Suck At Animal Well? Play With A Real Life Friend

Summary

I wasn't going to play Animal Well, but my friend suckered me into helping her solve puzzles after letting me eat dinner for free at her place.
It turns out that if you don't have the patience for platformers but love puzzle solving, standing by a TV and pointing out solutions can be just as satisfying as actually putting your hands on a controller.
I might play Animal Well now, I might not. The most likely outcome is that I'll keep going to her place and helping her solve puzzles without once taking the controller.

Last night, lured by the promise of a free lamb curry dinner, I hauled myself out of my house for the first time in days to h♔ead to ওa friend’s place. (The curry was great.) After dinner, we headed up to her bedroom, where she begged me to help her out with . “I need your brain cells,” my friend said. “I’m so stuck on these puzzles.”

I haven’t played Animal Well, though it’s one of 2024’s biggest indie hits and has been praised left, right, and center. Our own Eric Switzer gave it a full five out of five stars 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:in his review, praising its visuals, sound design, subversion of Metroidvania tropes, and density. My colleague Ben Sledge wrote about how it’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:just as satisfyin⛎g as it is ꧃frustrating. Gabrielle Castania said it’s turning her around on her previous di✨staste for the ♌Metroidvania genre. Editor-in-Chief Stacey Henley 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:waxed poetic about the ostrich.

I’ll admit, it wasn’t very high on my list of games to try out this year. I&rsqu🍨o;m famously weak at platformers because I have very little tolerance for games that require patience and quick reflexes, and even the promise of clever puzzles and critical praise across the board wasn’t quite en🐲ough to tempt me. That said, I’m never going to say no to playing a game with a friend. So I said yes, let’s take a look at what you need help with. What followed finally sold me on the game.

꧅ Animal Well Is Frustrating. Animal Well Is Amazing.

My experience of Animal Well is a cyclical nightmare of infuriati🔯ng roadblocks and ecstatic highs

Posts 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: ꦬ

Two Brains Are Better Than One

Since she’d asked for help, and not for me to play the game for her, I first asked her to run me through the tools we had in the game. She’d unlocked about half of them, judging from a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:list of collectible items I just Googled. She showed me how to use them, like how you could toss the disc acro꧙ss th🦩e map and jump on it as a method of traversal, use the slinky to press buttons, or hop on top of bubbles to get to higher areas.

There was a specific puzzle she couldn’t get past, one where you had to turn wheels to tilt platforms in order to bounce water into a fountain. She couldn’t🃏 get to one of the wheels because she hadn’t figured out exactly how to manipulate a bunch of flying boxes, so I stood by the TV and pointed at the buttons she needed to press and what tools she could use. Annoyed, she said, “How did you figure this out in one minute? I’ve been staring at this all day.”

This is the first thing that makes it fun to help play instead of actually p𒐪lay: perspective. Obviously, I am no smarter than the average player, I just happened to come in fresh. With no knowledge of how the tools had been used in previous puzzles, I was operating more on common sense than on knowledge of how the game typically works.

Another way this freshness helped was that I’d never seen the map before. As she looked for a way into a passage she hadn’t been able to access, I stood by the TV and pointed at what looked to be a gap in an area she’d alreaꦚdy accessed. “Isn’t that a way in?” I said. Exasperated, she groaned, “I can’t believe you immediately managed to find that tiny missing pixel.” Gamer cred, baby. She platformed her way in and found an egg, and we high fiꦗved.

using the lantern in front of the dog statue in animal well

🍬I Hate Metroidvanias, But Man, Do I Love Animal Well

So you see, that's 💦where the trouble began. That dog ghost 🐓statue. That damn dog ghost statue.

Posts 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: ꦉ

Skill Issue? Make Someone Else Hold The Controller

You’ll notice that she was doing all the platforming, and that wasn’t really her choice. Every time she handed me the controller, I’d noodle around for just a minute or two before handing it back to her to do all the hard work. I was having fun because I wasn⛎’t the one smashing my head against platforming puzzles and getting chased by ghost rats, and I wasn’t 🌳about to change that.

Instead, I stood by the TV and pointed at specific spots. I would instruct her to break spikes in a specific place, or toss her frisbee and quickly hop up to a different platform. She’d spent more time in the game than I had🍰, and was already familiar with its controls – in contrast, every time I tried any complex platforming, I floundered and threw the controller back before she could lose a life to my panicking thumbs. Teamwork made the dream work, and we managed to stumble our way through a couple of sections she’d struggled with before I got sleepy and hopped on my bus home.

I still don’t know if I’m ever going to play Animal Well myself. I know that with enough time and commitment, I’d be able to get good enough with the game to get completely sucked into its killer platforming and puzzle combination. But I kind of like just being able to come up with a solution and make someone else execute it for me. Plus, it’s an excuse to hang out with my friends while playing video games, a confluence of interests that’s unfortunately quite rare in my li🧜fe. Maybe I’ll just watch her play for the time being.