Thanks @nate38! I'll take a look at those later.

Put a wrap on Animal Well this morning. Got the rest of the bunnies and did the last challenge.

Of the remaining 10 bunnies I probably should have gotten 2 of them already and was surprised that I missed them/didn't try what needed to be tried, but with the other 8 there was pretty much no chance I'd have ever figured them out on my own. At the very least I'd never put in the time necessary to figure any of them out. So I was very content with looking them up. I'm pretty satisfied with getting through the first two layers without looking anything up, and I'd say that would have been a pretty good place to stop.

Great game, though! Basically consumed the last week and a half for me.

All y'all need to play Lorelei and the Laser Eyes now!

So, I cheated a little. Not with locations of anything, but just with... basically looking a little into what I need and what I can put on the side for now if I just want to focus on the eggs. And candles, I guess, since I'm so close there and it doesn't seem like that's a thing you need to wait for layer 3 for?

And I'm glad I did. Do you know how much time I spent trying to get past the skulls thinking an item I needed might be behind them?! Or the clock or the big rotating circly thingy or... well you get the point.

I love this game. It might even be my favorite non-Metroid non-Castlevania Metroidvania. Hard to say, but it's up there. But I do wish that there was at least a tad more guidance on what stuff is "layer 2" versus "layer 3". Because when I get stuck, there are always still like 10 or 15 MYSTERIES on my map at any given time and it's not very clear to me which I should pursue and which I can ignore if I just want to work on "layer 2". So I end up running all over the place trying to figure out which of my MYSTERIES I can do something about with my current skills and which I can't. And since this isn't a typical key -> door Metroidvania and you need to actually solve stuff sometimes (which I love about it), it won't always be clear if you have what you need for any given MYSTERY.

Anyway, 1 more candle to light and 3 more eggs to find and then I can decide how much layer 3 stuff I want to attempt, if any. Probably just end up looking at a guide for that.

Zero said:

And I'm glad I did. Do you know how much time I spent trying to get past the skulls thinking an item I needed might be behind them?!

During the day at work, what I thought was a brilliant idea on how to solve that room popped into my head. It involved something that happens after you get all the eggs (so I won't spoil it) - which I also hadn't solved yet, and I thought "Of course! That's it! That's really clever!"

And then I get home and try it right away, and....absolutely nothing. Stupid idea.

Ok I need one small hint, feels like this is obvious but... does every room with a ghost also have a candle and vice versa? I think this is how it works but I'm not 100% sure.

I think they all do except the very very very first one of those rooms doesn't have a candle. (And there's a reason for that related to Layer 3)

Alright, eggs done. I have to admit, I looked up the location of the last one I couldn't find. Turned out to be an Arkanoid wall in a place I never thought I'd be going back to. I did think that there being a phone down there was a bit odd, and it was right next to a space I still hadn't gotten to, but so was the incubator so I thought whatever happened there would be taking me to that space. Plus as I said above, I still had a ton of "odd" stuff to figure out at this point.

Anyway, I think I'm done now. I'm not a huge fan of obtuse stuff and it sounds like the next layer is very, very obtuse. Awesome game. If there was one thing I'd change it is what I already said above, distinguishing between the 2nd and 3rd layers more. Part of what made the last few eggs tough is that I still had so many "open" things going on at that point and wasn't sure what was related to the eggs or not. And maybe some kind of egg locator, not one that tells you exactly where but I dunno, something that tells you how many eggs are left in each area or whatever.

Did I underrate this game by giving it an 8.5/10 in NF Magazine? (we grade in 0.5 increments) I agree with most of the good stuff mentioned in this thread already but dang, those last few hours were just painful, trudging through the entire map over and over checking for spots to use the spinning top, UV light, or bouncy ball. The immediate postgame was fun and rewarding and felt like anything was possible, but after I'd checked all the little false walls etc on the map, the lack of meaningful progression really ground my enjoyment to a halt.

@TriforceBun I don't think you're wrong, I'd definitely say that the very end of the 2nd layer was my least favorite part and dulled the experience a little bit near the "end", and as for the 3rd layer, I never really like that kind of thing so I didn't even bother. It just depends how much that affects the overall experience for you, which will be different for everyone. But by then I had also put in 20+ hours and everything up to that point was so good. Like, I legit think this is one of the best Metroidvanias that I have played and I actually kind of hope Nintendo / Retro / etc. are influenced by it in the future. Still, as I said above, I wish the egg hunt was handled a bit differently, you want to go out with a bang and it did have the little neat part for the 65th egg but that part also made me remember how much time I wasted trying to solve something that wasn't solvable yet (the wheel thing you have to use to get to the second ending), heh.

@Zero

I beat the main game the other day and intended to boot it back up to finish finishing the other eggs. However... I'm finding myself not caring to go back now. New games await and I'll just not spend hours retreading everything to see what might be a breakable wall.

Good game but not something I'll 100%. I totally agree with you that some kind of post game support item to help find that stuff would be useful and could be optional.

TriforceBun said:

Did I underrate this game by giving it an 8.5/10 in NF Magazine? (we grade in 0.5 increments) I agree with most of the good stuff mentioned in this thread already but dang, those last few hours were just painful, trudging through the entire map over and over checking for spots to use the spinning top, UV light, or bouncy ball. The immediate postgame was fun and rewarding and felt like anything was possible, but once I checked all the little false walls etc on the map, it really ground my enjoyment to a halt.

That's very fair criticism. In the late/post game, I definitely wasted a good bit of time trying to solve things that were unsolvable, either at that point - or ever. And while revisiting every area of the map again (using those abilities) was fruitful in that it did turn up some things that I missed on first pass, it's not particularly compelling. But because you get some of those items/abilities so late in the game, it does feel like you really have to go back over the whole map with them or you'll miss a lot. I think it'd be a lot more elegant if you had the UV light from the beginning of the game so you could make note of all of those strange clues, and deduce their meaning over the course of the game - maybe even have the flute be an item you get a lot later on.

As it stands, in hindsight, I'd probably recommend not going over the whole map again and after seeing credits for the first time, just focus on any potential secrets you've marked on the map and start looking things up once you're stumped. I think I would have enjoyed that stretch of the game more had I started looking things up a lot earlier.

I think the main game is a masterpiece. The way that each room has multiple paths you can take through it depending on your item layout and which overall path you've taken through the game really elevates the level design from a basic puzzle-platformer to an action-adventure that ties those two components together better than almost any other game I've played. Add in the game's personality, mystery, and aesthetics, and I think it really lives up to the hype.

But yeah, the post-game mysteries could have been executed better. Layers 2 and 3 are neatly separated in hindsight, but you don't have any way of knowing that in the moment while you're hunting for eggs. This ends up really dragging out the egg hunt, and then when Layer 3 ends up being unsolvable by yourself anyway, it's a bummer, and draws attention to the fact that Layer 3 doesn't really have anything to do with the navigation puzzles you've been solving throughout the game anyway.

Yep, I too think it's a pretty masterful Metroidvania with added layers of secrets that are cool but needed to be more clearly spelled out as solo-solvable or not.

Like you guys, I was freaking loving my time for the first 8-10 hours, but poring over the map with the last few items hurt the momentum for me. So I just kind of stopped playing after a while. Still, that initial experience of revealing the map and stumbling over secret after secret was unparalleled 10/10 stuff.

In the context of the modern gaming scene, Animal Well was incredibly refreshing to play. Rather than slavishly copying NES games, it made me feel like I did when I originally played, like, the first Metroid game. The good kind of nostalgia.

I beat this like very soon after it came out. Loved the main game, loved getting all the eggs even more. I looked up most of the bunnies. I like how they are hidden but I do not think I would have found many of them by myself. But I do like some of the puzzles that got to them.

I do agree that some of the layer 2 and layer 3 stuff should have been separated a bit more, because the leap in puzzle solving from one to the other is quite large. Some way of hinting where a missing egg could be would have resolved all of that in my opinion.

There were also a few too many red herrings for my tastes. Just rooms or things that existed purely to confuse or mislead you.

Favourite puzzle was probably the lynx. The egg room was almost my favourite apart from one really dumb part that I think most people also were tripped up on.