Animal Well is a passion project by Billy Basso, an American solo-dev, in development since 2017. Another entry in the long-line of successful metroidvania-style indie games, Animal Well instead trades away any semblance of a combat system to double down on its puzzle solving elements.

The tools available to the player are enthralling to use, with so many hidden tricks and interactions that the game slowly teaches throughout even the first few hours of its runtime. You feel like a genius as you experiment and discover how robust the mechanics truly are, and as you slowly unlock more of the game's world to explore.

The world itself is enormous. Playing the game I found myself constantly remembering my experiences with Elden Ring, where no matter which direction you head there is such a vast swathe of stuff to do. Players will be hard pressed to find a screen that doesn't have secrets to find or puzzles to solve.

Speaking of the puzzles, the puzzles are the very reason why its so hard to talk about how fantastic this game is. Everything I've described so far is available before you hit the credits the first time. The issue is, that is barely half of the game's content, and doesn't even scratch the surface on how deep the rabbit hole truly goes. In truth, everything above only serves to conceal the ARG-level puzzles hiding just below the surface , which give way to even more game than I ever could have understood at first. This hidden second half is why I can't say why Animal Well is truly my Game of the Year choice for 2024. Its something you have to experience for yourself.

Animal Well has very little story, and despite that I still feel as though I'm accidentally hitting spoilers for content I haven't seen yet despite being 90% of the way through the game's content.

If Animal Well looks interesting to you, you should play it sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the more you open yourself up to spoilers, and Animal Well isn't a game you should take for granted. Do yourself a favour, go in as blind as you can.