In Animal Wall you play a small blob exploring an underground world visually and acoustically themed by all kinds of animal. The game has little to no story and lets you jump directly in exploring this mysterious world on your own. You can explore the different regions of the map in any order, there is full freedom to explore. However, at some point you will only be able to progress if you found one of the key items enhancing the abilities. For example, a disc can be thrown to activate more distant switches, a JoJo can be used to remove stone barriers and the bubble wand can be used to generate bubbles which can be used to jump upon to reach higher platforms.

Although there are enemies in the game the focus is to avoid them, and there is no combat. Mostly its about moving fast enough to not be hit or to scare them away by using firecrackers found along your way. Throughout most of the game you progress by solving puzzles which often require exact usage and timing of your special items. The variety and quality of this puzzles are excellent and the need for precise timing increases continuously throughout the game. Therefore, the learning curve and balance of challenges and rewards is excellently balanced.

As usual for Metroidvanias finding all hidden collectables is challenging in the complex world full of hidden rooms and ways. Unfortunately, the map view you can display is too small and more zooming options would have been appreciated. Still, it always helps to figure out where to go next and I never had moments in which I did not know where to go next. The flute item enables fast travel via animal heads located at different parts of the world. How exactly fast travel works is hidden in the world and not explained at all. Even so free exploration is appreciated a bit more hints here and there could have helped to understand how basic things work. This holds for fast travel as well as for usage of certain items.

There are several boss fights in the game. Mostly these are more complex puzzles formed around large animals. For example, you encounter a large chameleon, and you need to avoid being caught by his tong. Each of these bosses are uniquely designed and vary in term of how to beat them and difficulty level. Unfortunately for two bosses the developers decided to change things, including the final boss. These are not puzzles but chase sequence in which you must reach a certain point on the map or activate buttons. The chase goes through larger parts of the map and require perfect knowledge of the route and almost perfect execution for usage of items and platforming. As the game uses fixed screens and no side-scrolling and since there is no convenient way to switch items fast these bosses highlight the weaknesses of the game. Very often you will have to jump blind into the next screen or will make a mistake in selecting the right item. Overall, those chase sequence feel like a breaking point in the game design and can be frustrating. In contrast to similar gameplay elements like the EMI-encounters in Metroid Dread there is no way to hide away or stealth around.

Animal Well uses a 16-bit art-style with darker colors and a temperate soundtrack, putting emphasis of the sound of flora and fauna which makes up for a good part of the atmosphere. Despite the change of items, the rest of controls is crisp and precise, and I recommend to play the game using the four direction buttons instead of the analog stick as sometimes analog input were not taken precise enough. Animal Well delivers some of the best platforming and puzzles in last years. The complete lack of a story and the design decision to integrate chase sequence which reveal the technical weaknesses of the game and block its way to become one of the top Metroidvanias.