New Game Published by Dunkey Gets Release Date

gamerant.com:

Bigmode Games has officially announced that the indie game Animal Well will be released on May 9, 2024. Bigmode Games was co-founded by Dunkey from the popular Videogamedunkey YouTube channel back in 2022, and this will be the first indie game published by the studio.

Jason Yevgeniy Gastrow started his activities on the Videogamedunkey channel back in 2010. Since then, Dunkey has gained over 7.5 million subscribers, reaching widespread acclaim and becoming one of the most famous YouTube video game critics. Dunkey is known for covering a wide variety of games, ranging from major AAA to small indie games, including huge hits like Undertale. Last year, after the founding of Bigmode Games, Animal Well became the first project to be published by the company.

Now, Dunkey’s Bigmode Games studio has unveiled an Animal Well trailer, confirming a release on May 9, 2024, for Steam, PS5, and Switch. Animal Well will be an exploration-focused Metroidvania in which players control a slime that will adventure in a variety of mostly underground labyrinths. In the short trailer, it’s possible to see some of the dark environments that can be explored in the game, which include fearsome enemies that the player will have to avoid instead of fighting directly, adding an interesting spin to the experience. Animal Well has very atmospheric pixel art graphics, as well as some really creative enemies like the wolf-life ghost creature featured in the trailer.

While Animal Well is mostly known for being published by Bigmode Games, though, it’s actually developed by Shared Memory, a single-dev studio led by veteran developer Billy Basso. According to the developer’s official website, Animal Well takes a lot of its inspiration from the survival horror genre, as well as classic Nintendo franchises like Zelda and Metroid. In Animal Well, players will be able to explore an “atmospheric, puzzle box world” that will be filled with secrets, as they determine how to tread through unsafe areas to move on.