Hmm, people really like this game. I played to credits and enjoyed it well enough, but my overwhelming impression was that everything was a little... utilitarian, maybe? The world-building feels thin. Everything exists in service of (gameplay) puzzles, be they surface-level or deeper. I've realized my preference when seeing a mysterious mural in the background of a game is to wonder, what does this say about the fiction of the world? With Animal Well, I'm not sure there is a fiction of the world, and any vagueness + open-endedness I might like to dream into gets co-opted by puzzles. I feel no room to meaning-make, or be in dialogue with the game, since it all rolls up into something with a definitive answer. The level design is similarly functional. This isn't a place that exists for any other reason than to guide you to the four flames and to the credits. (And certainly to some post-game secrets that I haven't yet encountered).

La-Mulana keeps coming to mind as a point of comparison. That game is also chock-full of secrets within secrets, rooms with puzzles both front-and-center and embedded into the aesthetics and decor, etc... I can't articulate what La-Mulana does differently, but there's something in the experience of playing that game that works for me in a way that Animal Well doesn't approach. Some sense that if you kept tugging at the threads, it would resolve into something meaningful.

I understand there are multiple "layers" to this game, rolling credits being the first of them, and I do intend to keep playing. Maybe my feelings will change — I hope so! As it stands now though, despite Animal Well looking like my type of game, I don't think it's exactly my type of game.