Animal Well is an in-development Metroidvania from developer Billy Basso. Roughly a month after the announcement that Animal Well would be published by indie game publisher Bigmode Games, the game has gotten a new trailer that shows off how players will interact with animals and navigate the world.
Animal Well comes from Shared Memory, a game studio started by sole developer Billy Basso who would later go on to collaborate with Dan Adelman, who formerly worked in the indie divisions of Nintendo and Xbox. Animal Well was announced to be the first game to be published by Bigmode Games. Bigmode was founded by YouTuber Videogamedunkey and his wife Leah in 2022 as a way to uphold indie games that they feel are worthy of releasing while not exercising creative control.
Animal Well would be featured in Dunkey's first video of this year as well as in those of other creators. It got another full-fledged trailer on the PlayStation YouTube channel in which other PlayStation indie exclusives like Stray have been featured. This new trailer shows the player character traversing the game's characteristically blue world and using the environment and surrounding animals as means to get around while not directly fighting any of them. All this is set to a reserved yet engrossing soundtrack that beautifully complements the water-filled surroundings.
Some of the methods used for traversal shown in the trailer include riding on a chinchilla that the player guides with a green orb, jumping on lily pads to create bubbles to bounce off, and jumping off bubbles blown by a seahorse. The player character can also be seen using bombs to unlock new paths and evading a ghostly wolf creature that follows them menacingly. As was emphasized when Dunkey first announced his publishing company, he has regularly promoted indie games on his channel so long as he felt they deserved to be. This has naturally continued with Bigmode as this new trailer was promoted on Bigmode's Twitter account.
Animal Well is shaping up to be an especially unique addition to the current landscape of Metroidvania games in terms of gameplay and presentation, something that does wonders to help set it apart from the legions of other titles in the genre. Similar to other Metroidvanias like The Last Case of Benedict Fox which recently got a release date, Animal Well's embrace of its unique setting has helped make it easily recognizable among its contemporaries. With these factors and the added support of Bigmode, the future continues to get brighter for Animal Well.
Animal Well is currently in development for PC and PS5.
