Secret_Tunnel said:

@Shadowlink

But the checklist wasn't translated!

Some of it was! 9 entries! You only needed to find one more on your own so to speak. Add that to the seeking spell, I don't think it was really that onerous, but to each their own *shrug*.

TriforceBun said:

. The (32 egg reward) spinning top is an okay item and it is somewhat telegraphed, but you necessarily have to revisit every room in order to make the most of it. It's also easy to overlook spots where it can be used and there are only so many pixel-hunts I can take in a single game. Likewise, the UV light is an interesting idea for revealing more secrets, but it also necessitates the player going through the entire map again, combing every nook and cranny, and dealing with a slightly fiddly interface in order to check with it.
.

Yup, this is where a little part of me started to die inside too. Especially when you realise that unlike other eggs, the areas blocked off by those parts don't show on the map. For example it was easy to find a lot of eggs by careful noting where there appeared to be small gaps in the map walls leading to secret nooks and crannies. But there comes a point in the game where a seemingly solid wall is actually...not.

The constant retreading of the map at that point was just exhausting.

@Shadowlink

I must have completely missed the seeking spell lol, I don't remember that at all. Animal Well needed a seeking spell!

@Secret_Tunnel

Hah, it was in the manual on the page.

Basically if there was a puzzle in the area it'd point you towards it, if not the pretty lights would just fly off on their own.

Very useful. And yes, Animal Well could have done with one! The Remote letting you echolocate some hidden chests wasn't even close

Oh boy, I'm a bit stuck. I don't want any big spoilers or anything but just to clarify, the flames don't have to be gotten in any specific order, right?!

@Zero I believe that's right.

Zero said:

Oh boy, I'm a bit stuck.

Try moving over the bridge.

Alright, I'm back on track, realized a puzzle I thought was something I couldn't do yet was something I could solve right away.

And now I have all 4 flames! Not sure yet if I want to head to the next part or run through the map a bit more first.

Last night I managed to get the second flame. My first flame was the chameleon and my second one was the wolf. Luckily I had found the Animal Flute by this point so it was a bit easier taking that shortcut. Still tense though. I have a lot of the map revealed in both regions that house other flames. So it's interesting for me to see what I've missed as far as finding my way.

I'm sure it's been said but all these items are super neat! Unique in what items they are, and how they function in the game. I'm a big fan of the out-of-the-box thinking on this facet.

Started this the other night. I've got 16 eggs and have lit 4 candles. @Shadowlink is the last main item that I've gotten.

This game is really awesome so far. I agree with @Zero's description of it, where it feels really open and not "non-linear but still pretty linear" like some other Metroidvanias. I've been slowly expanding the map outward, going in one direction for a bit but not exactly hitting a wall. Instead I've been often going back and exploring some more in a different direction. There seems to be something worthwhile to find in pretty much every room. I haven't felt like I've needed to fully exhaust one area or path before moving on. The map is so interconnected anyway that it's really easy to just shift gears whenever I've felt like it.

I saw the credits!

And now I'm trying to get the rest of the map filled out. I have 42ish? eggs. It's cool that I keep finding new areas and even some new items (just got the remote).

It's hard to reach a telephone and be like, "This is a good place to stop." I always want to keep going...

I've got 2 flames, 30 eggs and lit 8 candles. I know where the last one is, just need a match. Right before I stopped this morning, I got the Remote, which feels like a game changer of an item already. I can think of a few dead ends on the map that this will resolve. Speaking of the map, pretty cool that it wraps around on the far ends. I don't think I've played a Metroidvania game that did that.

All right, I gave up on solving the third layer and looked up the puzzle solution. I might have got that after a few months of thinking about it! But probably not.

I like that there's even more weird secrets beyond, but I'm definitely not going to discover them myself, or bother looking them up. I'm sure whenever every secret is found, someone will put out a long-form video about what they are and how they were found and what they mean, and I'll enjoy watching that.

Great game, really enjoyed the first two layers.

Welp, I'd love to say I'm still making progress on the eggs but THE GAME JUST KEEPS GETTING BIGGER. What is this, Narnia?! I've gotten a few more eggs but a lot of the stuff I'm getting to on the map just opens up more mysteries instead of leading to a sense of progressing towards completion.

With that said I now have most of the map at least open at this point so I'm sort of confused where everything else could be hidden, unless the map expands in some unexpected way (upside-down castle?!) And I still have quite a lot to get, at least like 14 or so eggs, I think 1 more match, some objects to stick in other objects, a bunch of other mysteries. Hell, my inventory just added another row so I assume this means there will be a few more tools?!?!

BTW when you all talk first, second and third layers is this something the game eventually makes clear or did you pick up that language elsewhere? Because I "beat" the main game so that is probably the first "layer" right? And I have picked up that people see collecting all of the eggs as a "second" layer although I don't recall the game really saying well, anything about this. But beyond that I just have some mysteries with no idea what I would do about them... ? Is that the "third layer", and is this something that would be revealed once you collect all of the eggs? Or do you just stumble around in it blindly?!

@Zero

Layer 1: Find the four flames, there's a final encounter, ends with credits
Layer 2: Find all of the eggs, there's a final puzzle / encounter, ends with credits and a new location
--- things below here basically impossible to do on your own without devoting yourself to the game ---
Layer 3: Find all of the bunnies, there's a final puzzle, ends with finding another new location
Layers beyond 3: forget about it and search for videos on youtube like "ZOMG ANIMAL WELL INSANE SECRETS"

The developer mentioned "three layers" in a few different places, and flames/eggs/bunnies map onto that perfectly.

Credits rolled, I'm going over the whole map again. I'm at 57 eggs, and finally I've got my notebook out in front of me. I definitely need at least one more item but I'm not sure where it is. Still over half the map to revisit though!

I'm making progress again! Got a few more eggs, another cat, the rest of the kangaroo medallion pieces even though I have no idea what it does, and uh... found some MORE stuff I don't know how to get yet.

Also, it finally dawned on me how to warp back to the warp area, which I somehow missed the first few times. So this will make exploring a lot easier.

Got the rest of the eggs - the last one was one I could have gotten a lot sooner. One of those cases where a particular room had several things to interact with, and I thought I had checked all of them many hours ago, but I had not. Anyways, going back over the whole map again was successful.

Also saw credits for the 2nd time, so I guess that's it for Layer 2! As for the final egg puzzle, well played with the upside down egg. I couldn't understand why my input wasn't doing anything....and then I spotted it.

I've found 6 bunnies so far. There are maybe a dozen things left on the map that have me confounded. Maybe I'll poke around at those a bit more before I give up. If @nate38 says look stuff up at a certain point, I think I should probably start looking stuff up soon.

Shadowlink said:

I think Tunic was more elegant in it's design though, the hints on what you needed to do, and the path through the game (along with the final meta-puzzle) were just perfectly on point. This has an element of WTF randomness that I don't really like in these sorts of games. It's not too bad as it's completely doable without a guide- Up until the secret rabbits anyway., but just that whole 'look under every rock, try every item' philosophy feels a lot like busywork.

TriforceBun said:

Overall, Animal Well is a neat game. It digs into a lot of the mysterious figure-it-out elements that worked so well with Tunic and its core gameplay is perhaps even a little more satisfying. The toy-based powerups are creative fun, the puzzles are clever and the pacing/exploration balance is very solid. But the elements that made the game a big social playground-rumor-type mystery are--in my opinion--quite a bit weaker gameplay-wise. In other words, I found each layer of this game a little less tasty the further I got.

I'd hate to have the egg hunt sour me on the rest of the game but there were long stretches of time where I'd just wander about without a clue on what to do next, namely in finding the last ten or so Eggs. The (32 egg reward) spinning top is an okay item and it is somewhat telegraphed, but you necessarily have to revisit every room in order to make the most of it. It's also easy to overlook spots where it can be used and there are only so many pixel-hunts I can take in a single game. Likewise, the UV light is an interesting idea for revealing more secrets, but it also necessitates the player going through the entire map again, combing every nook and cranny, and dealing with a slightly fiddly interface in order to check with it.

Agreed with both of yas, I think Tunic was much more elegant in how it dealt with these additional layers. Many of the secrets in Tunic were right there in front of you the entire game, you just had to play enough of the game for things to begin to "click". Same with The Witness.

Here, you can't discover that secret element (I'm going to call it using the flute for directional inputs ) until you get a late game item that reveals hidden secrets in the background. Unlike Tunic it's not something you even realize is there until late in the game, and to get the most out of it you have to use comb the entire map with 2 or 3 items to really feel like you've found all of the information that you need. It's not cleverly hidden, it's just plain hidden and brute force is the only real approach to it. I've banged my head against the wall trying to solve some secrets on the map which I thought were egg-related, but quite possibly I still can't solve them yet...

I still think Animal Well is an excellent game but after doing one full revisit of the entire map, I'm feeling burnt out and I'm not sure how much more I want to dig. I'd have it a notch below Tunic for that reason.

Alright here are my remaining unsolved mysteries. I'll gladly accept hints!

1. This wall here. This one has bothered me for so long. You can't use the remote here. My assumption is that this is a secret room that you can drop down into from above, and you use the remote to get out through this wall (because you can use the remote in the next room over), but I've checked everywhere and can't find an opening. Probably missing something stupid...

2. This chest here. Wasted a lot of time on this one, thinking it was an egg. My guess is that you have to use the flute to open something up on the ground above it, but I have no clue what that could be. (UPDATE: Shadowlink linked me the solution to this one. Very dumb. It just looks like regular grass.)

3. This puzzle here. This one has me baffled. My assumption is that this is the exit, and you use the wheel to get out of there. But where that is up above, I do not know. That, or there's a hidden ability of the wheel that I haven't figured out yet. I button mashed my way up to the second level but I felt like I was cheesing the game, and I couldn't go any further.

4. The "?" on the left side of the map. Unsure how to get into this room.

5. The "?" in the middle of the map. This may be totally nothing, but it just looks like there's something there.

6. The Skull room. I saw someone point out earlier in the thread that you can only get to that chest if you get through the game without dying, so I guess that explains this one. Bit of a bummer, but cross it off the list if so.

7. The Clocks. I wasted a lot of time (lol) on this and I gave up. If it's related to speed-running as suggested earlier in the thread, then forget about it!

8. The interactive Rabbit Painting. The "hint" I found beneath it wasn't much of a help. Not sure what to do here.

9. The Bat. I can use the firecrackers to get it to leave, but what's the point of it being in that room in particular? Can it be actually defeated?

10. Wall mural of the rabbit and potions. I initially thought this was a hint to #8, but now I'm not sure.

11. Secret code on the wall in the office. No idea. Maybe it will make sense when finding all the bunnies.

@TheBigG753

1. Is one that I would basically have never figured out on my own.
Your assumptions are wrong, unfortunately.
Honestly I'd say just watch this.

3. You've got what you need to get through there.
I used the item that you're using to get through there, plus the frisbee. It did feel kind of janky the way I did it, but it worked.
This shows an advanced technique you can do with the frisbee that makes it look way easier though. Wish I'd known about it!

4. You can't. At least not without basically hacking the game.

5. I'm not sure offhand, I'll check this out and get back to you.

6. Yeah, that bottom chest is inaccessible to you now. Unfortunate.

7. Yep, forget about it.

8. This is a community puzzle, unfortunately. You can solve it yourself here, with all the pieces you would get from others provided for you.

9. As far as I'm aware, there's nothing more to it than what you've already done.

10. This doesn't seem to be linked to any puzzle. Probably just LORE.

11. I looked this one up, and I'd encourage most people to do the same, but maybe I can try to provide some increasingly-less-vague hints later...