Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
Thanks, I'll keep trying, though I really do seem completely stuck.
For those who've played enough not to mind potential spoilers (I really think I'm early on though):
I only have a frisbee (and normally firecrackers, though I have none right now and no access to any more). I'm in a purply-pink area in the bottom right-ish of the map, as far as I've unlocked it anyway. I discovered that I can ride the frisbee so accessed a yellow switch by a mouse in a room of pink and blue mouse(?) heads to unlock a route below. This was a switch you presumably need another item/ability to get to if you don't bounce the frisbee off the wall and ride it, as the jump is impossible otherwise.
I then did a puzzle where a flowing line of blue heads disappeared in the candle light to hit a switch, then one with 3 white birds to hit another switch. Hitting these two switches moved some blocks around to block off any route back, but opened up a ladder above. Above is two vertical spinning columns of pink mice that I cannot jump over to get to the switch top right, no matter how I jump or use the frisbee. To the right is a sort of hidden, tiny room with a fruit, and a jump that's too high unless I use my frisbee jump, but even if I do that, the room after that is a small tunnel dense with blue and pink heads that the frisbee has no effect on and literally the first one can't be passed if you try to run through.
So ermmm...any ideas? Did frisbee jumping take me to an area I'm not supposed to be in yet? Is it die to pink mouse heads time?
Went into it totally blind, have played a fair bit past the credits now.
Really well made game in every respect, but I'm definitely disappointed. It doesn't really do anything interesting or new from a Metroidvania aspect. You go here and there solving pretty clever switch-pushing puzzles at first, which is... fine. I guess the unique appeal is the deeper puzzles scatterred around, but... I hate that stuff. Reminds me of Tunic or Fez, two other games where the puzzle nature made me dislike a game I thought I would love. Tunic was still fun enough to beat I guess, but man, I hated Fez. I am not a puzzle guy.
I usually hate the "it's a good game it's just not for you" trope, but in this case I think it's applicable. It's a good game, it's just not for me. I will say that the almost total lack of music was pretty inexcusable. Game needed music badly.
What sucked me in was that in a lot of respects it looks like Rain World (probably my favourite game ever), but in practice it is the very opposite of that game.
Thanks, I'll keep trying, though I really do seem completely stuck.
For those who've played enough not to mind potential spoilers (I really think I'm early on though):
I only have a frisbee (and normally firecrackers, though I have none right now and no access to any more). I'm in a purply-pink area in the bottom right-ish of the map, as far as I've unlocked it anyway. I discovered that I can ride the frisbee so accessed a yellow switch by a mouse in a room of pink and blue mouse(?) heads to unlock a route below. This was a switch you presumably need another item/ability to get to if you don't bounce the frisbee off the wall and ride it, as the jump is impossible otherwise.
I then did a puzzle where a flowing line of blue heads disappeared in the candle light to hit a switch, then one with 3 white birds to hit another switch. Hitting these two switches moved some blocks around to block off any route back, but opened up a ladder above. Above is two vertical spinning columns of pink mice that I cannot jump over to get to the switch top right, no matter how I jump or use the frisbee. To the right is a sort of hidden, tiny room with a fruit, and a jump that's too high unless I use my frisbee jump, but even if I do that, the room after that is a small tunnel dense with blue and pink heads that the frisbee has no effect on and literally the first one can't be passed if you try to run through.
So ermmm...any ideas? Did frisbee jumping take me to an area I'm not supposed to be in yet? Is it die to pink mouse heads time?
You cannot do the hidden room yet. The solution there will become obvious later on, but for now you should just mark it on your map and return to the previous room.
There you should be able to get to the switch in the upper right corner. Pay attention to the heads as they move around the room and keep in mind what happened to the blue ones earlier.
I've started playing 3 hours in, and how I wish Nintendo would make another game with such a fine control of the puzzles and levels 。。。。 Nintendo hasn't had any interesting puzzle games since Skyward Sword.
Went into it totally blind, have played a fair bit past the credits now.
Really well made game in every respect, but I'm definitely disappointed. It doesn't really do anything interesting or new from a Metroidvania aspect. You go here and there solving pretty clever switch-pushing puzzles at first, which is... fine. I guess the unique appeal is the deeper puzzles scatterred around, but... I hate that stuff. Reminds me of Tunic or Fez, two other games where the puzzle nature made me dislike a game I thought I would love. Tunic was still fun enough to beat I guess, but man, I hated Fez. I am not a puzzle guy.
I usually hate the "it's a good game it's just not for you" trope, but in this case I think it's applicable. It's a good game, it's just not for me. I will say that the almost total lack of music was pretty inexcusable. Game needed music badly.
What sucked me in was that in a lot of respects it looks like Rain World (probably my favourite game ever), but in practice it is the very opposite of that game.
Thank Sakamoto you don't really lose much progress when you die. I died to the slim dog that goes into the holes with you. Horror jumpscare! As far as I can tell save points just act like respawn points but you save all your progress?
Thank Sakamoto you don't really lose much progress when you die. I died to the slim dog that goes into the holes with you. Horror jumpscare! As far as I can tell save points just act like respawn points but you save all your progress?
I'm glad you decided to play it, my good bloke. It's pretty goshdarn pogged up.
And yeah, save points behave more like respawn points. When you die, you still keep most (all?) of the progress you made across various rooms, in terms of having unlocked doors / solved puzzles and such.
I’m at 50 eggs now & still 2 matches to go. Hopefully I can finish it without using a guide (or at least, I hope so)
I don’t understand what I’ve got to do with the circular recess, tho
Hm, I have to admit I'm not sure where to go next. I've gotten to the part with all those green button block puzzles, but I'm not sure how to actually do them, feels like I don't have the tool for it yet. I have the disc, bubble wand, firecrackers, and animal flute. The animal flute seems useful for backtracking, but I don't know where I need to backtrack to as all the open doors are places I've pretty much completed.
Maybe I need to explore the right side of the map more, but I've done a lot of it and it doesn't feel like the game would expect me to backtrack that far after just doing so much here.
You cannot do the hidden room yet. The solution there will become obvious later on, but for now you should just mark it on your map and return to the previous room.
There you should be able to get to the switch in the upper right corner. Pay attention to the heads as they move around the room and keep in mind what happened to the blue ones earlier.
Thanks, I eventually worked out I could just jump carefully, felt pretty dumb.
It is is possible to soft lock yourself though, I've just had to wait to forever to die at the
two herons/cranes, which you can get to with the frisbee, but can't get past without some other item I don't have yet, but can't get back either. Unfortunately, the fuckers take an age to randomly come over and peck you enough times to get sent back to a phone.
You can definitely soft lock yourself into spots where you have to die, happened to me a couple times.
Or, at the very least, there’s no way out of those spots that’s easy to spot. Guess it’s not impossible that I missed something, but wasting time trying to escape instead of just restarting from a checkpoint is an easy decision to make.
After roughly 10 hours, I'm at 52 eggs and all but one (I think) item. There are still some mysteries I know nothing about, but I've figured out at least some of the more secret content.
I don't know if it's interesting enough to keep playing for long. I think one thing the game suffers from in comparison to other Metroidvanias is the lack of movement upgrades. In a Metroid game you will be screw attacking through rooms in the blink of an eye, whereas here you are stuck with the same unwieldy jump with items intended to expand the puzzle variety. The puzzles are great, but I can't be bothered to find them!
I kind of noped out at the second mock disc thing, which is much much longer than the first. I've just never done well in games where there's some invulnerable enemy in relentless pursuit of me, it makes me way too anxious. Why I haven't played any recent Resident Evil game either, lol.
Finished the second layer. Had a small bit of help to get the final two eggs, but mostly out of impatience. One was especially too bad as I just figured out that the small lamps in the background are not part of some larger puzzle, but indicate a use for the remote (very perceptive after 25 hours of playing). I still needed the Large Egg, and would have solved how to reverse the elevator direction had I gone to look there one last time. The other missing egg was behind the snake room, the one for which you need the bouncy ball, which I would have found if I had taken a final run through the whole map. Looked up some of the solutions to other puzzles (the bar code in the grass to name one) and realised that although I love that this exists, I am not going to gain any more ground here. Might return for a few final tries on some puzzles that I might be able to solve.
All in all, amazing game, love the obscure nature of it and how it makes you more and more suspicious of everything you see in the game.
The slight feeling of annoyance with this game does not go away.
I mean it had some great moments and I love the theme, artstyle and sounddesign but I agree with jusoo regarding movement and lacking some more meaningful upgrades^^
Movement in general still feels a bit off/clunky to me.
Also the map is just too low res to really recognise most of the rooms in it.
I don't like looking at it. To me it just looks like a colorful mess. Usually I like studying the map in this type of games.
There are some good puzzles here but a lot of times I don't feel particularly clever when finding a secret because
I just run around and spam the button of the remote to see secret treasure chests blinking on the screen that I then reach through some obscure hole in the wall or by spamming the yoyo or top to destroy areas.
These kind of secrets are just not a lot of fun for me.
I am still missing 20 eggs or so...but I am losing my motivation to be a completionist here.
I found some directional patterns with arrows where I feel like I have to play a song using these. Don't know where yet.
But with the controller it is not easy to do this (especially upper left, upper right, etc.) without pushing wrong inputs in between. Does it have to be very accurate? I am a bit worried.
I found some directional patterns with arrows where I feel like I have to play a song using these. Don't know where yet.
But with the controller it is not easy to do this (especially upper left, upper right, etc.) without pushing wrong inputs in between. Does it have to be very accurate? I am a bit worried.
it does have to be accurate to the eight directions you can play, but you can take as long as you need to line it up with the stick or directional buttons before you hit the button to play the next note
As non-spoilery as possible, I've got the four flames, 41 eggs, and have done a bit of progress in the underground ending area, found the flashlight. Should I press ahead and complete the game or is the ending unsatisfying and I should try and go for 100% completion?
I used the lantern to get "upstairs" and found the giant clock and stopwatch (although I don't think the latter is in my inventory?) Just wondering what to do now really, will things become clearer if I reach the ending?
ANIMAL WELL Pre-orders Close June 23, 2024 Explore a dense, interconnected labyrinth, and unravel its many secrets. Collect items to manipulate your environment in surprising and meaningful ways. Encounter beautiful and unsettling creatures, as you attempt to survive what lurks in the dark.
ANIMAL WELL Pre-orders Close June 23, 2024 Explore a dense, interconnected labyrinth, and unravel its many secrets. Collect items to manipulate your environment in surprising and meaningful ways. Encounter beautiful and unsettling creatures, as you attempt to survive what lurks in the dark.
I love this game, I find it so satisfying to solve the puzzles, though I'm hard stuck now. I have lots of clues and items that presumably will be useful at some point, but this is the first time I've literally run out of ideas.
As non-spoilery as possible, I've got the four flames, 41 eggs, and have done a bit of progress in the underground ending area, found the flashlight. Should I press ahead and complete the game or is the ending unsatisfying and I should try and go for 100% completion?
I used the lantern to get "upstairs" and found the giant clock and stopwatch (although I don't think the latter is in my inventory?) Just wondering what to do now really, will things become clearer if I reach the ending?
I dunno about 100% as I'm not there yet, but I have 49 eggs so I guess I'm ahead in that regard and they've all been cool to find so I'd keep going.
The stopwatch doesn't show in my inventory either, not sure what it's about or why, guess it just kicks in at some point.
I don't have the flashlight though, assuming that's different to the lantern which I do have. Would you mind giving a clue to the vague area that it's in, as I'm just wandering the map aimlessly at this point?
I love this game, I find it so satisfying to solve the puzzles, though I'm hard stuck now. I have lots of clues and items that presumably will be useful at some point, but this is the first time I've literally run out of ideas.
I dunno about 100% as I'm not there yet, but I have 49 eggs so I guess I'm ahead in that regard and they've all been cool to find so I'd keep going.
The stopwatch doesn't show in my inventory either, not sure what it's about or why, guess it just kicks in at some point.
I don't have the flashlight though, assuming that's different to the lantern which I do have. Would you mind giving a clue to the vague area that it's in, as I'm just wandering the map aimlessly at this point?
The stopwatch, I think, adds a playtime counter to the pause menu (I don't think it was there before). No idea about the flashlight, I only have the lantern as well .
The stopwatch, I think, adds a playtime counter to the pause menu (I don't think it was there before). No idea about the flashlight, I only have the lantern as well .
It kind of fell off a cliff for me after the first credits.
Everyone was saying "it only just starts after that".
The fun didn't start for me, I can tell you that.
After the credits this game is not very much about being clever most of the time (except some very obscure meta-stuff).
It is about being meticulous and persistent.
I don't like that at all, especially with such a confusing map layout.
I was playing this game for over 12 hours now and many times I still didn't know where I was or what rooms lie adjacent to each other.
Even if I knew, I repeatedly ran into places where I had to "solve" the same puzzles again or came at it from the wrong side so it was a dead end.
The shortcuts later in the game don't really feel like a shortcut. It's all still very cumbersome and time consuming to get around.
Disclaimer: I never discovered the warp song to warp to the warp room from any place on the map - even if I already tried the dance of the warp room fish - because I just didn't get the handling of the flute (this is a recurring theme)!
They provide a unique item to do basically a double jump but it is just clunkier and restricted to times when using the item (to be fair, it can be upgraded).
The constant item swapping in general disrupts the platforming gameplay a lot.
Recently I obtained the third item to search every room AGAIN to get hints for secrets, yay!
first the lantern, then the remote, now the uv light
I am missing a handful of eggs and two items and I can't be bothered anymore.
These were my last two hours in the game:
I searched every corner of rooms that looked like there were missing some pixels on the map.
Found an entry to an area with floating fish. Reached a skeleton fish that shoots bubbles.
Tried every item, nothing did anything. Got one-hitted a few times in the process. Back to the last telephone each time.
It is quite a looong way back to the skeleton fish. Getting more annoyed....
I try the animal flute again. No reaction of the fish. Try to mimic the directions of the bubbles. No reaction of the fish.
After a while I notice there is always the same pattern of the bubbles. Note down the pattern and try it a few times.
Nothing happens (yeah, I know - I must have done wrong entries, but you get no feedback at all).
Give up and look up the solution. It is just as I thought but I wasn't able to pull it off apparently.
Somehow it still takes me a few tries to do it with knowing exactly how it works. Damn you animal flute.
That was like 45 minutes....
Afterwards I backtrack to the cuckoo clock because I am reaching another full hour (hour 11).
I expect something to happen but no...the cuckoo comes out and that's it.
Half an hour later I meet the kangoroo again. Nothing happened after I scared it away.
I look that one up too after a while because I am getting more and more impatient.
It should drop a third k shard but I just can't find it. The shards from my inventory are gone as well..?
Probably a bug? Then I might be screwed with moving on forward anyway.
Maybe I can meet the kangaroo again, but now I just don't want to play this game anymore.
I go back to the cuckoo clock again, because now it is twelve o'clock. That must do something, right?
No. Nothing. Look it up again. It is a timer for speed runners. Nice.
Makes sense of course but that one turned out not very exciting for me.
So I looked up the remaining secrets (beware: end game spoilers) and I am fine with quitting beforehand.
I get why that's a fun challenge for some people to get to the bottom of these. Must be super cool. I'd probably figured out almost none of these bigger mysteries.
I figured out the principle with the uv light codes on the eggs in the egg room, but just thinking about playing 64 notes in a row sounds horrible to me (at this point I have to say that my d-pad is probably just very bad) and then I would have probably been too dumb for finding out about the bottom up egg in the sequence anyway.
The thing with the groundhog is nice but super obscure as well.
The unicode stuff ( I got a few of these messages) is also interesting to watch in a video but doing some of these by myself sounds way too cumbersome (eating 100 fruits without taking damage...what?). Not for me - but okay, that's really post-post game stuff.
One of the biggest disappointments of a game for me personally in a while after all the praise it got.
Comparisons with Outer wilds (top 5 game ever for me) are strange to me - besides re-contextualising some parts of the world with gained knowledge, they have nothing in common.
The payoff of discovering things was magnitudes greater in Outer Wilds for me and I was emotionally very invested in the fate of all the creatures in that solar system. I don't care about the blob or the animals at all.
Sorry for the rant and I am happy for everyone who enjoyed Animal Well so much.
Just sad it didn't do much for me.
What part of the flute did you not get, how to use it or what order to play the song notes?
The flute is admittedly very janky, you press the button then the direction, but if you have to play the same note twice you have to take your hand off the button again and repress it and the direction
So the warp song would be something like button - > right, hand off, button - > right, hand off, button - > left, hand off, button - > left, hand off ...
I'm not sure why they did it like this because other items don't really work that way and it makes the flute sound bad since you can't hold a consistent melody
I'm not sure why they did it like this because other items don't really work that way and it makes the flute sound bad since you can't hold a consistent melody
That's exactly what I didn't like, yes. It doesn't sound like a cool melody when actually using it for puzzles.
I am pretty sure, my D-Pad is too wonky.
I did get how it should work (someone else explained it to me already some post above), but I repeatedly had unintended inputs while using the D-pad.
No Problem when you get a feedback for failing (which is the case with some puzzles) but with other puzzles I am just guessing if I do the wrong thing in general or just had a wrong input in the sequence.
doing very long sequences with the flute doesn't sound like a good time for me...
just completed the part where I got 4 flames then the part after that, and got credits
Two parts I hated the most: The mock disc sprint with the ghost cat chasing me around. I used shortcut room and waited there until ghost cat shows up, then took the shortcut to give myself a bit of time to navigate through the ascending poles with blocks activated by slinky. The other part I hated: the creature that kept chasing me around with laser eyes while I desperately try to press all 6 buttons for the final door.
I know I'm not done seeing all of the game yet. I haven't read any replies here, am going in fully blind.
What part of the flute did you not get, how to use it or what order to play the song notes?
The flute is admittedly very janky, you press the button then the direction, but if you have to play the same note twice you have to take your hand off the button again and repress it and the direction
So the warp song would be something like button - > right, hand off, button - > right, hand off, button - > left, hand off, button - > left, hand off ...
I'm not sure why they did it like this because other items don't really work that way and it makes the flute sound bad since you can't hold a consistent melody
That's an awkward way to do it, though I suppose it'd work eventually. Once you've taken the flute out, you don't hold the button at all until you're pressing the direction. So the song you're talking about would be
hold right, press button twice, hold left press button twice, hold down press button twice, hold up press button twice.
That's more like a real flute, where holding the direction is like covering the correct positions with your fingers, and pressing the button is blowing into it.
It's interesting that some of the parts people dislike are some of the reasons it's a 9 or 10/10 for me. I enjoyed
planning out a route and the tension of being chased
and I didn't find the map confusing at all, though I can understand it would have been far more frustrating if I hadn't discovered the
warp song
.
On the other hand, I really didn't like The Outer Wilds, as I hate time pressures of any sort in games if they're a main mechanic, even when they don't actually matter that much (Pikmin is another example), and I found the controls needlessly fiddly personally, when they didn't really seem to matter for the game, as far as I played it anyway. I'm not after major pay-offs from puzzles either though, I just like finding and solving them.
Just shows how hard it is to recommend games to people based on other games they've liked, even if they have similar things like a sense of mystery, exploration and puzzle solving.
That's an awkward way to do it, though I suppose it'd work eventually. Once you've taken the flute out, you don't hold the button at all until you're pressing the direction. So the song you're talking about would be
It works correctly and is always reliable, i've never had a problem doing it that way.
I guess I tried to do it exactly the way that you explained, except I thought that the d-pad controls would be what you repeat. You take the flute out using the button, but you don't start playing it really till you use a direction. Guess my brain really didn't think of it the other way, since with other items you have to keep the button to use it held down if it's an item that needs to be out consistently.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
.
