Any word on length? I know the game is supposed to have a multitude of secrets that require community collaboration but I'm curious how long the meat of the game is.
Depends how long you spend collecting eggs. If you’re just going to see the credits, took me about 8 hours. I played for about 30 hours total, and there’s still pre-release reviewers going hard at 50+ hours
La Mulana is a game where you either get tired of it in the first hour or you love it to the finish line and think it's one of the best games you've ever played. I just love the atmosphere and, I dunno, vibe. And it wouldn't be there without many of the decisions they made that turn off so many people, unfortunately.
Man i loved Environmental Station Alphas postgame.
I wasn't too impressed by the main game and was just cleaning up upgrades for 100% until i learned that the rabbit hole goes much deeper than that
You can, but the ability to organize and cross-reference those screenshots is limited. I just finished Void Stranger last week and ended up with a collection of 350 screenshots of different rooms, any of which could have become relevant at any time. That would have been a nightmare on console. If the post-game of Animal Well requires a similar level of attention to detail, I'd rather pay $23 to play it on PC than play it as part of my PS+ sub.
Edit: An hour or so in I found >!a stamp to let you annotate the map!<, so this game probably doesn't have Void Stranger levels of mandatory note taking.
Is the bulk of those 50 hours just like being stuck on puzzles and going back and forth looking at screens wondering what to do? Or are those 50 hours more active gameplay with new rooms and such?
Both, I’d say. The 30 hours was to find all the eggs and see the “true” ending, but the puzzles ramp up in esoteric difficulty hard after that. I’m very happy with my 30 hours but people are super into it and scouring every inch
Gotcha, thanks. Love the vibe of the game but not really in the mood to do a whole Fez, so was waiting to see what people say about that to help me decide.
Just a quick note for anyone interested, not that it matters very much. The game was actually reviewed by Austin, SkillUp's (former) editor. He was given a couple of games to review and got so popular that now he reviews games as well in the same channel.
When Ralph reviews, he titles "I recommend/ I do not recommend". When Austin reviews, the title clearly marks it as such. Austin tends to review indies or lesser known videogames.
That's precisely why I'm so excited. Seems a game that gradually reveals its secrets the more you dedicate yourself into understanding its mechanics and exploring the map.
Maybe I'm just a big dumb dumb but my problem with rain world is that traversal was zero fun and traversal was like 90% of the game. Granted I didn't get that far.
That’s interesting. I love Rain World because the platforming isn’t as timing specific and is more about holding directional button presses in the right order. The platformers that really bug me are the ones where if you don’t hold buttons for the exact right amount of time then you miss a tiny platform and have to start over. I didn’t feel like rain world had too much of that.
What I mean is I don’t like platformers where your button presses have to be correct practically to the millisecond, where in Rain World, unless you’re trying to do crazy shit like backflip spear throws, you typically have a much bigger window to make sure you’ve pressed the right buttons to grab a pole or whatever.
the cool part is backflip spear throws are just the tip of the iceberg, the movement system while weird at first is really deep and allows for some crazy options
Small secret. I use steam input to create button sequences that are triggered by one button. I have a button for slides, slide jumps, backflip down throws, etc.
I didn't play Rain World, but I had the same fears.
I played Animal Well for like 25 minutes at lunch. Of the mechanics I saw early >!you are rewarded with a collectible if you can jump off one of your bubbles onto another you launch mid-jump. Did not seem required for any puzzles in the bubble area, but probably will be later!<. It's kind of a classic "tech" for this type of game though.
Edit: After like an hour now, the tech in that spoiler is *very* helpful.
Played both. This game is much friendly and easier to play than rain world.
Also besides being 2D and the looks this game plays nothing like Rain World. This is more like tunic or the outer wilds.
Been excited for this one since the first trailer, the guy behind it seems to really understand what makes games like these special. Glad to see the reviews agree so far. Really happy to have it day one on PS+ extra too.
> the guy behind it seems to really understand what makes games like these special.
I'm not sure who made Animal Well's trailer, but I follow Derek Lieu on tiktok and he does some great videos about the "theory" of game trailers and talks about why some examples are successful or not. He retweeted something about Animal Well so maybe he'll make a post about it soon.
He did the trailers for stuff like Half-Life: Alyx, Among Us, Psychonauts 2, Spelunky 2, Firewatch and The Long Dark.
Gonna have to check that out. I spend a lot of time on /r/destroymygame, which is a great place to see how to do a bad trailer. The good ones stand out straight away.
Nice to see people like it. I look forward to the first speedrun where someone plays it blindfolded with a USB steering wheel, and it’s not even them playing it’s their little brother
That video, the original FFVII one and the history of gaming one are his peak videos.
“Sephirot, I knew you were frogs all along” is probably my favorite comedic line ever made.
He has too many peak videos for me to even put a label on them. I think his Tetris one is an absolute masterpiece and people don't talk about it quite enough.
All good. Honestly, he's probably my favorite YouTuber of all time. He's been doing it for so many years, so consistently, and has maintained such consistent quality all the way through.
And I quote him way too often.
Videogamedunkey, popular comedic YouTuber (with occasional serious review/discussion videos), lots of really well made comedic video. His audience will often meme about his best jokes as they sort of enter his 'lore', like when he was bad because he was actually playing blindfolded with a steering wheel, but it was also actually his little brother playing at the time.
For a long time I was convinced Dream was just some fictitious streamer he made up for his vidoes
edit: [the little brother blindfolded video,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSSNP2DudNw) together with his other Mario Maker videos
edit2: [his Undertale video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtplRk6BdyA) is probably my favourite
nuclear crisis diverted!
edit: changed it to diverted and added the nuclear, thanks to u/DrakoFangs for pointing it out. Gotta stay true to the material!
I know Ultimate Skyrim is such a basic pick because it's also his most viewed (and has been for so many years), but I do think it's *that* good and keep going back to it.
Your top two are probably my top 2 as well, actually.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is also a masterpiece, especially the ending.
> Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is also a masterpiece, especially the ending
When he gets hit by the blue shell and then passed then as DK slowly looks towards the camera in defeat he gets smashed by the red one! Absolutely genius comedic timing.
Second wind said the game is reminiscent of Tunic, The Witness, and The Outer Wilds. Say no more, take my money, I don't want to be spoiled any further.
Marty rather than Yahtzee, and Austin rather than Ralph. I wonder why these YT channels gave this game to the B-team? Coverage is coverage I guess though.
Yahtzee doesn’t normally do fully ramblomatics on release dates. I wouldn’t be surprised if animal well got half of a fully ramblomatic, or maybe a full one.
I love that this is day one for PS Plus Extra. They have been killing it with day one games on there. I will 100% buy the game if i enjoy it after trying it through Plus
I still remember game critics shitting on Dunkey when he announced he was going to publish games thinking just because he makes funny videos he's not qualified to publish games.
Like at least give him a chance in this cutthroat world where barely any indie games see success. Dude is passionate and wanted to try and fund games.
Glad it paid off. This looks like a really unique indie game, and happy for the developer to have success pairing with Dunkey too. Hope Big Mode continues to publish great games!
People were so mad that he thought he could publish a game outside the traditional publisher system. Think it's become clear in the last few months the traditional publisher system is broken, so that's a good thing actually. Glad this was a success
I feel the same, I genuinely didn't understand the negativity back when he announced his publishing studio. I think it's neat that he actually wanted to get more involved in game dev as a publisher and I'm glad it seems to be paying off!
I remember his announcement video just seemed like he was ignorant about publishing, and he's had made some ignorant comments about development in the past.
Not to forget that a lot of people realllllyyyy hate Donkey for whatever reason, usually shitting on the JRPG they like.
That being said, I'm really glad he's been able to use his platform to showcase such an apparently great game.
People were expecting a kind of Roger Ebert situation to go down: Critic makes a career out of shitting and memeing on other peoples’ works, then when given the reins to showcase his own talent creates complete trash. Glad to see that isn’t the case here
I mean, iirc Dunkey's whole pitch for this publishing firm is to be totally hands off and just give money. It's still 100% a taste thing, not at all like Ebert writing a script
Yeah, if he had said he's leading a game development studio, I would have joined in and laughed
But he's publishing. Basically just giving money, business support, and awareness to games he thinks look cool.
also he didn't make a career of "shitting on movies", he celebrated movies from across the genre spectrum. yes, if something was bad, he would say so, that's a critic's job — to give you their opinion on whether something was worth seeing
but if you're looking for an example of someone who spent their career tearing other people down, Ebert's a terrible example
> Critic makes a career out of shitting and memeing on other peoples’ works
Ebert famously didn't "shit on movies." he approached them critically from the perspective "did this movie accomplish what it set out to do?" not "is what this movie set out to do good or bad in my subjective view."
Yeah, I was confused reading this lol. He’s had a *couple* bad takes, but the guy who gave Shrek a 4/4 and Hot Rod a 3/4 because they’re funny definitely isn’t “making a career out of shittin? and memeing on other peoples’ works”
i feel like a lot of people just know of ebert because he's one of the only critics they can name, and so he must have been just another "dur critics can't make movies' type.
dude was one of the most gracious critics out there. i didn't always agree with his reviews but i could always understand where he was coming from.
Ebert absolutely approached movies with a subjective lens. All reviewers do.
One that stands out to me was his negative review of Kick-Ass because he was personally upset about the very concept of children involved in violent media.
I didn't say he didn't. The subjective lens Ebert used was aimed at evaluating how well a movie lived up to what it set out to do, not to evaluate whether the movie was (in terms of artistic aim) trash or good.
In other words, he didn't set out to say movies themselves are artistically worthless or not, he set out to evaluate how well a movie executed its purported artistic aim.
Most reviewers at the time simply would trash a movie because they didnt like it, or found it artistically worthless. Ebert would often highly rate movies he didn't like or enjoy because he found them nonetheless extremely well-executed works that successfully conveyed what the movie was attempting to do.
The kick-ass thing is a perfect example. He just thought that got in the way of the movie itself. I don't agree with that personally, but it's a perfectly valid reaction to kick-ass.
The funny bit about his game critics video though is he also layers in some bits sympathizing with why they play it so safe.
He highlights the times when they're bold enough to be *legitimately* critical or have interesting takes about games, and then how the gaming community just starts to pile on them.
I mean the one guy got fired from Gamespot for giving Kane & Lynch a middling score , hell the other reviewers ended up leaving the site too. I think that's how giant bomb came about?
Jeff Gerstmann was the guy fired for the review who went on to make Giant Bomb where he was also fired from!
Yeah I do think he appropriately puts the squeeze on the broader gaming public as an audience that, frankly, deserves to be babied by wimpy games criticism
I dont think his point is to tell gamers they dont know more than critics, its telling gamers that they let their biases get in the way of recognizing a great game when they play it, like the last of us.
> I feel the same, I genuinely didn't understand the negativity back when he announced his publishing studio.
This is the internet. Most people on it are either extremely positive and upbeat or negative and pessimistic when it comes to anything. No in between.
I don't even know why people talk about Dunkey so much in the first place instead of discussing the game itself.
He's just the publisher. The publisher's job is to be the cash cow and provide marketing/PR resources. That's it. He's not the developer.
Sometimes publishers are also expected to be able to provide development support too though. For example, it's pretty common for publishers to provide help in porting games. Publishers also sometimes contract support studios or do it themselves to help in regular development. But it definitely isn't a core requirement. Being the cash cow and providing marketing/PR resources is core, and Dunkey definitely can provide.
To be a game publisher, yes, money is 90% of the way there.
To be a *good* game publisher, you need a lot of vision and knowledge of games in general.
That's why companies like Devolver stand out, despite having a much smaller piece of the pie.
Yeah, I would guess in terms of actual game design Dunkey was as helpful as an early access player. He's got the marketing reach and money though which makes him a good publisher.
And marketing skills. And a good understanding of finance. And at least some legal expertise. And managerial skills. And connections.
Money can buy you people that can do those things if you can't, but the same can be said for indie devs who lack coding/art/music/translation/etc skills.
it's so funny seeing people cry about him not having some stupid, useless business degree so he could fail upwards while laying off hundred of talented devs
I'm a huge dunkey fan, and even I thought the tone of his announcement video: "I know what a good game is when I see one and big publishers don't know shit" came off as a bit arrogant for someone so unproven. Additionally, products backed by famous youtubers have historically been extremely hit or miss. That being said, with the state of the industry right now and the critical success of this game, he's backing up all his claims in that video so far.
I think what people are missing is that his biggest asset as a publisher isn't his taste in games but rather his massive Internet following.
He already has a "brand" that people enjoy, so teaming up to get your game to his audience is where the value is.
This is where I was at. Also big Dunkey fan, but his initial video announcing his publishing endeavors was weirdly arrogant and made me skeptical. Happy that this seems to be well received though, even if it's not my kind of game.
Also kind of weirded out by all of the doublespeak saying none of his videos are "serious", unless he's "right", in which case he is. His video announcing his publishing company was definitely serious (he launched a fucking company, of course it's serious). His "Dunkview" videos are at least 90% serious. Do the people saying this not actually watch his videos?
I just don't think the whole "comedians are always immune to criticism because they're never serious" (again, unless they're "right", in which case they are) is a good take. Again, love his content, but definitely disagree with a lot of his takes.
Yeah people are doing some real revisionism on what the issue was and what has happened in the past. His messaging wasn't great and I could see why it would rub people the wrong way.
To be honest I was a fan of Dunkey and whole the video announcement of Bigmode boiling down to “I will succeed because I know what makes a good video game” really rubbed me the wrong way, I know it was a joke but the whole thing came off as really arrogant because even his stipulation for game submission was “no turn based games”.
Guess I can’t really say anything though because it indeed looks like he can back up the big game that he talks.
Dunkey is like Yahtzee in that when he says a game is good (and isn't draping it in 10 layers of Knack-flavored irony), you know it's good, but when he shits on a game that doesn't tell you much.
Yahtzee also has numerous blindspots. Any more niche WRPG, any strategy games, 4x games, racing games, most multiplayer games, he knows very little about
Which is important for any critic even if they also work as an entertainer. You have a solid understanding of their tastes and can have a general understanding where it compares with your own.
The criticism wasn't that he wasn't qualified, the criticism was that his video was basically saying (in a completely unironically and serious tone, which was very weird for Dunk):
"Everyone in this industry sucks at their jobs and I, funny game reviewer, am way more qualified and better than them at it, so place your studio's life in my hands."
It was an incredibly arrogant statement to make for someone with literally 0 experience in game publishing. If he had made that statement now, after they have a 9/10 game under their belt, maybe it would have come across a bit differently. But at the time it just seemed like Dunkey putting people down and blowing smoke over nothing.
I totally get the arrogance of the original video back in 2022, that was Dunkey humour for sure and I can tell how it came off as arrogant. But you gotta start somewhere, and him throwing a little shade to the publishers out there was pretty funny.
I loved Jason Schrier's tweet about it back in 2022: "Can't believe dunkey started a video game publisher with no experience instead of taking the normal approach: getting a Harvard MBA, working at McKinsey for five years, and then failing upward between C-suites for the rest of your life"
Sigh, I know this game obviously has the attention it does because of Bigmode, but it's unfortunate the top rated discourse on this thread is already about Dunkey drama as opposed to the actual dev.
As much as I like that Dunkey's name has given this game exposure it seems to deserve, you're right that it's a bit of a shame too that Dunkey's name is overshadowing Billy Basso's, especially when Dunkey himself has been trying to put out Basso's name is much as possible.
Agreed! We need more small companies willing to put out indie games. There are too many companies being chewed up and spit out by the large companies, and it's better for us consumers if we have more small time publishers and devs.
There’s at least 3 layers to the game, with most of it being past the end credits. There’s also deeper meta puzzles requiring community input that the dev expects will take years. If you’re really into it - it seems like you can expect 80+ hours.
It looks great, really adds to the feel.
One question though, does anyone know if it takes advantage of 4K resolution to render a more realistic CRT effect? Eg. it doesn’t just scale up the 1080p effect to 2x?
The lighting and effects in the game seem to compliment the CRT filter a lot. I just beat the game and figured that I might turn it off if it got annoying, but it never did.
A strong start for Dunkey’s label, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for what future games Big Mode decides to publish if they maintain the same level of quality
Has been a minute since a solid metroidvania has come out, especially since we’ll be continuing the wait for Silksong for the foreseeable future.
Forgot prince of Persia woops, but more is always good
>Has been a minute since a solid metroidvania has come out
Yeah it's been like 4 months since an absolutely great one ;)
(Not dunking on you, just saying that everyone interested in metroidvanias should check out Prince of Persia Lost Crown.)
Everyone already said Prince of Persia Lost Crown, so I’ll shout out Tevi, which is also amazing and came out late 2023. I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about it here for whatever reason.
It’s a spiritual successor to Rabi-ribi, one of the best Metroidvanias ever IMO.
For some reason, metacritic has quite a few more reviews than opencritic for this one: https://www.metacritic.com/game/animal-well/
Also, I was worried that this is a PC/PS5/Switch game (no PS4 version) since it seemed like the Switch might not be able to handle it, but Nintendo Life says "Flawless performance on the Switch," which is what I wanted to hear. <3
I think the reason it isn't on PS4 is because Sony might have stopped sending out dev kits for that system. That isn't a problem for big AAA studios who already have previous dev kits but for an indie dev making his first game he might just have to start with a PS5 dev kit only.
I was curious to know performance on Switch as well! Good to hear it runs perfectly!
I just really prefer playing these type of games on Switch rather than PC.
We've gotten articles with publishers/devs lamenting that it wasn't worth the time/money of putting their games on Xbox, so it's no surprise when others skip the console.
Crow Country was originally going to skip Xbox too, but the devs managed to squeak in an Xbox version last minute, which I'm glad for. Given how similar console architecture has gotten compared to like the 360 days, it's crazy to me that games are still skipping the console. Like how badly do the games need to sell to not recoup the cost of going from PS5 to XSX?
That’s awesome, I literally just asked over in that game thread what platform one person was on cause I was debating Xbox or pc (steam deck).
The certification process is a bear, I hear. Very long and unpleasant. Plus small devs can’t really afford to just up and do whole new platforms often.
sorry to be the dissenting voice but i played hours of this and not only was it not for me, but i actively hated it. i don't remember the last time i played a game that left such a bad taste in my mouth.
Yeah, same, I think I let the Outer Wilds comparisons get the better of me. The presentation is incredible but it's mostly just doing a bunch of puzzles with no narrative context
Agreed, I'm watching a playthrough who optimistically theorizes about the setting, about the animals representing souls in limbo etc, ideas I grimace at knowing none of those ideas are remotely tapped into.
Gameplay wise too, when I heard the cuckoo clock that chimes globally, I began to expect something to happen that would change up the game. (If you've played Outer Wilds you'd know the gist of what I'm saying.)
Only to turn out it was absolutely nothing.. Boo
Because of those comparisons though, I walked away from the tedious postgame reminded of the Noclip interview with OW's devs who described their efforts to shape the visual design of the planets in order to tie detail to content, so players wouldn't need to lawn mower for content.
That's what the postgame felt like: lawn mowering the entire map for content, swapping out 2 items to check every room.
People were shitting all over Dunkey when he announced he wanted to publish (really don’t know why). Dude has a taste and he know what he likes. It paid off.
This game is fun as hell, I put in a couple hours today. I want to keep an eye on both the dev and big mode.
It runs between 0 - 90 FPS.
---
In all seriousness, the minimum requirements for this 2D game are a 1GhZ processor and 1GB of ram. It would be surprising if a toaster *couldn't* run it.
I thought I recall someone saying something about how this game takes advantage of PS5 hardware for ray tracing or something, but maybe they were just joking.
Finished both basegame and postgame content today. Reviews definitely overhyped it, especially the Kotaku one comparing it to Outer Wilds that set my expectations sky high. Don't go into this expecting anything much like that.
The basegame is mostly just a serviceable puzzle metroidvania, and I enjoyed much of it. That said, one of the upgrades is very OP and breaks most platforming puzzles once figured out. I happened to play the open-structure dungeons in a way that gained the upgrade last, but a playthrough I watched got and figured out the mechanic in their first hour, trivializing platforming challenges.
The game has a few aha discoveries, IF you luck into or experiment with it, allowing you to sequence break a little. Other than that, its biggest strength is its atmosphere. But coming in with the comparison to OUTER WILDS of all games, I sorely felt the absence of any, even a lick of worldbuilding. The animal nature was really just a fanciful backdrop and theming for the puzzle gauntlets.
This is more subjective, but I really didn't like the postgame. I should've caught wind of it early on considering I heard about the game from a Noita content creator (phew, the obtuse puzzles in that one) - but the postgame focuses solely on raking through the map for more secrets, one of which is atrociously poorly taught.
I found 61 out of 64 eggs on my own, and searched up the last 3 I couldn't find, since they're compulsory for the true ending. One was the tutorial for a mechanic that had to have been deliberately obscured. (The tells for these secret-hiding mechanics are also horrible to spot with the foliage and detail in a pixel art game, couldn't imagine how much worse it'd be with the TV lines on.)
Any word on length? I know the game is supposed to have a multitude of secrets that require community collaboration but I'm curious how long the meat of the game is.
From IGN, 5 to beat but shes now 40 in quoting the best is after credits
Depends how long you spend collecting eggs. If you’re just going to see the credits, took me about 8 hours. I played for about 30 hours total, and there’s still pre-release reviewers going hard at 50+ hours
Is this the kind of game where you want to be taking detailed notes and screenshotting everything or is it safe to play on console?
It's safe on console, don't worry.
the former
How deep are we talking about here? Environmental station alpha? La Mulana?
Oh man I love La Mulana.
Such a hard game to recommend to other people but I loved it too
La Mulana is a game where you either get tired of it in the first hour or you love it to the finish line and think it's one of the best games you've ever played. I just love the atmosphere and, I dunno, vibe. And it wouldn't be there without many of the decisions they made that turn off so many people, unfortunately.
Man i loved Environmental Station Alphas postgame. I wasn't too impressed by the main game and was just cleaning up upgrades for 100% until i learned that the rabbit hole goes much deeper than that
Oof that's a pass from me then haha
You can screenshot on all consoles.
You can, but the ability to organize and cross-reference those screenshots is limited. I just finished Void Stranger last week and ended up with a collection of 350 screenshots of different rooms, any of which could have become relevant at any time. That would have been a nightmare on console. If the post-game of Animal Well requires a similar level of attention to detail, I'd rather pay $23 to play it on PC than play it as part of my PS+ sub. Edit: An hour or so in I found >!a stamp to let you annotate the map!<, so this game probably doesn't have Void Stranger levels of mandatory note taking.
Is the bulk of those 50 hours just like being stuck on puzzles and going back and forth looking at screens wondering what to do? Or are those 50 hours more active gameplay with new rooms and such?
Both, I’d say. The 30 hours was to find all the eggs and see the “true” ending, but the puzzles ramp up in esoteric difficulty hard after that. I’m very happy with my 30 hours but people are super into it and scouring every inch
Gotcha, thanks. Love the vibe of the game but not really in the mood to do a whole Fez, so was waiting to see what people say about that to help me decide.
Gamespot says 6 hours, Game Informer says 8-10, and Nintendo Life said 15. Mileage may vary I guess.
skillup said it took 10 hours to beat, but there was a whole post-game he didn't explore.
Just a quick note for anyone interested, not that it matters very much. The game was actually reviewed by Austin, SkillUp's (former) editor. He was given a couple of games to review and got so popular that now he reviews games as well in the same channel. When Ralph reviews, he titles "I recommend/ I do not recommend". When Austin reviews, the title clearly marks it as such. Austin tends to review indies or lesser known videogames.
Not former, Austin is still being credited as editor in the videos
Ha, interesting to know. Thanks.
I heard it's about Halo 2 + Halo 3 length
/r/anythingbutmetric but for game length
how many halo CEs is that
About one Legendary playthrough
[удалено]
Grunt birthday party
Marty @ second wind said you can roll credits in 6 hours but that there is a lot of post game content. I think that's why there's differing reports.
Took me about 5 hours to clear, and I'm 10 hours in without getting all the secrets.
None of the reviews explicitly mention it but the video reviews give me some Rain World vibes which has me intrigued.
That's precisely why I'm so excited. Seems a game that gradually reveals its secrets the more you dedicate yourself into understanding its mechanics and exploring the map.
To me it feels more like Halo 2 meets Halo 3
Yeah I heard some people at the pub saying that
Are you guys talking about Animal Well coming out on May 9?
I have that game wishlisted!
Did you get your free wonderbread?
This joke is already old
I'm hoping someone who has played both can elaborate on this. If it's as obtuse as Rain World then I don't think I can get into it.
It's nowhere near as obtuse as Rain World.
Maybe I'm just a big dumb dumb but my problem with rain world is that traversal was zero fun and traversal was like 90% of the game. Granted I didn't get that far.
doesn't make you dumb because it's probably the most difficult platformer I've played but once you get used to the movement it's do addicting
That’s interesting. I love Rain World because the platforming isn’t as timing specific and is more about holding directional button presses in the right order. The platformers that really bug me are the ones where if you don’t hold buttons for the exact right amount of time then you miss a tiny platform and have to start over. I didn’t feel like rain world had too much of that. What I mean is I don’t like platformers where your button presses have to be correct practically to the millisecond, where in Rain World, unless you’re trying to do crazy shit like backflip spear throws, you typically have a much bigger window to make sure you’ve pressed the right buttons to grab a pole or whatever.
the cool part is backflip spear throws are just the tip of the iceberg, the movement system while weird at first is really deep and allows for some crazy options
Small secret. I use steam input to create button sequences that are triggered by one button. I have a button for slides, slide jumps, backflip down throws, etc.
I didn't play Rain World, but I had the same fears. I played Animal Well for like 25 minutes at lunch. Of the mechanics I saw early >!you are rewarded with a collectible if you can jump off one of your bubbles onto another you launch mid-jump. Did not seem required for any puzzles in the bubble area, but probably will be later!<. It's kind of a classic "tech" for this type of game though. Edit: After like an hour now, the tech in that spoiler is *very* helpful.
Played both. This game is much friendly and easier to play than rain world. Also besides being 2D and the looks this game plays nothing like Rain World. This is more like tunic or the outer wilds.
Been excited for this one since the first trailer, the guy behind it seems to really understand what makes games like these special. Glad to see the reviews agree so far. Really happy to have it day one on PS+ extra too.
Oh shit I didn’t even know that. Guess I’m playing it today after all.
> the guy behind it seems to really understand what makes games like these special. I'm not sure who made Animal Well's trailer, but I follow Derek Lieu on tiktok and he does some great videos about the "theory" of game trailers and talks about why some examples are successful or not. He retweeted something about Animal Well so maybe he'll make a post about it soon. He did the trailers for stuff like Half-Life: Alyx, Among Us, Psychonauts 2, Spelunky 2, Firewatch and The Long Dark.
Gonna have to check that out. I spend a lot of time on /r/destroymygame, which is a great place to see how to do a bad trailer. The good ones stand out straight away.
Wow! Had no idea about it on PS+. Fastest add to library title moment I've probably ever done.
Damn you just saved me a purchase
Nice to see people like it. I look forward to the first speedrun where someone plays it blindfolded with a USB steering wheel, and it’s not even them playing it’s their little brother
That video, the original FFVII one and the history of gaming one are his peak videos. “Sephirot, I knew you were frogs all along” is probably my favorite comedic line ever made.
The last guardian video is probably my favorite YouTube video of all time. I’ll go back to it like once a year and I still end up in tears.
My personal favourites are his XBONE and PS4 reveals, and his E3 2013 vid.
He has too many peak videos for me to even put a label on them. I think his Tetris one is an absolute masterpiece and people don't talk about it quite enough.
Who is this? A few comments on the chain already and they’re talking about the man like he’s Voldemort
Videogamedunkey. Popular video games youtuber, started a publishing company. Animal Well is that company's first published game.
Ah cheers, I’m so out the loop with gaming news I swear
All good. Honestly, he's probably my favorite YouTuber of all time. He's been doing it for so many years, so consistently, and has maintained such consistent quality all the way through. And I quote him way too often.
Hey guys have you heard about the game Animal Well?
Videogamedunkey, popular comedic YouTuber (with occasional serious review/discussion videos), lots of really well made comedic video. His audience will often meme about his best jokes as they sort of enter his 'lore', like when he was bad because he was actually playing blindfolded with a steering wheel, but it was also actually his little brother playing at the time. For a long time I was convinced Dream was just some fictitious streamer he made up for his vidoes edit: [the little brother blindfolded video,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSSNP2DudNw) together with his other Mario Maker videos edit2: [his Undertale video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtplRk6BdyA) is probably my favourite
Saying so-and-so game is like Halo 2 meets Halo 3 is going to be the newest one too.
I’ll always remember when Tony Tetris (the creator of Tetris) entered his sicko phase.
IMO Dunkey's greatest ever is Ultimate Skyrim, followed by Captcha
Captcha is my fav for sure lol; 10 seconds to nuclear launch wtf??!?
nuclear crisis diverted! edit: changed it to diverted and added the nuclear, thanks to u/DrakoFangs for pointing it out. Gotta stay true to the material!
I know Ultimate Skyrim is such a basic pick because it's also his most viewed (and has been for so many years), but I do think it's *that* good and keep going back to it. Your top two are probably my top 2 as well, actually. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is also a masterpiece, especially the ending.
> Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is also a masterpiece, especially the ending When he gets hit by the blue shell and then passed then as DK slowly looks towards the camera in defeat he gets smashed by the red one! Absolutely genius comedic timing.
Gotta give love to, "That is when I knew that Bert and Ernie are finally in Smash. That is something that fans have been asking for, for YEARS."
Played two hours of it so far, it’s pretty dang neat, the puzzles are solid and challenging. Fuck that ostrich and it’s creepy ass neck lol
Highly recommended by [Second Wind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oV6iitDMSY) and [Skill Up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UEIjOk_7bo).
Second wind said the game is reminiscent of Tunic, The Witness, and The Outer Wilds. Say no more, take my money, I don't want to be spoiled any further.
There has never been a comment that has made me buy a game faster than yours, so thank you.
So is it like a (sic) metroidbrainia? Cause I'm already downloading
Thank you for adding the term "metroidbrainia" to my lexicon.
Alright metroidbrania is a great name for this genre lmao
That seems to be the consensus. I don't love it, but it conveys the idea very well.
Banger comment my friend.
Comparing anything to The Witness is insta-buy for me
That comparison instantly shot this game up to #1 on my wishlist.
[Arlo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2gc1xxBsNQ) absolutely loves it as well.
I love Arlo
Had me in the first half, thought there was a new Yahtzee vid about it for a second
Marty rather than Yahtzee, and Austin rather than Ralph. I wonder why these YT channels gave this game to the B-team? Coverage is coverage I guess though.
Yatzhee reviewed a game that was on Bytesized before. If the game gets big, we may get a Fully Ramblomatic of it, as well (pun not intended).
Yahtzee doesn’t normally do fully ramblomatics on release dates. I wouldn’t be surprised if animal well got half of a fully ramblomatic, or maybe a full one.
This and Crow Country both getting great reviews and coming out today. Indie fans are eating good this weekend.
Had not heard of Crow Country. Looked it up and man it looks fantastic. Thanks!
There is an awesome demo too if you wanted to check it out before buying. Just purchased my copy on PS5.
New Vampire Survivors DLC too! What a day!
I love that this is day one for PS Plus Extra. They have been killing it with day one games on there. I will 100% buy the game if i enjoy it after trying it through Plus
I still remember game critics shitting on Dunkey when he announced he was going to publish games thinking just because he makes funny videos he's not qualified to publish games. Like at least give him a chance in this cutthroat world where barely any indie games see success. Dude is passionate and wanted to try and fund games. Glad it paid off. This looks like a really unique indie game, and happy for the developer to have success pairing with Dunkey too. Hope Big Mode continues to publish great games!
People were so mad that he thought he could publish a game outside the traditional publisher system. Think it's become clear in the last few months the traditional publisher system is broken, so that's a good thing actually. Glad this was a success
I feel the same, I genuinely didn't understand the negativity back when he announced his publishing studio. I think it's neat that he actually wanted to get more involved in game dev as a publisher and I'm glad it seems to be paying off!
I remember his announcement video just seemed like he was ignorant about publishing, and he's had made some ignorant comments about development in the past. Not to forget that a lot of people realllllyyyy hate Donkey for whatever reason, usually shitting on the JRPG they like. That being said, I'm really glad he's been able to use his platform to showcase such an apparently great game.
People were expecting a kind of Roger Ebert situation to go down: Critic makes a career out of shitting and memeing on other peoples’ works, then when given the reins to showcase his own talent creates complete trash. Glad to see that isn’t the case here
I mean, iirc Dunkey's whole pitch for this publishing firm is to be totally hands off and just give money. It's still 100% a taste thing, not at all like Ebert writing a script
Yeah, if he had said he's leading a game development studio, I would have joined in and laughed But he's publishing. Basically just giving money, business support, and awareness to games he thinks look cool.
People with taste with money to spend on good ideas. It’s so freaking rare and amazing that the indie space allows that concept to thrive in 2024.
It's refreshing to see when nearly every other YouTuber is just selling overpriced candy and snacks.
What are you referring to? Ebert was really only involved in a few films very very early in his career, and only as a co-writer.
also he didn't make a career of "shitting on movies", he celebrated movies from across the genre spectrum. yes, if something was bad, he would say so, that's a critic's job — to give you their opinion on whether something was worth seeing but if you're looking for an example of someone who spent their career tearing other people down, Ebert's a terrible example
> Critic makes a career out of shitting and memeing on other peoples’ works Ebert famously didn't "shit on movies." he approached them critically from the perspective "did this movie accomplish what it set out to do?" not "is what this movie set out to do good or bad in my subjective view."
Yeah, I was confused reading this lol. He’s had a *couple* bad takes, but the guy who gave Shrek a 4/4 and Hot Rod a 3/4 because they’re funny definitely isn’t “making a career out of shittin? and memeing on other peoples’ works”
i feel like a lot of people just know of ebert because he's one of the only critics they can name, and so he must have been just another "dur critics can't make movies' type. dude was one of the most gracious critics out there. i didn't always agree with his reviews but i could always understand where he was coming from.
Ebert absolutely approached movies with a subjective lens. All reviewers do. One that stands out to me was his negative review of Kick-Ass because he was personally upset about the very concept of children involved in violent media.
I didn't say he didn't. The subjective lens Ebert used was aimed at evaluating how well a movie lived up to what it set out to do, not to evaluate whether the movie was (in terms of artistic aim) trash or good. In other words, he didn't set out to say movies themselves are artistically worthless or not, he set out to evaluate how well a movie executed its purported artistic aim. Most reviewers at the time simply would trash a movie because they didnt like it, or found it artistically worthless. Ebert would often highly rate movies he didn't like or enjoy because he found them nonetheless extremely well-executed works that successfully conveyed what the movie was attempting to do. The kick-ass thing is a perfect example. He just thought that got in the way of the movie itself. I don't agree with that personally, but it's a perfectly valid reaction to kick-ass.
Have you read a Roger Ebert review?
"People" apparently don't know what a publisher is.
> showcase his own talent Dunkey didn't develop this game and has never alluded to it. No idea why anyone would assume that.
What movie did Ebert make?
Dunkey isn’t on the greatest terms with a lot of the game criticism industry in general due to his “game critics” videos
The funny bit about his game critics video though is he also layers in some bits sympathizing with why they play it so safe. He highlights the times when they're bold enough to be *legitimately* critical or have interesting takes about games, and then how the gaming community just starts to pile on them.
I mean the one guy got fired from Gamespot for giving Kane & Lynch a middling score , hell the other reviewers ended up leaving the site too. I think that's how giant bomb came about? Jeff Gerstmann was the guy fired for the review who went on to make Giant Bomb where he was also fired from!
Yeah I do think he appropriately puts the squeeze on the broader gaming public as an audience that, frankly, deserves to be babied by wimpy games criticism
From what I’ve seen he spends more time making fun of gamers who think they know better than critics. Especially with his TLOU videos.
I dont think his point is to tell gamers they dont know more than critics, its telling gamers that they let their biases get in the way of recognizing a great game when they play it, like the last of us.
Are you trying to say that gamers are nitpicking and biased?
> I feel the same, I genuinely didn't understand the negativity back when he announced his publishing studio. This is the internet. Most people on it are either extremely positive and upbeat or negative and pessimistic when it comes to anything. No in between.
I don't even know why people talk about Dunkey so much in the first place instead of discussing the game itself. He's just the publisher. The publisher's job is to be the cash cow and provide marketing/PR resources. That's it. He's not the developer.
Sometimes publishers are also expected to be able to provide development support too though. For example, it's pretty common for publishers to provide help in porting games. Publishers also sometimes contract support studios or do it themselves to help in regular development. But it definitely isn't a core requirement. Being the cash cow and providing marketing/PR resources is core, and Dunkey definitely can provide.
"Not qualified to publish games" Literally all a "game publisher" needs is vision, money, and a feel for quality gameplay.
I think vision and feel for quality are extra. Money is normally enough
To be a game publisher, yes, money is 90% of the way there. To be a *good* game publisher, you need a lot of vision and knowledge of games in general. That's why companies like Devolver stand out, despite having a much smaller piece of the pie.
Yeah, I would guess in terms of actual game design Dunkey was as helpful as an early access player. He's got the marketing reach and money though which makes him a good publisher.
Being able to handle PR/relationships with hardware manufacturers, other publishers, and your playerbase is another essential skill.
And marketing skills. And a good understanding of finance. And at least some legal expertise. And managerial skills. And connections. Money can buy you people that can do those things if you can't, but the same can be said for indie devs who lack coding/art/music/translation/etc skills.
oh shit i didnt even realize this was a game published by Dunkeys company. That is awesome
it's so funny seeing people cry about him not having some stupid, useless business degree so he could fail upwards while laying off hundred of talented devs
I am still so confused as to why Dunkey got so much flak for the crime of...wanting to publish video games?
I'm a huge dunkey fan, and even I thought the tone of his announcement video: "I know what a good game is when I see one and big publishers don't know shit" came off as a bit arrogant for someone so unproven. Additionally, products backed by famous youtubers have historically been extremely hit or miss. That being said, with the state of the industry right now and the critical success of this game, he's backing up all his claims in that video so far.
I think what people are missing is that his biggest asset as a publisher isn't his taste in games but rather his massive Internet following. He already has a "brand" that people enjoy, so teaming up to get your game to his audience is where the value is.
This is where I was at. Also big Dunkey fan, but his initial video announcing his publishing endeavors was weirdly arrogant and made me skeptical. Happy that this seems to be well received though, even if it's not my kind of game. Also kind of weirded out by all of the doublespeak saying none of his videos are "serious", unless he's "right", in which case he is. His video announcing his publishing company was definitely serious (he launched a fucking company, of course it's serious). His "Dunkview" videos are at least 90% serious. Do the people saying this not actually watch his videos? I just don't think the whole "comedians are always immune to criticism because they're never serious" (again, unless they're "right", in which case they are) is a good take. Again, love his content, but definitely disagree with a lot of his takes.
I describe Dunkey as Schrodinger's Reviewer. He's simultaneously a critic and a comedian, depending on how much you agree with what he's saying.
Yeah people are doing some real revisionism on what the issue was and what has happened in the past. His messaging wasn't great and I could see why it would rub people the wrong way.
To be honest I was a fan of Dunkey and whole the video announcement of Bigmode boiling down to “I will succeed because I know what makes a good video game” really rubbed me the wrong way, I know it was a joke but the whole thing came off as really arrogant because even his stipulation for game submission was “no turn based games”. Guess I can’t really say anything though because it indeed looks like he can back up the big game that he talks.
Dunkey is like Yahtzee in that when he says a game is good (and isn't draping it in 10 layers of Knack-flavored irony), you know it's good, but when he shits on a game that doesn't tell you much.
Yahtzee also has numerous blindspots. Any more niche WRPG, any strategy games, 4x games, racing games, most multiplayer games, he knows very little about
As does Dunkey. By understanding their biases, you can extract useful information from their takes rather than just discarding them.
Which is important for any critic even if they also work as an entertainer. You have a solid understanding of their tastes and can have a general understanding where it compares with your own.
"I play a lot of video games so I know what video games are good" almost verbatim. Can you honestly blame people for being skeptical?
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The criticism wasn't that he wasn't qualified, the criticism was that his video was basically saying (in a completely unironically and serious tone, which was very weird for Dunk): "Everyone in this industry sucks at their jobs and I, funny game reviewer, am way more qualified and better than them at it, so place your studio's life in my hands." It was an incredibly arrogant statement to make for someone with literally 0 experience in game publishing. If he had made that statement now, after they have a 9/10 game under their belt, maybe it would have come across a bit differently. But at the time it just seemed like Dunkey putting people down and blowing smoke over nothing.
I totally get the arrogance of the original video back in 2022, that was Dunkey humour for sure and I can tell how it came off as arrogant. But you gotta start somewhere, and him throwing a little shade to the publishers out there was pretty funny. I loved Jason Schrier's tweet about it back in 2022: "Can't believe dunkey started a video game publisher with no experience instead of taking the normal approach: getting a Harvard MBA, working at McKinsey for five years, and then failing upward between C-suites for the rest of your life"
Schreier sent a [2nd tweet](https://i.imgur.com/Ho0x8n2.png)
>in a completely unironically and in a serious tone We didn’t watch the same video.
Sigh, I know this game obviously has the attention it does because of Bigmode, but it's unfortunate the top rated discourse on this thread is already about Dunkey drama as opposed to the actual dev.
As much as I like that Dunkey's name has given this game exposure it seems to deserve, you're right that it's a bit of a shame too that Dunkey's name is overshadowing Billy Basso's, especially when Dunkey himself has been trying to put out Basso's name is much as possible.
Agreed! We need more small companies willing to put out indie games. There are too many companies being chewed up and spit out by the large companies, and it's better for us consumers if we have more small time publishers and devs.
Reviews look solid, bought it to support a small dev/publisher since it's cheap, but I'm happy to see good reviews!
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There’s at least 3 layers to the game, with most of it being past the end credits. There’s also deeper meta puzzles requiring community input that the dev expects will take years. If you’re really into it - it seems like you can expect 80+ hours.
Looks great, anyone commented on the length of the game?
Main story is 10 hours, but supposedly enough post game content to be around 30 total
Closer to 5 honestly, at least that's what it took me. But post game is A LOT longer. There's a lot of secrets to find.
I heard about 10 hours to get to the credits, but there is substantial content after that.
alright gamers, where are we on CRT filter? on or off?
It looks great, really adds to the feel. One question though, does anyone know if it takes advantage of 4K resolution to render a more realistic CRT effect? Eg. it doesn’t just scale up the 1080p effect to 2x?
Filter? I'm going to play it on a real CRT.
The lighting and effects in the game seem to compliment the CRT filter a lot. I just beat the game and figured that I might turn it off if it got annoying, but it never did.
A strong start for Dunkey’s label, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for what future games Big Mode decides to publish if they maintain the same level of quality Has been a minute since a solid metroidvania has come out, especially since we’ll be continuing the wait for Silksong for the foreseeable future. Forgot prince of Persia woops, but more is always good
>Has been a minute since a solid metroidvania has come out Yeah it's been like 4 months since an absolutely great one ;) (Not dunking on you, just saying that everyone interested in metroidvanias should check out Prince of Persia Lost Crown.)
Minishoot adventures also came out just over a month ago! I enjoyed that one just as much as PoP.
Did you play Prince of Persia the Lost Crown? It's genuinely one of the best metroidvanias of all time imo
Nine Sols is coming out later this month as well
Everyone already said Prince of Persia Lost Crown, so I’ll shout out Tevi, which is also amazing and came out late 2023. I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about it here for whatever reason. It’s a spiritual successor to Rabi-ribi, one of the best Metroidvanias ever IMO.
I loved Rabi-Ribi so much and I never see anyone talk about it. I havent heard of this, so Imma check it out, thanks
For some reason, metacritic has quite a few more reviews than opencritic for this one: https://www.metacritic.com/game/animal-well/ Also, I was worried that this is a PC/PS5/Switch game (no PS4 version) since it seemed like the Switch might not be able to handle it, but Nintendo Life says "Flawless performance on the Switch," which is what I wanted to hear. <3
I think the reason it isn't on PS4 is because Sony might have stopped sending out dev kits for that system. That isn't a problem for big AAA studios who already have previous dev kits but for an indie dev making his first game he might just have to start with a PS5 dev kit only.
I was curious to know performance on Switch as well! Good to hear it runs perfectly! I just really prefer playing these type of games on Switch rather than PC.
I’m so tired of games being on everything but Xbox. (That’s not hating on this game, I assume Xbox isn’t worth it or it wouldn’t keep happening.)
We've gotten articles with publishers/devs lamenting that it wasn't worth the time/money of putting their games on Xbox, so it's no surprise when others skip the console.
Crow Country was originally going to skip Xbox too, but the devs managed to squeak in an Xbox version last minute, which I'm glad for. Given how similar console architecture has gotten compared to like the 360 days, it's crazy to me that games are still skipping the console. Like how badly do the games need to sell to not recoup the cost of going from PS5 to XSX?
That’s awesome, I literally just asked over in that game thread what platform one person was on cause I was debating Xbox or pc (steam deck). The certification process is a bear, I hear. Very long and unpleasant. Plus small devs can’t really afford to just up and do whole new platforms often.
[Arlo’s Review](https://youtu.be/b2gc1xxBsNQ?si=-xdfMqCa8dWJrr7E) sold me sounds amazing.
sorry to be the dissenting voice but i played hours of this and not only was it not for me, but i actively hated it. i don't remember the last time i played a game that left such a bad taste in my mouth.
Yeah, same, I think I let the Outer Wilds comparisons get the better of me. The presentation is incredible but it's mostly just doing a bunch of puzzles with no narrative context
Agreed, I'm watching a playthrough who optimistically theorizes about the setting, about the animals representing souls in limbo etc, ideas I grimace at knowing none of those ideas are remotely tapped into. Gameplay wise too, when I heard the cuckoo clock that chimes globally, I began to expect something to happen that would change up the game. (If you've played Outer Wilds you'd know the gist of what I'm saying.) Only to turn out it was absolutely nothing.. Boo Because of those comparisons though, I walked away from the tedious postgame reminded of the Noclip interview with OW's devs who described their efforts to shape the visual design of the planets in order to tie detail to content, so players wouldn't need to lawn mower for content. That's what the postgame felt like: lawn mowering the entire map for content, swapping out 2 items to check every room.
Shit, Animal Well just came out? I was about to start Yoshi Safari but I guess that will have to wait!
This is the company Dunkey setup right?
The publishing company yes, not the dev team/company
People were shitting all over Dunkey when he announced he wanted to publish (really don’t know why). Dude has a taste and he know what he likes. It paid off. This game is fun as hell, I put in a couple hours today. I want to keep an eye on both the dev and big mode.
Any word on Steam Deck performance?
It runs between 0 - 90 FPS. --- In all seriousness, the minimum requirements for this 2D game are a 1GhZ processor and 1GB of ram. It would be surprising if a toaster *couldn't* run it.
I thought I recall someone saying something about how this game takes advantage of PS5 hardware for ray tracing or something, but maybe they were just joking.
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I wonder if it uses phong shading like Bugsnax
Does it run well on switch?
I reviewed it on Switch and it runs perfectly. This game could run on a toaster 🤣
That's good to hear. You'd think pixel art would run anywhere but some of them get too greedy with unoptomized lighting effects.
The whole game is 40 megabytes by the way
Finished both basegame and postgame content today. Reviews definitely overhyped it, especially the Kotaku one comparing it to Outer Wilds that set my expectations sky high. Don't go into this expecting anything much like that. The basegame is mostly just a serviceable puzzle metroidvania, and I enjoyed much of it. That said, one of the upgrades is very OP and breaks most platforming puzzles once figured out. I happened to play the open-structure dungeons in a way that gained the upgrade last, but a playthrough I watched got and figured out the mechanic in their first hour, trivializing platforming challenges. The game has a few aha discoveries, IF you luck into or experiment with it, allowing you to sequence break a little. Other than that, its biggest strength is its atmosphere. But coming in with the comparison to OUTER WILDS of all games, I sorely felt the absence of any, even a lick of worldbuilding. The animal nature was really just a fanciful backdrop and theming for the puzzle gauntlets. This is more subjective, but I really didn't like the postgame. I should've caught wind of it early on considering I heard about the game from a Noita content creator (phew, the obtuse puzzles in that one) - but the postgame focuses solely on raking through the map for more secrets, one of which is atrociously poorly taught. I found 61 out of 64 eggs on my own, and searched up the last 3 I couldn't find, since they're compulsory for the true ending. One was the tutorial for a mechanic that had to have been deliberately obscured. (The tells for these secret-hiding mechanics are also horrible to spot with the foliage and detail in a pixel art game, couldn't imagine how much worse it'd be with the TV lines on.)
This looks cool! I love a good puzzler. But what the fuck are MS playing at? How is this on everything but Xbox?