In a shock announcement at immediately’s Xbox Companion Preview showcase, Jason Gastow (aka videogamedunkey) popped in to announce that Animal Well is diving onto Xbox eventually, and it is out immediately.
If you happen to did not fairly perceive what Animal Well was from that trailer, that is probably by design. Animal Well is a puzzle platformer that hinges on secrets and techniques. Its preliminary marketing campaign, just a few hours lengthy, is a reasonably straight ahead expertise. However even in these first few hours, it shortly turns into apparently that there are dozens of hidden issues to seek out lurking within the partitions, corners, and “shadows” of Animal Well. Its developer has described it as having a number of “layers” of secrets and techniques, and a few of them get fairly wild. There’s even a puzzle that required the teamwork of not less than 50 group members to unravel.
As for why Dunkey was doing the announcement, Animal Well is the primary sport printed below the publishing label he began together with his spouse Leah Gastrow in 2022, Bigmode.
Animal Well launched earlier this yr for Nintendo Change, PlayStation, and PC, with Xbox as a notable omission. We gave it a 9/10 in our evaluation, calling it “a phenomenal, multi-layered puzzle field that’s each enjoyable to easily mess around with, and an utter delight to slowly crack open, secret by secret.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Yow will discover her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Bought a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.