masterpiece status similar to Hollow Knight.