In a surprise announcement at today's Xbox Partner Preview showcase, Jason Gastow (aka videogamedunkey) popped in to announce that Animal Well is diving onto Xbox at last, and it's out today.
If you didn't quite understand what Animal Well was from that trailer, that's likely by design. Animal Well is a puzzle platformer that hinges on secrets. Its initial campaign, only a few hours long, is a fairly straight forward experience. But even in those first few hours, it quickly becomes apparently that there are dozens of hidden things to find lurking in the walls, corners, and "shadows" of Animal Well. Its developer has described it as having multiple "layers" of secrets, and some of them get pretty wild. There's even a puzzle that required the teamwork of at least 50 community members to solve.
As for why Dunkey was doing the announcement, Animal Well is the first game published under the publishing label he started with his wife Leah Gastrow in 2022, Bigmode.
Animal Well launched earlier this year for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and PC, with Xbox as a notable omission. We gave it a 9/10 in our review, calling it "a beautiful, multi-layered puzzle box that’s both fun to simply play around with, and an utter delight to slowly crack open, secret by secret."
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
