I'm not the biggest metroidvania fan, I normally get burned out playing them, but this maintained my attention the whole way through, can't believe I'm giving a game published by a YouTuber a four and a half star rating, and the last section is really damn intense! I'm not going to give any spoilers since I believe it's best if people walk in blind! The puzzles are largely straightforward if you stand still and think about them, but they can have some severe difficulty spikes in certain portions. The only negative aspects I can think of are that the ladder can be awkward to climb at times, and the spikes are difficult to see when doing platform jumping with the bubble! The jumping felt fluid and smooth and the world's colours and animal designs were fantastic. the game rewards discoverability with cool items to progress the map, The boss battles were enjoyable and some were even creepy! This is my favourite game of the year so far, which I was not expecting to say when I started playing it. It makes me want to play other greats of the genre, which is the highest compliment I can give it.

I expected to like Animal Well going into it, but not as much as I ended up liking it after completion. This game oozes personality and atmosphere! There truly isn't any game like it, even though it uses the regular Metroidvania gameplay style.

The performance, artstyle and sound-design are all immaculate. I was immediately hooked to the point where I could not stop playing for the first 8 hours, because the game sucked me in and made me forget everything else. Next to this, the gameplay is incredibly straight-forward and satisfying, and without any tutorials none the less! Everything was clear to me, from interactables to collected items.

The puzzles and platforming sections were sometimes challenging, but never frustratingly difficult. At first glance, completing the game is quite simple. But after doing so, the game sheds layer upon layer, revealing new secrets and collectables. It is truly awesome to me that Billy Basso made this all on his own, especially regarding complexity of the endgame. Animal Well will forever hold a place in my heart, and I might even try some speedrunning for it as well. Hats off to you, Billy!

Animal Well really is a thing you need to experience with a controller in your hands and full focus because it is a living, breathing art piece that sucked me in. I bought this game 5 hours ago and I haven't put it down since. The way everything animated is like drinking cool water on a hot night. Refreshing.

Seeing the previews of this game, I thought "ok big youtuber videogamedunkey is firmly in his 30's and wants to expand beyond making shitposts and make money by becoming an indie publisher". I wasn't moved at all by any of the promotion for Animal Well. I am bored to DEATH of 2D platformers and this game only teased a pleasant art style which is not enough to make me care. Most 2D games all mostly play the same. I'm sleep.

Thing is I got 24.68 on my Steam Wallet, so why not give it a try.

It is a Metroidvania logic puzzler. There are no tutorials in Animal Well. You are left as to guess how you progress forward. It's not Baba is You go FUCK yourself hard. It is quite simple and natural gameplay that leads to bigger and bigger "ah-HA!" moments. The kind where you feel dumb and smart. Smumb. Darmbt. I felt like I was one of those things.

The gameplay mixed with the environments and ambient music just clicked with me hard. I was 45 minutes into the game after being cynical about the whole thing and my brain just snapped after a certain puzzle solution and I realized this game has a hidden power level of cleverness. It is so meticulously well thought out. It's not trying to reinvent the wheel. It just was catered for you to have a good time.

I recommend this game for everyone. I've been in a gaming slump where no new game releases has really excited me, but Animal Well is the game that pulled my brain out of that fog. Not saying it will do the same for you, but if you give it a shot, it just might.

It ain't as good as Hollow Knight, but this is right under that (so far) as a jaw dropping 2D game with content that keeps upping the ante in amazement.

Jamal Dunkey picked a banger to kick off his publishing venture.

I am not alone in this empty blood ocean

Horror has been a beloved genre for millions of people for a century now and that can also be said with video games. A great horror game will make you think about it for a couple hours after you finish it, it will send you into a depressing vegetative state and i can't think of anything that has done something like that in recent time other than Iron Lung. You see, for years i have played so many horror games from many different titles and what i can learn from those experiences is that horror can really expose the fear that every person have. Fear of dark, fear of enclosed space, fear of deep sea, fear of loud noises, fear of blood, these are just an example that horror genre used often for so long. But there is one fear that i think most people couldn't stand or dealt with and that is the fear of the unknown.

Short but powerful, that is a sentence that i can describe Iron Lung. It set in an ocean of blood on an alien moon in the wake of the “Quiet Rapture," which is one of the scariest description for an apocalypse i've ever seen, an event which saw the disappearance of every lifeform in the universe with the exception of people living on autonomous space stations. After every known star and planet in the universe disappears, the last remnants of humanity send a prisoner, namely you as the player to the depth of this strange moon covered in a sea of ​​blood to explore what secrets may lie beneath its surface in a submarine. And you never know what is inside of the moon. The only thing you see is the inside of the small submarine you have welded together, and the low resolution images you can take of the inside.

The gameplay might be simple but it is what makes the game more intense and scarier which makes me more appreciate it. You navigate the ocean by adjusting your bearing, and forward velocity via a simple interface. You press the right button on your console to turn right, and the left button to turn left. You press the forward button to go forward, and the backward facing button to go backwards. It is simple, and slow. Your camera is controlled by a button at the back of your ship. To see where you are going you have to turn around and walk away from your controls. This means that, when you hear a thud outside your ship, there is a significant delay between the sound and your ability to take a photo of what made that noise. The photographs take a moment to develop and the delay makes me crazy, sick, feelings that i have not feel before with horror games because you are not alone in the craters of this impossibly alive, alien moon.

That aspect of Iron Lung is what keeps me still thinking and put me in state that i have never experience before in my life. A simple tension that comes from blindly navigating your sub, constantly looking at the map to try to figure out what you are to make sure you don’t crash your sub. It’s a finicky process, but focusing on the little things does a great job of lulling you into a rhythm and keeping you from bracing yourself for surprises. It keeps you busy with all the numbers and navigation controls that sometimes can messes you up. There are moments where you’re looking at the map and you feel like you shouldn’t be close to a wall, but for some reason, your motion sensor starts beeping at you. Do you have your calculations wrong, or could it be something else?

Even more so than most horror games, Iron Lung builds tension through exceptional sound design. Your ship is thick with the noise of the ocean, the thud of cave walls and the sound of blood (thick) moving around your ship. The sounds of the ocean around you range from mundane to worrying as you begin to suspect there are creatures out there that you have no way of seeing.

After i read the intro text states that there’s no time to train the prisoner on the operation of the sub before launch, i was certain that I was going to die. Whether it be from a lack of oxygen, or the crushing pressure, or some impossible thing in the blood water, didn’t actually matter. I knew I would die. Which meant the assumption of death, and horror, lurks around every corner. Every thud against the ship’s hull became colored by death. Every ruptured pneumatic pipe, a signal that my time was up. And of course the screen that showed you everything that you don't want to know about the moon.

Iron Lung is a game that evokes the end of a broken world, one defined by cruel systems which we built foolishly. Your investigation, and your focus, are cruel pantomimes of an attempt at a better future. It is an inevitable failure, and an execution. In most horror games, there's at least a hope that'll make it out alive and return to normalcy, but in Iron Lung there is no normalcy to return to.

Pros:
+ the visual style and feel are close to the original consoles
+ the infos on classic consoles are a sweet tribute
+ collectables are saved even when dying

Cons:
- having to play through levels in sequence is a huge design flaw
- the jump mechanics are difficult to get used to
- enemy movement is arbitrary
- collision detection is subpar
- retractable spikes in particular are tough to navigate
- the level design in later levels is highly confusing
- unfair situations are plentiful
- losing a heart early spells the immediate end of an attempt
- screen dimensions and doors are often not discernible
- no option to quit to the level select screen


Playtime: 1 hour, 23 of 116 levels completed.

Blagic Moment: Entering the level "Monster Palace" and getting stuck in an unfair situation only to find that it's entirely optional.

Verdict:
A weird little game with a fresh central idea of playing through the history of video games. However, the bare mechanics are not working well, the jumping is too tough to control, and the level design is frequently confusing.

I abandoned this quickly and do not recommend it.

I've seen many people that were completely consumed by this game and spent hours and hours and hours on it, but honestly i don't really see why. The game isn't very specific about what it wants you to do, and to me it seemed like the game play was planting crops and then walking to and from town over and over again. there is a combat mode but it doesn't control great, and i couldn't figure out how to progress relationships with the characters or whatever it was the game expected me to do without telling me or guiding me. its just kind of boring and i say that as someone who can enjoy more laid back games. maybe i need a guide or something like in terraria, but id much rather the game have a proper tutorial than expecting me to read a Wikipedia page.

I like how every time we see Madeline she gets a bit gayer

Celeste Classic (2015): Just lil jump girl
Celeste (2018): Implied trans woman with ex boyfriend
Celeste Farewell (2019): Confirmed trans woman no partner mentioned
Celeste 64 (2024): Trans woman with girlfriend

Next time we see Madeline she better be in a 12 person lesbian polycule or else I'm not buying