Animal Well: Where to Go After Lantern (How to Beat Manticore Boss)

Animal Well

By William Parks

Published May 14, 2024

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Animal Well

This article is part of a directory: Animal Well Walkthrough

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Players who have collected the Lantern in Animal Well are very close to reaching the game's closing credits. That said, there is a major obstacle between fans and the ending, and it is a boss known as the Manticore. For those players who may be struggling to find and defeat that final boss in Animal Well, this guide is here to help.

This walkthrough focuses exclusively on leading players from the Lantern to the end credits, and it does not cover any of the optional collectibles that can be obtained along the way.

2:00

How to Solve the Bunny Mural in Animal Well

Solving Animal Well's bunny mural puzzle required a team of more than fifty players to come together and share their findings. Here's the solution.

Animal Well: After Lantern Walkthrough

Once the Lantern has been collected, players should use it, to make the nearby bird translucent, and exit the room to the right. Fans should then fall to the bottom of the corridor and go left to enter the room with the hippo's head. Here, players should use the Lantern to safely access a hole in the bottom-left corner of the room, and the path that is beyond that opening leads to a room with a door and four buttons.

In this room, players can use a variety of Animal Well's Tools to press the four buttons and open the door. Specifically, the second button can be hit with the Yo-Yo, the third button can be hit with the Slink, the fourth button can be hit with the Disc, and fans can simply step on the first button as they walk toward the exit. After using that exit, players should continue one more screen to the left to enter a room that will be referred to as the "four-button room" moving forward.

Upon reaching the four-button room, players should use the Bubble Wand to ascend through the top of the screen. Fans of puzzle games should then continue to the right, to reach a room with an inactive whale fan, and fall through the hole that is to the right of that object.

It is at this point that the Manticore will start pursuing players, and they will need to evade its lasers as they work through the next section. While fans who move very quickly should be able to avoid most of the attacks from this Animal Well boss , the Manticore can be kept at bay by deploying Firecrackers, which can be found throughout the area, and using the Lantern.

Players will now be situated next to a yellow button, and they should activate it by throwing a Disc through the small slit. That action will cause a barrier to the left of the button to be removed, and here are the steps that fans should take to reach it:

Hit the green button on the ceiling, to temporarily remove the platform that is beneath it, and fall to the ground.
Go left to return to the four-button room, and use bubbles to get back through the ceiling.
Go right and fall through the hole to the left of the inactive whale fan.

From here, players should go left and press the fourth button in the four-button room. Fans of indie video games should then travel up and to the right to find a green button that activates the aforementioned whale fan. Players must now set their sights on reaching that fan, and that is done by passing through the four-button room, using bubbles to ascend, and traveling to the right.

At the now-active whale fan, players should put a bubble in its air current and ride to the elevated path. Fans should then go left, step on a yellow button (which removes the barrier that is below), and exit through the bottom-left corner to reach the first button in the four-button room.

With the first button pressed, players should reenter the four-button room and go up through the ceiling. Fans of Metroidvanias should then place a Slink on the newly-accessible green button, go left under the square block that has risen, and fall down to the four-button room's second button.

Players should now jump back up to the room with the recently-removed barrier, walk past the green button, and fall through the hole. From this position, fans of exploration-focused video games can use the Yo-Yo to hit the four-button room's third button, causing the exit door to open. Players should now focus on using that opening to reach the room to the left.

As soon as players enter this new room, they should use the crank to raise a platform and continue traveling to the left. Fans must then scale some wooden scaffolding and exit the screen through its bottom-left corner, using Firecrackers and the Lantern to thwart the Manticore's advances. A plunger awaits players on the other side of that opening, and they should jump on it to dispatch the Manticore and beat Animal Well.