30MB>30G, this indie game has made countless people "loan" the best of the year
Recently, I was swiped by Animal Well, which has a 33MB package and has been developed for seven years, with the engine, soundtrack, level settings, and art all in the hands of the author. And it is such an indie game that has achieved a rating of over 90 points on station M, and it is the second indie game with a score of 90 this year (the other is "Joker"), and many big-budget games can only hope for it. The game has also received rave reviews on Steam, and in many reviews from players, "Animal Well" can be compared to top indie games such as "Star Frontier", "Tuinc", "FEZ", "Azure", etc., and it is no exaggeration to say that "Animal Well" can almost "loan" the best indie game of the year.
At first glance, "Animal Well" is undoubtedly a Metroidvania-like game, but it is difficult to summarize this game, unlike most combat-oriented and linear galactic-like games, "Animal Well" has almost no combat elements. In the game, we play as a small ball-like thing that wakes up in a huge underground labyrinth full of animals. "Where did it come from? Where to go? "The author does not deliberately include any explanatory text, nor does he tell you what your goal is. Soon after the game starts, players will be able to discover that the map route is very free, and all the mechanics have to be learned and summarized by the player on their own.
In other games, the task of guiding the player is often placed on NPCs, but the author is reluctant to do so. "A lot of games have tons of NPCs that are either standing there, showing off their animations, or they're just staring at you...... It always felt empty to me, and it might have brought the world to life, but it actually highlighted the shallowness and dullness of other places. ”
The author of the map is more willing to add various hints to the game, providing players with a "sense of epiphany" at all times, so that players can gradually get into the best situation. For example, although the game starts at a loss, we will move in the direction of animals, and when we find the map, four flames will be displayed on the map, and the player will be guided to explore......
I have to say that this weak guidance method is very in line with the tone of the puzzle game, and its concept is also implemented in the entire props and level design of "Animal Well". As you play, you'll unlock toys-like power-ups: frisbees, bubble sticks, yo-yos, and more will all play a vital role in your journey. Even without any instructions, you can discover their unique uses. For example, the original use of a frisbee may have been to trigger a distant trap. But you stumble upon a bounce when you hit a wall, and you instinctively think of its wonderful use when you see two traps.
In the following levels, there are several puppies blocking their way, and if they venture to rush over, they will definitely be bitten all over their bodies, but they only have frisbees in their hands,... Dog... Bite... Frisbee... Fly...... So we tried to throw the frisbee out, and the dog was really attracted to attention, and everything was so unexpected and reasonable. Or when you accidentally stand up and find that you can also move with it, the word "genius" can only pop up in your mind.
An item can obviously be used in multiple ways, and can be used in different ways in different puzzles: the yoyo can be used to clear the ground thorns and also illuminate dark areas; The Wonder Circle can be used to hold down the trap for a long time, and it can also lift the platform under your feet...... But that's not even the most genius design, and I was amazed that there wasn't a single solution to the same puzzle.
For example, when I got the bubble stick later, I passed the dog's level again, and at this time, "left foot on right foot" was able to fly directly over.
For example, there are at least 3 solutions here, one is to jump directly by moving position, but if you are not confident in your body, you can also blow bubbles and throw frisbees to make hedgehogs fall one after another.
This reuse of abilities breaks the inherent pattern of one-to-one correspondence between "lock" and "key" in traditional galaxy-like games. In other words, even the concept of "disorder-breaking", which is common in galactic games, is subverted, because Animal Well does not have a preset linear flow in terms of levels and maps as a whole. There is no "order", how can it be said that it is "broken".
Since the map is open-ended, the order in which players get the four main abilities is not fixed, and in countless levels, you can see all kinds of strange routes between players. Even some players who haven't even unlocked all the props can clear the game for a week, and they are both stunned and surprised after the community exchange
The surprise is that we found that "Animal Well" is hiding far deeper than we thought, the author has set up hidden "eggs" in various corners and "old six o'clock", and we still need to discover some hidden new items and new bosses. To be more precise, there are a total of 12 items, 64 eggs, and 4 rabbits waiting for the player to unveil them. How exaggerated is this, so far we have only introduced 4 kinds of props, and in a normal week, only one rabbit can be seen from beginning to end. The reason for the confusion is that even if you are told that there are so many more things, you may not be able to find them all. For example, the bubble blown out will be punctured by the hummingbird, and it is clear that the author does not want the player to use infinite jump in this diagram, but how to get up is another problem
In another picture, we passed by an unremarkable patch of grass, and if we didn't go to the community to find the answer, we might never know that there was a barcode hidden here.
What's even more exaggerated is that some of the puzzles also break through the dimensional wall, which can be directly connected to the player's printer and then output a rabbit's drawing. If you don't know, you really think you're playing a horror game.
I moved, I didn't play anyway, and when I stumbled upon a puzzle, a dark passage, an ability, we reflexively felt that every detail of the game—the sounds, the symbols, the animals playing in the background—seemed to mean something. On the extranet, someone has spent hundreds of hours searching for these hiding spots. On Discord, there are also thousands of players who are frantically discovering the secrets of the game, which already involves some elements of parallel reality puzzles.
This is because the author once said that there is also an ultimate puzzle hidden in the game, and this puzzle is not enough on its own, it also needs to be solved by utilizing game mechanics and exchanging information with other players.
While the game's ultimate puzzle was cracked less than a week after the game's release, there are a number of other secrets, such as an item called the "Cheat Ring" in the Fox and Snail Room. It is likely that the author left this room for those who unpack or cheat. When the author was asked if there was a legal way to get the item (no unpacking or cheating), the author replied "no comment".
It's hard to believe that a game with only 33MB can do this, even if it's just one week, its amazing design is already beyond the reach of other types of galactic games, and when playing multiple weeks, we still don't know what layer we are on as if we are in Inception, we can only say that there is a kind of beauty of NASA controlling the Apollo moon landing with a computer with a few kilobytes of memory.
The magical painting style is fascinating, but it is actually "hand-rubbed"? When it comes to indie games, especially small teams or single-player titles, we tend not to be too critical of the graphics. However, with a capacity of only 33MB, "Animal Well" presents players with a treacherous and charming visual feast. It blends pixel art, dynamic light and shadow, and CRT display effects to create a unique atmosphere that is both cute and dangerous, beautiful and unsettling.
Animal Well's art style is distinctly pixel art, but developer Billy Basso doesn't see it as pure nostalgia. He believes that pixel art is a natural style of the video game medium, which embraces the essence of pixel grids and inspires creativity in abstract forms.
To make pixel art more expressive, Basso uses a variety of rendering techniques from its own engine. Specifically, he leverages particle effects, procedural geometry, and fluid simulators to create impressive, dynamic visuals. For example, the water and smoke effects are not simple textures, but are generated in real-time by the fluid simulator, which adds a "magical electronic" flavor to the game.
Another impressive visual element is the scanline (CRT) effect. When turned on, the game runs as if it were running on an old-school CRT TV, creating a clean, transparent, and dreamlike atmosphere. In fact, the CRT display in Animal Wells is a projection of Billy's personal pursuit of retro games, and he has several CRT TVs in his home that accompanied him for most of his younger gaming years.
Basso felt that the approach taken by some pixel games that mimicked old-school CRT displays was too rough – "they would force the image to look terrible... Worst of all, they couldn't even align the scanlines correctly with the pixels. This idea led him to work meticulously on the development of a CRT mode specific to Animal Well, and instead of using simple filters, he used low-resolution rendering to faithfully reproduce the CRT display, striving to perfectly represent the retro game graphics he had in mind.
Finally, there's the horror and absurdity of the game itself. In the early days of the game, the author positioned it as a "survival horror game" and took some inspiration from similar games, such as not providing players with overpowered power.
Regarding the boss "Ghost Dog", which has made countless players feel aggressive and disobedient, the author said: "One of the most terrifying designs in horror games is the invincible nemesis character, who will stalk you on the map and jump in from off-screen. I had Tyrant in Resident Evil 2, Alien in Isolation, and Phanto in Super Mario Bros. 2. "The design philosophy behind it is actually to break the habitual associations of players.
As for the sense of absurdity that the game brings, Basso believes that Super Mario Bros. 2 also gave a lot of inspiration, such as the fact that turnips can be used to attack enemies and turn into rockets under certain circumstances; As well as the hawkbeak that appears at the end of the level, it even flies in the late stages and looks like a boss fight, and in Animal Wells we can see similar elements as well.
Miracles happen, but not many, Basso has had a passion for games since he was a child, and his childhood hobbies such as drawing, music, and building blocks have laid the foundation for later game development. Later, he was inspired by the documentary "Indie Game Movie" and decided to create his own game world.
Seven years ago, the prototype of Animal Wells began as a side-project for Basso, a playground for him to test out his quirky design ideas. However, he prefers to focus on optimization and the underlying technology rather than making games. For him, "Programming is like playing a game, even if it's performance optimization, you have a target number and it will keep giving you a score and let you know how well you're doing." He built the game engine from scratch in C++ to break away from some of the limitations of Unity and Unreal Engine, and based on that, he continued to polish the game's graphics, gameplay, and level design.
The game's path to exposure dates back to early 2021, when the addition of veteran game publisher Dan Adelman gave Basso a step onto the big stage. Drawing on his years of experience and connections in the gaming industry, Adelman began to promote Animal Well to all major platforms, media outlets, and well-known game streamers in a targeted manner. Animal Wells has since exhibited at E3, Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show, and Day of the Devs...... It has gained the attention of players and media from all over the world. Especially at the Tokyo Game Show, the game was recommended by PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida and attracted the attention of the "game donkey" couple, and the gears of fate also began to turn at this time.
Donkey had nearly 7.5 million followers on YouTubeAt the time, the game Donkey was preparing to form an independent game publishing company called BIGMODE. Because it was a new start, the company lacked a blockbuster title, and Animal Well, despite its quality, lacked the reach to reach more players. In this way, the two sides met by chance, and a complementary cooperative relationship began.
It is worth mentioning that although the release of BIGMODE was very successful, the author did not do market research when developing this game, and he did not know which game style would be more popular, and he simply did what he wanted to do. In the early days, he didn't want to find a publisher to get involved in his game, because he was worried that it would undermine his creative rights. Later, the donkey couple did participate in the creation of the game, but only played the game to give feedback in the same way that testers did. The only request made was to add more animals, which is actually in line with the author's idea.
Just imagine, if BIGMODE had been released with a different game, would Animal Well have been able to achieve today's popularity? If Basso hadn't met Dan and Donkey, would he have been where he is today? If it is not necessary, do not add substance, I believe in the cliché story that "gold always shines", and I also believe that "opportunities are always given to those who are prepared". There's never a shortage of wonders in the indie game industry, but Animal Wells certainly lives up to the word "miracle."
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