Don’t spoil Animal Well for yourself

polygon.com:

You are an egg person. You wake up in a large turnip.

The world around you is alien, with an eerie, neon glow. But there’s a familiarity to it. A nearby squirrel beckons you to chase it, and lazy reeds sway in an unseen breeze. You start to find comfort in this strange world, gobbling up smaller turnips and discovering plants that act as mini firecrackers to scare away the few creatures that wish to do you harm. It’s a simple life you’ve found, living among the ducks and kangaroos and monkeys of this bizarre realm. But beneath the surface of Animal Well, something lurks. Something that will transform you from a simple egg person into a paranoid, note-keeping conspiracy theorist.

You have been warned.

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Animal Well is devious in the way it presents itself. At first glance, it’s a simple 2D exploration game with no combat whatsoever. Your goal? Hard to say, beyond some vague markings on a large map. It appears to be a very lo-fi take on the Metroidvania genre, with basic, switch-based puzzles blocking your way.

But as you explore this world, its secrets unravel before you in fascinating ways. Ways that I desperately don’t want to explain, but I realize I have to in order to convey why this is one of the most inventive games of the last decade.

We’ll start with the basics. As with any Metroidvania, there’s gear in Animal Well that’ll allow you to traverse more of the map. One of the earliest pieces of gear you get? A bubble wand that allows you to blow a single bubble, which you can then jump on as a height boost. In other words, it’s this game’s take on a