00:00:01.67 Dave Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. This is a video games deep dive review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it, and discuss. My guest today is a friend of the show, co-host of Geeks and Grounds podcast, organizer and host of Wholesome Games, and community manager for Ivy Road, as well as many, many other things around gaming world. And she's a friend to all the animals in your local well. Welcome to the show, Jenny Windom. 00:00:33.92 Jenny Hello, I'm so excited. And also that's really charming. I feel like a Disney princess a little bit. 00:00:38.76 Dave Exactly. Yeah. but Fits in with the, uh, the wholesome games thing, right? 00:00:43.31 Jenny Yeah. 00:00:43.43 Dave We're just going around befriending everything in the local Wells. 00:00:47.22 Jenny Yep, exactly. Yeah. Oh, I cannot wait to dive into this game with y'all. 00:00:48.74 Dave Yeah. 00:00:51.53 Dave Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's great to have you on the show and we have a wonderful game, ah something I've been excited about talking about. It's one of those games that just begs people to get together and share the stuff that you discover. ah That game today is Animal Well, which is a Metroidvania kind of puzzle game developed by Billy Basso and published by Bigmode in 2024. If this is your first time listening to the show, first of all, thank you for stopping by. Here's how spoilers work and especially important for this game here today. We're going to this is not like this game doesn't really have a story that can be spoiled. I don't think we'll we'll talk about that, but 00:01:29.09 Dave ah this game does have a lot of discoveries that can be spoiled so for the first portion of the episode we're going to go no spoiler we're not going to spoil all of the wonderful things that are down in the well uh we're going to keep it on like a surface level i'm going to try and you know do as many well puns as I can here, but a surface level ah kind of like that, that first layer of things that if you just picked up the game and played, you'll find that they're not huge secrets. 00:01:51.25 Jenny Haha. 00:01:59.45 Dave They're probably in the trailer stuff like that, but we will save those big discoveries for the spoiler section. So don't worry about being spoiled as always on the podcast. So what is Animal Well? If you don't know what the game is, we have some elevator pitches for you. I say this is a creative Metroidvania that asks the question, what if it was all exploration and no combat? 00:02:24.08 Jenny I love that. 00:02:24.18 Dave Jenny, what would you say? 00:02:25.85 Jenny ah I said, Animal Well is a layered cryptic luminescent exploration into how far you're willing to go to find secrets, even when those secrets may just be for secrets sake. 00:02:39.22 Dave Mm hmm. It does get to that point eventually, but by that time you're so deep into it that ah it almost doesn't matter, I think. 00:02:42.16 Jenny Yeah. 00:02:46.11 Jenny Mm hmm. And I honestly, I mean, I don't know if this is getting too far ahead, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. SoI realized I do love secrets and I love figuring puzzles out and having those light bulb moments. 00:02:53.32 Dave Mm hmm. 00:03:00.48 Dave Yeah, absolutely. Gamers love treats, and this game is full of treats. 00:03:03.28 Jenny Yep. 00:03:04.65 Dave ah I played this on PS5. I played it via PS Plus, where it, you know, depending on when you're listening to this, it might be there, it might not, but on release, it was on PS Plus. ah It took me eight hours to see the credits, and then ah last time I checked, I have about 16 hours, so I about doubled my play time hunting for secrets. Jenny, how about you? 00:03:26.28 Jenny Um, I primarily played on the Steam Deck and I think I was just over eight hours as well to see the first tier of credits. 00:03:33.34 Dave Mhmm. 00:03:36.36 Jenny Um, currently I'm at about 30 and I am actually still going. 00:03:38.98 Dave Mhmm. 00:03:41.74 Jenny Uh, I'm still, still deep within this journey. 00:03:45.42 Dave Yeah, yeah, I picked this, so like I beat this, I don't know, three, four, or five weeks ago, something like that.I kind of like devoured it when it first came out. I couldn't stop playing it. And then I picked it up a couple days ago just to refresh before recording and I just found myself continuing to play. Like it was just like, oh, I just found something weird and new. Okay, well, I better go investigate that, you know? So it got its hooks back in me. It is one of those for sure. 00:04:14.19 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:04:15.97 Dave So, uh, we always start the episode out by talking about our histories with the game. What got us interested in it? Uh, when did we first play it and stuff? Now we're recording this, you know, not long after release. Uh, but I think this is a game that you and I were both really excited about. And I think we even agreed to do this game for the podcast before it released. So what was it about Animal Well that drew you to it in the first place? 00:04:36.91 Jenny Yeah. 00:04:41.41 Jenny The visuals were this first and most striking thing about it to me. 00:04:44.04 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:04:45.90 Jenny um I really love that sort of CRT pixel-y, like crunchy pixel ah art. And what I loved about this is that a lot of games play with a lot of light. And I play a lot of cozier farming sim style games, which are often very pastel-y, very light colored. And so having something that was a really dark color palette, but with beautiful pops of luminescence and color and light, I just could not take my eyes off it. 00:05:15.97 Jenny So I knew from just the visuals right away that it was something I needed to play.And then I saw it and I got to meet the team, Billy and some of the other folks at PAX West. And they were absolutely lovely. And I got to try that demo at PAX and it hooked me in.I just couldn't, I stood there and looked at it for the longest time, even after I finished the demo. And what was interesting to me is thatand we know BigMode is the publisher for it. and It got picked up and Dunkey is the one who founded Big Mode. 00:05:51.70 Dave Mhm. 00:05:51.79 Jenny um For folks who aren't familiar, Dunkey is a content creator, like a YouTuber,streamer. like He does video game content creation. and so I admittedly was a little bit worried and skeptical because my job is video game marketing, a big big chunk of it is. 00:06:01.60 Dave Mhm. 00:06:07.76 Jenny and I was just like, what's going to happen when content creators go in and this is their focus now and this is what a lot of content creators are doing. So I was also really paying attention to this one, admittedly, because this was the first of a few games where it didn't fit a traditional publisher model in the sense that it was coming from like a games publisher. This was coming from a content creator who is very familiar with games, but, you know, hasn't published before. So I was also watching it from that perspective too. 00:06:36.02 Dave Right. 00:06:39.82 Dave Yeah, it's an interesting angle on it. And like I think I have a kind of similar origin to a lot of people where I had not heard of this until it was announced that Big Mode was publishing this, or Big Mode was starting, and this is the first game. And I was like, okay, I remember the reveal trailer is really weird, just them standing out like by a lake and stuff, talking. 00:06:55.95 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:07:03.64 Dave ah Billy Basso's doing the yo-yo and stuff in the background. 00:07:04.75 Jenny Yeah! 00:07:06.28 Dave And I'm like, what the fuck? and then they showed what the game looks like. And just like you, I went, oh, that looks like it looks familiar, but very different from all the other pixel art games out there. 00:07:20.05 Dave So that the visuals are super striking. 00:07:23.07 Dave um And then I got a chance to play the demo at PAX East in 2024 here. And I don't know if you had the same experience or if the demo was similar when you demoed it, but it was a 10 minute demo. And when it started ticking down, like 20 seconds left, I legitimately panicked. I was like, I can't, I want to keep playing. This can't, I can't be out of time. Like, I got to go stand in line again. Like, and that's when I knew like, this is something special. I'm going to have to play this one way or another ah right away. 00:07:54.89 Dave Because, you know, I demoed a lot of games at PAX East and I enjoyed a lot of them. None of them made me panic when the demo was over, though. This was the one. 00:08:03.73 Jenny Yeah. I think the demo was either very similar or it had a timer and I do remember seeing that timer countdown, just be like, no, but I just, I'm just so close. 00:08:13.05 Dave Yeah, yeah. 00:08:14.00 Jenny I want to go a little bit further. Um, yeah, it was, it was such a fun demo and it was really cool because yeah, I had never played anything. like this, where it was a Metroidvania, like you said, with your elevator pitch, there's no combat. And so you are fully just able to enjoy the space without being nervous. 00:08:29.67 Dave Hmm. 00:08:34.23 Jenny And that's always, for me like when I play Hollow Knight, for example, like there's always the edge of, okay, but you have to keep your eyes out. You have to be ready to fight,which we'll talk about later. I think there's moments in this game where you are a little bit, yeah, you are a little bit on edge. 00:08:46.86 Dave There's danger for sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was the feeling I got. It just came to my mind. It's like when I was a kid and I would like play demo kiosks like at Walmart, and then I'd like to have a great time. I remember playing Luigi's Mansion on one of these. 00:09:03.03 Jenny Oh yeah. 00:09:03.28 Dave And then my parents were like, okay, it's time to go. And I'm like, no, I don't wanna like, I don't wanna leave. 00:09:07.03 Jenny Mhm. 00:09:07.99 Dave I wanna keep playing Luigi's Mansion. It was that exact same type of feeling. 00:09:10.75 Jenny Mhm. 00:09:11.72 Dave So ah to get into our quick opening thoughts here at the beginning, one of the things that I remember about when the the big mode publisher reveal happened was people were very skeptical of it and i remember this quote and i don't know if it's real or not i can't find it but i remember a quote where, I don't know, it was reproduced that Dunkey had said something like, yes, I don't have experience publishing games, but I have lots of experience playing games and I know what good games look like. And a bunch of people are like, okay, dude, whatever. And I gotta say, I can't. Kind of think he's got, he's onto something here. This game is really great. Uh, it's easily one of my favorite games I played this year, whether it's from 2024 or not. I played lots of games from other years as Animal Well, still one of my favorites, uh, that promise of. 00:10:06.41 Dave really enticing you to explore, giving you rewards for exploring, rewarding your experimentation, and then all of these like wonderful aesthetic things too. 00:10:12.09 Jenny Mmhmm. Mmhmm. 00:10:16.74 Dave This is an absolute home run and like it feels like it came out of nowhere and it's like how's something this good just come out of nowhere like this. It's really astonishing to me how good this is and Like it's so creative and so different from other games in the genre that I like, I don't know. Sometimes you play a game and you're like, Oh, I didn't think there was room for something different like this, but apparently there was. And now I'm like, okay, what other creative swings are people going to take within these genres? 00:10:51.19 Dave So, uh, this is awesome. 00:10:52.15 Jenny Yeah. 00:10:52.61 Dave I love this. 00:10:54.22 Jenny Yeah. It's interesting too. I think I like huge props to Billy Basso because I think he's been primarily solo developing this over a period of seven years. 00:11:00.48 Dave Yeah. 00:11:06.08 Jenny So like he's been like, this has been his life for the better part of a decade. 00:11:10.11 Jenny So I am super happy that not only has it come out because that must feel incredible to finally have a game like this come out finally. but yeah the level of I think what I appreciate is the level of love that's very clear in this game for this kind of a r g ARG meta experience in addition to Metroidvanias and other puzzle games. 00:11:33.43 Jenny like As we play, there's so many nods to other games of the genre. in like the mechanics and the aesthetics. It just feels like a love letter to the genre to me as I am playing it and I think that's really really cool. 00:11:48.36 Dave Yeah. And like a different kind of love letter too. Cause it's not trying to copy things from the past either. 00:11:54.89 Dave It's not like, it's not like an axiom verge. That's like, Oh, you really love Metroid. So here's a game that will remind you a lot of Metroid. Cause it's, you know, looks and plays the same or something like that. Uh, this is not like that. So, but I agree with you that that love letter aspect of it is in there, but like within its own very unique take on this kind of game. 00:12:16.46 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:12:17.65 Dave Yeah. 00:12:17.63 Jenny Yeah. I also feel like if anyone is interested in Metroidvanias or puzzle games, like I feel like this year or the past couple of years, we've had games like Tunic come out. I recently, relatively recently finished Outer Wilds. 00:12:34.33 Dave Mm hmm. 00:12:34.92 Jenny And these are all games that really lean on trusting the player, trusting curiosity and the dedication of the player to unearth secrets in the world. I think these games all have very different components. But they all have this trust and I think if you're wanting to play a puzzle game and you're like, I don't know if I'm feeling like I think feeling smart enough is one of the common things I hear from folks like I don't know if I'm smart enough to play this game. 00:12:57.03 Dave Mm hmm. 00:13:02.01 Jenny I feel like Animal Well compared to some other games in this type of genre is relatively accessible,at least in its first layers. I think once you get maybe to some of the deeper elements, it gets really wild, butmore so perhaps than like Fez or Rain World, like some of these other games that maybe are its comparables, it has this accessibility where like you can probably be get to the first ending and do so without a guide if you're very determined and like 00:13:36.14 Jenny You stick with it, I think. 00:13:37.29 Dave Yeah, yeah, if you're curious, like curious more than smart, you'll definitely you'll definitely be able to get through it. 00:13:40.48 Jenny Exactly. Yeah. 00:13:44.12 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:13:44.22 Dave Like there's some tough sections, but it's not like the hardest game. And then your curiosity will be the thing that drives you through the rest of it, less so than, like you said, like, am I smart enough to beat Baba is you or something like that? 00:13:51.77 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:13:58.84 Jenny Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. 00:14:00.62 Dave So it's not like that kind of puzzle game. So ah we will put a pin in these various points and we'll listen to a bit of the music from Animal Well. 00:14:03.16 Jenny Yeah. 00:14:11.14 Dave We'll come back and do our traditional setup, even though you know normally we do a story setup, not so much in this game, but we will dive in properly after this music break. 00:14:23.37 Dave in Animal Well. It begins, you see an image of these four flames on the screen, they disappear one by one, and then ah your little Kirby looking bald dude, you look kind of like Kirby, little orange round little thing, ah you wake up and The game does not give you any words or directions on where to go, who you are, what you are, or what you should be doing. The only hint that you get is you see those flames disappear. Eventually you find a map and it will mark those four flames. So you have a target for where to go. And then in the process of getting out of the first couple of rooms, you'll see a couple of things like a ghostly squirrel. 00:15:09.39 Dave ah will run away when you catch or when you get up close to it. So you you know you're, okay, where are they going? Let me chase after them, see what's up.That is about it as far as the setup and the like tutorializing, at least things that are directly told to you or like strongly hinted at. This is a game that teaches you how to play by giving you stuff and just saying, okay, try it out, see what happens. 00:15:30.98 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:15:38.15 Dave And that extends to basically everything except for they do mark where those four flames are on the map. 00:15:45.42 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:15:46.86 Dave And that's like, that's it. They just kind of send you out into the world to explore. And I think this is one of those things that hooked me during the demo at PAX and will hook people that are just starting the game out too, because within those first couple minutes, You're going to find some items to use. You'll find some firecrackers in a room nearby. ah You're going to find a dangerous thing ah that you need to learn how to get past. You're going to find some secret exits, some hidden walls, stuff like that. And so the wheels start turning. You're like, oh, it's this kind of game. OK, well, I'm off. let me It's like Calvin Hobbs. Let's go exploring. 00:16:28.47 Jenny It's really incredible how, I'm amazed whenever games do this, where you know through the design of the game itself, no verbal instruction is needed, no written instruction is needed.It's always amazing to me how much I am able to pick up. like I'm always surprised. like I figured this out. How did they know I would figure this out? 00:16:51.39 Dave Yeah. 00:16:51.58 Jenny They set it up perfectly.Yeah, I think it's really interesting at the beginning of the game because Your character kind of hatches out of a flower or like blossoms out of a flower, which I think, again, story-wise, I'm not exactly sure what significance that holds, but it feels significant. 00:17:04.31 Dave Yeah. 00:17:13.14 Jenny um And I think also as you're exploring, what feels really interesting is the fact that you're in this really, it's caverns, but it's a really lush set of ecosystems. 00:17:26.12 Dave Yeah. 00:17:26.25 Jenny And I think that's one of the most striking things in terms of setting up the story environment.You immediately see that there are these plants that are hanging down from the cavern. There are flowers, ah some that you can pick up that give you health, some that act like firecrackers when you throw them. And there are just so many different creatures. like This is a really living, breathing ecosystem. And you can hear it in the sound design, too. like Oh, I love the sound design, because in some places of the game, you can just stand or sit.I don't know what blobs are doing. They don't have feet. But you can just pause and listen to the sounds. And there you'll hear birds chirping. 00:18:09.04 Jenny barks in the distance and it feels very living, which is very interesting because normally I wouldn't think of a cavern as a lush ecosystem. So that was really cool. 00:18:20.95 Dave Yeah, that sound design is really great. And that's probably one of the things that really gets you into the game right at the beginning is, you know, seeing how the game looks and hearing. Like you said, Lush is a great word to describe how everything sounds in here. You have all these animal sounds out in the distance. You've got birds and other critters and like what maybe sounds like an owl hooting in the distance. And it's just, it feels like a full ecosystem down here. 00:18:51.07 Dave um There's a room later in the game with some cats in it or some kittens. And my dog went nuts when he heard the cats in the game. 00:19:00.04 Jenny My cat was so bothered by that room. 00:19:04.24 Dave Yeah. 00:19:04.83 Jenny So funny. Yeah. So same. 00:19:07.28 Dave Yeah,there's a place where there's some dogs and they have great sound effects too. 00:19:11.82 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:19:12.04 Dave They're really goofy and fun. But all that, like ambient background noise, is really great. The dripping water too, you get that you know we're an underground type of feeling even though you don't see your character you know go down from the surface like an undertale or something like that. 00:19:21.04 Jenny yeah 00:19:31.29 Jenny mm hmm. 00:19:31.39 Dave like This is where you wake up, but you get the sense like we're in this dense, ah this populated, this like, you know, humid place in it. 00:19:42.19 Jenny Right. 00:19:42.45 Dave It all sets it up just through sound and of course visuals too. 00:19:46.10 Jenny Yeah. Well, and I think you brought up a really good question that immediately, at least story-wise, I found myself asking because my big thing is like, who am I? 00:19:57.62 Dave Yeah. 00:19:57.98 Jenny Because it's weird that, to me, it felt very weird. You're the only blob. like Amongst all these creatures as you're exploring, they're all more animal like, hence the Animal Well, but they're all more definitive creatures that you could name like out of a zoo or something and you are just blob, ah which I found fascinating. 00:20:13.12 Dave Yeah. 00:20:15.92 Jenny So the first question I had narratively was like, who am I? Who put me here?Why are we going for these four flames? And then, um, just who did this? Who's in charge here? Because there, as you explore, you see that in addition to the lushness of very natural things, what becomes really increasingly apparent is the presence of a lot of very man-made stuff. 00:20:30.69 Dave Yeah. 00:20:44.23 Jenny like and I would say, not unnatural in the sense that it shouldn't belong, but it shouldn't belong with nature. like There's a really interesting contrast. 00:20:50.35 Dave yeah Yeah, there's a whole lot of stuff that you come across that I won't name right now, but there is a lot that you come across where you're like, why is this here? like this is it's It's unnerving that it exists in this place. 00:21:00.96 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:21:06.30 Jenny Yeah! 00:21:06.50 Dave and that's a like There is a definite kind of...I don't want to say scary, but there is a spooky vibe to this game too, even though, you know, you're surrounded by mostly friendly or indifferent animals here. 00:21:23.04 Dave Like there's not a whole lot of enemies in here. 00:21:26.27 Dave Um, but there is like that vibe that there you're in like this lush place, but there's something unnatural about it, I think. 00:21:36.47 Jenny Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that is a perfect way to describe it. Like there's something even amidst all the nature, kind of unnatural going on. And I kind of got the feeling, okay, so when I have gone to the beach and I swim like in the ocean, for example,I am hyper aware that like, even though I may be snorkeling and having a great time, I don't belong here. 00:22:01.54 Dave Yeah. 00:22:01.79 Jenny Like, there is danger that could come up at any moment. And I felt an Animal Well captured a little bit of that feeling where I'm like, I'm here and I'm having a good time, but I don't think I belong here. And I feel like danger could happen at any moment. 00:22:18.05 Dave Yeah. 00:22:20.98 Dave And I mean, sometimes danger does happen. So there are, so I said like the game has like this spooky, not overtly scary vibe. 00:22:30.01 Dave Like this isn't Resident Evil 7 or something, but it is kind of, it's kind of spooky going around. 00:22:30.67 Jenny Right. 00:22:36.12 Dave You hear all these sounds. You don't know what's in the next room. There are some parts of the game that are legitimately scary. Like I think I could name 00:22:43.81 Jenny Oh yeah yes Yeah. 00:22:45.22 Dave you know three or four things off the top of my head that like got that panic in me when it happened. And I'm like, shit, shit, shit, how do I get out of this? like That definitely happens in this game. It's like a sneaky horror game in spots. 00:23:02.94 Jenny Oh my gosh. I feel I'm excited to compare what those spots are because I i i have very specifically yeah about three momentswhere my heart rate, if I had a monitor on, you would have seen the spike,which I think is really amazing because again, this game otherwise is so 00:23:07.18 Dave Yeah. 00:23:25.49 Jenny peaceful and cute. like when you seelike There are points in time when you see little critters like hiding in holes or just kind of walking around. and I love being able to see the critters just made me so happy. and you know Again, friend of the animals in the well, like definitely held true. 00:23:42.57 Dave Yeah. 00:23:45.75 Dave One of the first things you find is like, uh, really close to your starting room is a little burrow with a groundhog in it. 00:23:53.92 Dave And it's, it's looking at you and when you get closer, it retreats back into its burrow and stuff. 00:23:53.99 Jenny Yeah. 00:23:59.77 Dave Um, so like. You get the feeling that a lot of these animals like this is not a cohesive ecosystem that exists on Earth. It's kind of like a grab bag of just like whatever animals Billy Basso thought would be cool to put in the game, which I love. 00:24:15.19 Jenny Yeah. 00:24:15.25 Dave ah So like you'll go around and you'll see all these wonderful animals. 00:24:19.21 Jenny Mhmm. 00:24:19.67 Dave And again, most of them are either indifferent to you or they're afraid of you. They'll hide.or they'll just kind of chill. You can walk up next to them.I really want to shout out the pixel art for these animals because you have like this very high contrast between the black backgrounds and like this dark place that you're in, but the colors and like the pixels are really bright in comparison to other pixel art games. 00:24:54.38 Jenny Yeah! 00:24:54.80 Dave It reminded me of Lite Brite if you played with that when you were a kid or now, I don't know, but just like you have this black background and then these lights like it feels like every pixel on the screen has its own LED behind it. the way that it pops. And so when you have like these, you know, these beautiful ah pixel art sprites and animations for these animals that you find, like it's all really, really impressive when you come across it. 00:25:25.54 Jenny who And in the sake of staying spoiler free, I don't want to get too far into it, but I think that light-bright comparison is really interesting because we've already mentioned CRT references, light-bright, which was kind of an 80s, 90s reference. 00:25:39.29 Dave Yeah. 00:25:43.71 Jenny um A lot of the tools you get are also very toy-like. And again, I feel like, and maybe it's just my age and I'm placing it, but I felt like toys from like the 80s and 90s as a kid that I would play with. 00:25:47.96 Dave Mm-hmm, yeah. 00:25:57.07 Jenny And so again, there's this child-like something that this game is channeling.And again, it's quite interesting because there isn't a definitive narrative. So you're not getting a story like, oh, let's compare digital manmade created things and toys with nature. But there is this theme that happens consistently. 00:26:21.12 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. One other thing I think that's worth shouting out as being really excellent is, so I mentioned the sprites for the animals in the rooms that you go in. 00:26:34.14 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:26:35.28 Dave A lot of times they're just chilling. You'll walk in a room and there's you know ah some monkeys just hanging out.They might throw something at you, but otherwise they're chilling. 00:26:42.38 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:26:44.87 Dave um And as far as visual design goes, I love how the design of each room goes back layers and layers into the background. So you'll have some stuff in the foreground that you're interacting with. 00:27:00.93 Dave And then like it feels like there's a lot of depth to each room and each layer of depth is filled in with details. So like, those monkeys feel like they're a few layers back. And then behind the monkeys, there's more stuff. And that's like when, especially when we get in the spoiler section, we're gonna say the word layers a lot. 00:27:22.68 Jenny Yeah. 00:27:23.01 Dave We're bringing it up here to talk about the way that these rooms look too.Because I think that like, I don't know, a lot of games with a pixel art style don't necessarily feel like you're in these huge cavernous places. 00:27:39.36 Dave ah Maybe they're older and they couldn't really pull that off super well. 00:27:43.27 Dave But that's one of the things that Animal Well does really well I think is that it calls back to like your memories of older things like that, like super Metroid or something. 00:27:53.83 Dave But this is very obviously made with modern technology and it's not trying to hide that at all. And I think it's like, it's just like visually the music and stuff. 00:28:00.52 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:28:05.87 Dave It's all just so good. 00:28:07.77 Jenny Yeah, it's beautiful. I will admit, for me at least, especially the thirst the first 30 minutes to an hour of the game,I thought it was beautiful, but it did take me a little bit of practice in understanding what the game wanted me to read as important versus what the game wanted to like use as just extra detail to fill out the space. 00:28:24.58 Dave Mm. 00:28:29.85 Jenny So for anyone jumping in and feeling a bit overwhelmed visually. I think there's a little bit of an adjustment curvebecause there were some parts where I was like, oh, I thought this was a wall, but you actually could. It's just in the background. You can walk past it. 00:28:45.99 Dave Yeah. 00:28:46.62 Jenny So I think there were some elements that took me a little bit of getting used to as I was playing. But once I understood what the game wanted me to, ah at least, you know, in again, you have these like tiers and layers of understanding. You have this first layer of understanding where you're understanding, oh, these plants, you can move past these pillars. they're actually not blocking your way. Once you get that, you're fine. 00:29:11.45 Dave Yeah. 00:29:12.41 Jenny And then you start learning different levels of reading. Like I have gotten so good at being like, there's one pixel that's not showing up there. There might be a secret wall behind it, you know? 00:29:22.56 Dave who Yeah, there is a certain level of learning the game's language, I think, ah seeing what you should be poking at and what you know is unpassable or i'm not important in any way, ah just kind of there to look good. 00:29:23.10 Jenny So yeah, it's definitely practice, but yeah, no doubt this is a very beautiful game. 00:29:34.78 Jenny Yes. 00:29:44.66 Jenny Mhmm. 00:29:49.71 Dave One other thing to to shout out before we really dig into gameplay here is I think that musically, soundtrack-wise, it is a 00:29:55.86 Jenny Mhmm. 00:30:00.59 Dave a modest ah soundtrack I think it's it's staying in the background most of the time but when we talk about like the vibes of this game we talked about sound design already we talked about visuals the other piece of that is just this mostly ambient soundtrack in the background that is like the the last puzzle piece for creating this uh You I think you said like, seemingly friendly, but also kind of spooky type of vibe. It's a tough thing to pull off, I think. 00:30:31.01 Jenny who 00:30:33.60 Dave um But it's, you know, this soundtrack really sets it up like that. 00:30:37.96 Jenny Yeah. There's a level of detail. Again, it's like the amount of attention that is paid to every little detail in this game is what really impressed me. Um, because the more you listen, the more you realize a lot of the sound effects, and they're really good. 00:30:49.30 Dave Yeah. 00:30:55.58 Jenny They're reallyimmersive. You feel like you're a part of this world. You feel like the world is alive. Once you start getting familiar with the sounds much like the pixel art, I found, I started to understand what a lot of these sounds were indicating to me. 00:31:10.61 Dave Mm hmm. 00:31:10.63 Jenny And so what's really fun is once you start getting to know, okay, what's familiar, you really start to know what's not, and then what starts to jump out of place. And so I love that this game was really ah just smart, again, and how it utilized not only visual education, but auditory education. It made it a little bit tough, I will admit, because part of me was playing this while I was traveling, and my headphones weren't working on my steam deck because I forgot to charge them. 00:31:36.31 Dave Mm hmm. 00:31:40.99 Jenny And so playing this without sound felt, after having the sound, I felt like I was missing, like I was literally missing a sense, but it really felt like it was changing the gameplay for me. 00:31:47.36 Dave Oh, yeah. 00:31:51.41 Jenny cause it's like I don't know if I'm missing something. I'm sure I am.But yeah, this is one where you definitely want to have that volume up and you definitely want to start listening for things.Probably not in the first tier, but definitely when you get into like the secret stuff. 00:32:09.39 Dave Yeah, yeah it's ah yeah we'll we'll we'll revisit this. There's a lot going on. 00:32:15.12 Dave yeah And kind of the last thing to point out is I think that we talked a bit about how this game has some scary or unsettling moments and the music plays a big part in that. 00:32:30.79 Jenny Oh yeah. 00:32:31.29 Dave ah The main menu music is actually low key like really abrasive and weird. I hate had kind of forgotten about it until I booted it up the other day and I was like this is ah is interesting to get you started in this kind of 00:32:43.85 Jenny Mhmm. 00:32:45.80 Dave Set the mood I guess a little bit and then it kind of fades away to these more ambient sounds and then there's definitely parts in the game that get intense and the music is like Really really intense like huge contrast between intense moment and you know the the room before 00:32:50.21 Jenny Mhmm. 00:33:05.95 Jenny Yeah, I again, it's like this is a game of contrast. You have nature and then you have digital and I didn't even put it together. And I love that you said that where it's the sound itself for most of the game, you will be aware of that. drop of this ambient soundscape but you're not like super aware of it you know you're just aware that it's very pleasant it's guiding your play through but man when that music comes in when some of these scarier moment moments happen it's super impactful and again it's because that dichotomy 00:33:26.42 Dave Mm hmm. 00:33:39.24 Dave Yeah. Yep, exactly. And that's a good segue to listen to a bit more music. And when we come back, we will talk about what it's like to actually play Animal Well. 00:33:54.91 Dave So Animal Well is a Metroidvania, like we said before, super focused on exploration. There are puzzles to solve. There are many secrets to find. ah This is a game primarily, like if you made a list of the things that are important in this game, like secrets and discovery and exploration would be like the top three things on that list, even though they're basically the same thing. 00:34:16.15 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:34:16.21 Dave So ah there is no combat, like we talked about before. There are hostile animals. but you are not defeating them through conventional means. Even things that you pick up that seem like they could be used like a weapon, ah like one of the items that you get is a yoyo. You might think, oh, I mean, I hit people with Ness's yoyo in Super Smash Brothers. Not in this game. That's not how it works. ah You have to figure out how to get past everything. So hostile animals are their own little puzzle for how to just get past them, basically. 00:34:52.14 Jenny Okay. 00:34:53.00 Dave And those firecrackers that you pick up at the very beginning tutorialize this. ah They are not grenades that, you know, explode when you throw them at things. 00:35:05.02 Dave They are loud. They make big, bright explosions. 00:35:09.69 Dave They don't really hurt things. So firecrackers are a deterrent for a lot of not a lot for certain animals. So that's kind of like the game teaching you like this is the kind of game that we're talking about. So I know that in a lot of Metroidvanias, combat is like a huge part of it. You mentioned Hollow Knight before. like hall night I mean, in my opinion, it has an excellent combat system, but combat's a huge part of that game. 00:35:38.59 Jenny Oh yeah. 00:35:39.25 Dave Metroid, Blasphemous, you know some of my other favorites, Death's Gambit,Nine Souls that just came out recently as we're recovering or recording this. Those are like super focused on combat and to have a Metroidvania like this that is just, you know, it's kind of like disco Elysium. It's like, what if we made an RPG and just didn't have combat? It's better to have no combat than to have mediocre combat or something that doesn't fit with the rest of the vibe we're going for. 00:36:10.74 Dave Um, I really respect the decision here. 00:36:13.05 Dave What did you think about this? It's the trend for this kind of game. 00:36:18.87 Jenny I loved it. I mean, Hollow Knight's one of my favorite games of all time, but I'm not naturally proficient at combat, I would say. 00:36:29.41 Dave ah Yeah, yeah, I got you Mm 00:36:29.64 Jenny like It takes me a long time to get patterns.i am Bullheaded and so like if a game tells me I need to parry or I need to dodge I'm gonna do everything I can to just avoid that until the game really forces me to soI make combat hard for myself So I'm loving this idea of you know when you have a Metroidvania Which I always love just exploring the world in general i'm focusing on the exploration and having the idea of 00:37:02.75 Jenny familiarity being the focus. like You're going to get really familiar with every single room in this world. 00:37:08.49 Dave Mm hmm. 00:37:08.57 Jenny You're going to get really up close and personal.and What I thought was really cool is even though there's no combat,the fact that you can't fight kind of channels some horror elements to me and that there's a feeling of helplessness. 00:37:23.11 Dave Yeah. 00:37:26.44 Jenny And so I think even without combat, you can still create that really good tension and feeling of helplessness that a lot of horror games do intentionally when they just don't let you fight anyways and you just have to run.So I think that that was super effective for me and I loved it. i wish i'm I'm hoping more games explore thisthis type of 00:37:47.77 Dave Yeah. 00:37:49.67 Jenny framing, I guess. 00:37:51.23 Dave Yeah, ah Billy Basso lists survival horror as one of the big inspirations for this game. 00:37:56.42 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:37:57.02 Dave And I think I even think the game started out as more of a survival horror game than it turned out to be. 00:38:01.46 Jenny Oh, so good. 00:38:04.17 Dave So that you're spot on with that like that. the idea of disempowering you, still putting you in dangerous situations from time to time, but you can't fight back, you got to figure out something else ah is really interesting. 00:38:16.06 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:38:16.94 Dave You also hit on something here that I had not thought about, but you're exactly right. And when I think about Why cuz I love Metroidvanias one of my favorite genres of games and when I think about like the secret sauce and the thing that I like the most about them it is those moments where. Maybe I've picked up a new item, maybe I just got the double jump. And now I'm going back to all those places where I needed a double jump and I'm going to go collect the treasure or I'm going to find the new path forward or something like that. 00:38:43.03 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:38:47.84 Dave That feeling to me is like why I like the genre. If I could pick one thing, it's that. And this game is entirely that, basically. 00:38:56.12 Jenny Yeah. 00:38:59.90 Jenny Yeah, I think there's a thing I was taught in like marketing, which is that the secret to really good marketing is a mix of familiarity and novelty. And I think that's what exactly like you said, the Metroidvanias in general, 00:39:14.55 Dave Mm hmm. 00:39:19.60 Jenny do that really well because they force you to get very familiar with the space. 00:39:23.57 Dave Mm hmm. 00:39:23.83 Jenny um And then every so often they'll add a new skill, a new tool so that you can look at that space with fresh eyes. And it makes for really dense content and dense games. 00:39:35.05 Jenny And so I've recently been thinking a lot about Metroidvanias and time loops in particular. 00:39:40.09 Jenny And I realized that's why I love both of those genres is because it feels like Not only am I getting that sense of discovery and curiosity, but we're also just getting to see familiar places in a fresh light and feeling like you really understand it. I feel like I really understand some aspects of Animal Well. 00:40:01.83 Dave Yeah. 00:40:01.96 Jenny Still working on it, but I'm getting there. 00:40:04.28 Dave Yeah, yeah. the The thing I think that... puts Animal Well apart in that regard from others in the genre, is another Metroidvania might give you that fresh look on the places that you're familiar with by giving you a new ability that is used for very specific things, like a double jump or an air dash or something like that. 00:40:24.73 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:40:28.79 Dave It's just, I remember these places that had gaps I couldn't jump over before, now I can jump over them, so I'm gonna go back. 00:40:30.85 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:40:36.38 Dave um Animal Well's a little bit different because the items that you pick up in Animal Well, like some of them loosely map onto items that you'd pick up in another game like this, but there they're not exactly the same thing. So like your double jump equivalent is a bubble wand that you pick up and you blow bubbles, you can jump on top of it, but you can only blow one bubble at a time. So effectively it doubles your jump vertical, 00:41:05.24 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:41:06.33 Dave but it's not like there's a limit to it, right? 00:41:08.88 Jenny Right. 00:41:09.51 Dave So when you pick that up, then you can go do the double jump loop through the map or whatever, or it will help you get through the rest of that section. What Animal Well does though is, and I'm not gonna spoil it, but, or I'm not gonna spoil them, but there are other uses for the Bubble Wand that the game will not tutorialize for you. 00:41:26.08 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:41:29.15 Dave that you are rewarded for just being like, hey, I wonder if I can do this. And a lot of times the answer is yes. And it extends to the other items you pick up too. They all have one use that is basically tutorialized. And then they have two, three, four other uses that are not shown to you. But if you experiment, you'll figure some stuff out and you will then like, So like you get into this loop of going back through the map in Animal Well, you have not picked up any new items, but maybe you discovered new things about the items you have, and that's recontextualizing all the rooms for you. And it's like, I don't know, it's magical in that way. And it's nonlinear too, so you can go in any direction. You don't need to pick up one item before the next item. You can just kind of pick a direction and go. If you hit a place where you don't, 00:42:26.07 Dave know how to progress, you can leave and go somewhere else and come back later. And so like, you're just constantly learning more about how the world works, how your items work. And just you keep doing these loops through the map. And every time you go, you find something new. And it's just this feedback loop that just keeps you exploring. And that's why I beat this game in like six days after it came out, because I couldn't stop playing it. This is why. 00:42:51.61 Jenny Yeah, I think I am very much looking forward to seeing what order some of the things that happened for you, like what order you did the flames, what order you found some of the items, because in the conversations I've had with other folks who've played, some of our experiences, even again in that first level of like just finding the flames, very different. 00:43:02.40 Dave Mm hmm. 00:43:14.83 Jenny Like I think, and that's what's really amazing about this one, this title, is I think ah it's incredibly open. And, you know, I haven't played a ton of other similar games. I've been told, like, oh, you should play, I think it's called La Mulana. 00:43:32.25 Dave Yeah. 00:43:32.78 Jenny And everyone's like, if you love this, go play that, because that's like a next level of puzzle mastery and frustration. 00:43:39.43 Dave I heard that's like a game where you have to keep a notepad with you and stuff. 00:43:43.11 Jenny Yeah, well, I did the same for Animal Will here. I had this notepad, and I was like, I'm going to be taking all the notes. 00:43:48.20 Dave Nice. 00:43:50.88 Jenny Eventually, you unlock like this. You do get a map, and there's abilities to put down stamps, you know like most Metroidvanias. 00:43:54.99 Dave Mm hmm. 00:43:56.93 Jenny You get like the ability to take notes in there, which ends up looking like a horrible scrawl. like I couldn't read half of what I was putting in the game map. 00:44:05.47 Dave hahahaha 00:44:06.21 Jenny It was so bad. But yeah, this ability to cater maybe not intentionally to the game to how you play, but the game does adjust to your style and strategy as a player. And as a result, you can find different things at different points in time. And again, I'm just like, how do you design for something like that? That feels incredible to me that you could potentially think of most instances and paths players will take and still make the game 00:44:38.01 Jenny I think almost every area is accessible in some way, like every main area is accessible in some way with the use of a few of the basic tools. That's incredible. It's so good. 00:44:50.24 Dave Yep. Yeah, there's,like I said, it's nonlinear in the order that you do the flames. 00:44:57.15 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:44:57.53 Dave There's also potential for sequence breaking that, like, it's again, it's a game that rewards you for saying like, Hey, I wonder if I can pull this off with the stuff that I have. 00:45:00.15 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:45:08.51 Dave And if your logic is sound, this game will let you do it. So again, it's a super well-designed, really confident design too. 00:45:08.57 Jenny yeah 00:45:19.01 Dave Always love it when ah you know people are just like, yeah, people are probably gonna do some weird stuff and sequence break and do things that I didn't intend them to do, but apparently Billy Basso's super cool with that idea because this game's just full of stuff like that. 00:45:32.80 Jenny Yep. 00:45:35.95 Dave ah So all the people who, 00:45:36.80 Jenny Mhmm. 00:45:38.80 Dave I know that I really dig things like Tunic and Outer Wilds and all those other games that reward your curiosity and experimenting. 00:45:43.57 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:45:49.72 Dave Rainworld is another one of those that I personally just adore for that specific thing, among many other things. 00:45:51.59 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:45:57.10 Dave But ah people who are into that type of thing, like basically everyone latches on to what Animal Well is doing because Animal Well is giving you that same type of thing, but it's not required for you to be like that. Like you can just get the items, use the abilities and stuff in an order that makes sense, go get the four flames, go beat the game. You can do that, but there's like endless potential for other types of experimenting along the way, which is just super impressive to me. 00:46:23.16 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:46:30.99 Jenny Yeah, yeah, I agree. About two hours in,I was already imagining I am not a speedrunner, but I was imagining the kind of speedruns that this game has the potential to have. 00:46:40.20 Dave Mm hmm. 00:46:47.84 Jenny And I'm very excited to start seeing what people do in the speedrunning community around this game. 00:46:52.88 Dave Yeah. Yeah. And there's somerewards tied to beating the game very quickly. 00:46:57.63 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:46:59.46 Dave So yeah, it'd be interesting to see. We'll see this at GDQ anytime now, I feel like. So yeah, that'll be cool. 00:47:06.10 Jenny Yeah. 00:47:08.00 Dave um One other thing I want to mention, because this is something that I have thought about, because this is a game that ah There's a community solving aspect to it. It's a game where people will get together and share the discoveries that they made during the weeks after its release. We had a channel in my Discord server where people were just like, either getting help with specific puzzles or more often just being like, holy shit, I found this thing. What is this? Does anyone know what it is? And someone will chime in and be like, yeah, I found that too. 00:47:39.07 Dave Actually, this is what I think. And there's this community aspect to it too. 00:47:43.40 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:47:43.51 Dave And you mentioned ARG and some you know meta stuff like that too. And I had started to think like, okay, so is this a game where you had to be there? you know, when the ship sails, is this game still going to have a, you know, value for someone who plays this in 15 years when no one else is doing this stuff? And to me, the answer is definitely yes, because that core gameplay, the basics of it and how it just rewards you for being curious will still be there. 00:48:14.60 Jenny Yeah, I've also been wondering that too, ah interestingly, because in my own playthrough,I'm at, I believe I am at some of these puzzles where it can only really be solved if you are in a community of folks. And so at this point, I either need to just look stuff up orfind that community of people who are also in that same point. 00:48:32.26 Dave you 00:48:39.31 Jenny And so I think I don't want that to deter people because I do feel like, especially immediately after launch,it felt like there was a really sharp pendulum swing when I saw really good reviews for the game. People were super stoked, but then a lot of people were like, Well, I don't know maybe this is because all the people who like reviewed it well got to be in this discord together They got that prime experience Like I don't know if I can do that and I don't think I still think this is an incredibly strong game and one worth playing and that sense of discovery is still very achievable throughout everything I've currently played at least andYeah, I feel like this is still very worthwhile 00:49:05.41 Dave Yeah. 00:49:24.99 Dave Yeah, 100%. I agree with you. Like, that's the conclusion I came to too. It's that, like, you might miss out on, I don't know, three of the hundreds of secrets in the game by not being there right in the moment. 00:49:42.04 Dave But you still have an entire game's worth of things like experimenting and secret hunting and stuff that you can do all by yourself. Or, you know, if you need help with something, you can ask someone that played it or go look up specific things if you want.And, you know, I hope that years from now, there will still be people that want to band together and solve some of those community things together. 00:50:05.94 Jenny Mmhmm. Mmhmm. 00:50:07.16 Dave But if that's not the case, I really don't think you're missing out on the big important stuff. I think that no matter when you play this, this game has a ton to offer to you. 00:50:14.20 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:50:20.63 Dave If you're curious, if you're still curious and you want to dig in as much digging as you personally want to do. 00:50:27.47 Jenny Yeah, I feel like what's interesting is I feel like there have been other games where people have said that sentiment, one that came to mind a very different game. But Journey,there's an element to Journey where it's like, oh, well, 00:50:38.20 Dave Yeah. 00:50:41.73 Jenny I play it now am I going to get the same experience that people did when you know they first came out and there's there's a little bit of a co op element there that I won't spoil, just in case someone doesn't know butYeah, I feel like that hasn't deterred people from still enjoying Journey. Solike you said, I think you can find community and other people who are still actively trying to solve puzzles and enjoy Animal Well even beyond the launch. 00:51:01.70 Dave Yeah. 00:51:11.22 Jenny Yeah. 00:51:11.33 Dave Yeah. And that's a minor part of the game. Honestly, like that stuff. It gets a lot of attention because there's not a lot of games that do this kind of thing, but in the grand scheme of things and what Animal Well is, that is a very small part of it. And it's something that you could not do and still have the best time playing this. 00:51:30.41 Jenny whom 00:51:32.62 Dave So it's, you know, kind of unfortunate because the ship does sail on specific things like that, unless you really go hunt out 00:51:37.58 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:51:41.32 Dave a community of people that are doing it all for the first time. But it is, it's like a, I don't know, that criticism in particular, feels like it's ignoring everything else that the game does. 00:51:44.26 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:51:51.92 Jenny Right. 00:51:53.98 Dave And it's just like picking on one optional thing to just be like, well, I can't do this. So I don't even, is it worth it? Yes, it's still worth it. 00:52:01.87 Jenny Yeah, I thinkwhat's interesting is I had not a similar experience, but when I played Outer Wilds, I streamed it and I discovered this community because they came into my stream called the Interlopers and it's a reference to a thing in Outer Wilds. 00:52:17.35 Dave The comet. Yeah. 00:52:18.58 Jenny But it's a community of fans of the game who, you know, they've already played it. They've experienced a lot of its secrets. They have, you know, their own discord where they hang out and talk about all the stuff. And what they do is they seek out people who are experiencing it in general, but specifically for the first time. and go enjoy that experience for the first time with them. And they're very, what I loved about this community, they're wonderful folks. They were really good about not giving anything away, just enjoying that fresh experience. 00:52:49.20 Jenny And I feel like Animal Well has the potential to be a game like that where people, like if you're playing it and you are a content creator, people will come in and be like, oh, I'm not going to tell you anything. I just want to see you go through this together and like to have that experience again. 00:53:01.13 Dave Yeah. 00:53:03.71 Jenny So I think, this ishas that potential. I also read an article in I think it was an article in The Guardian where Billy mentioned that he wanted this game to be released in a complete form. So he was like, I'm not going to do DLC or expansion or anything like that. Everything that's going to be in the game is in the game. And he talked a lot about game preservation and how he wanted the game to feel like it was going to be preserved in this form and played in this form. 00:53:39.08 Jenny for decades beyond its launch. And so I think for that reason, his intention was this is going to be something that people enjoy long term. 00:53:47.02 Dave Yeah. 00:53:47.97 Jenny So I think that's very much like you said, a small gripe in the middle of a very big wave of very good things about this game. 00:53:55.78 Dave Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Sowhile we wrap up this non-spoiler section, we always will begin the wrap up part of this by answering the question, ah what type of person would you recommend play Animal Well? 00:54:14.35 Jenny I think the type of person who should play Animal Well is someone who enjoys the light bulb moment. 00:54:22.08 Dave Hmm. 00:54:22.38 Jenny So that aha feeling in games, if you enjoy feeling a little bit frustrated and okay, if you're feeling a little stumped, um, because you know, that payoff is going to feel great. Um, you don't have to be smart. You just have to be persistent and curious. I think that is the type of player who should play Animal Well. 00:54:40.82 Dave Yeah, 100% agree, ah somebody who likes to hunt for secrets, somebody who's curious about ah not only, you know, where have I not been yet, but how can I interact with the places I have been in new ways, people who are just. 00:54:45.11 Jenny Mhmm. 00:54:58.85 Dave always asking, can I do this? If you like games like that, if you like exploration, if you like, you know, if you love Metroidvanias, but like you're kind of put off by how a lot of the new ones seem to be souls like Metroidvanias, if you want something more on that exploration side of the genre than Animal Well is like a home run recommendation. 00:55:22.80 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:55:22.91 Dave I have you know i was thinking about it like, what what do I not like about it Animal Well? I can't really think of a whole lot. like There's a couple of you know, sections that I thought were a little bit frustrating. 00:55:34.93 Jenny Oh! 00:55:35.34 Dave Um, I didn't love the final boss, but it was over very quickly. And, uh, so like they're very minor things. 00:55:39.35 Jenny Okay. 00:55:42.85 Jenny Mm 00:55:43.02 Dave Like I don't like the final boss in a lot of games that I play. It's not, uh, it's not a deal breaker. 00:55:46.55 Jenny -hmm. 00:55:49.25 Dave And there, I don't think there are any real deal breakers here for me personally. Like if you need combat, then maybe find something else to play. But other than that, I think this appeals to, 00:55:57.69 Jenny Mm-hm. 00:56:01.70 Dave Like the, the joy that I think a lot of people are looking for when they play video games like you said the the light bulb moment Animal Well is like full of light bulb moments and light bulb moments within light bulb moments and stuff like that. 00:56:11.79 Jenny Mm-hm. 00:56:14.86 Dave It's a. I don't know, just as a real special game and I. You know, it released on ah May 9th, 2024, which like seven other incredible indie games all came out on that same day. 00:56:28.51 Jenny my god Yeah. 00:56:30.46 Dave So I hope that if people missed Animal Well because they were playing 1000xResist or ah Little Kitty, Big City, or one of the other games that came out on that day, I hope you go back and try it. I think it's definitely worth your time if what we've been talking about appeals to you. 00:56:48.40 Jenny Man, I forgot that May 9th was like the indie, I don't know what, indiepocalypse sounds bad. What's a good version of indiepocalypse? 00:56:56.68 Dave Yeah. 00:56:58.22 Jenny It was like the indie tsunami or something. 00:57:00.60 Dave Yeah. 00:57:00.68 Jenny I don't know. It doesn't sound much better, but oh yeah. 00:57:06.31 Dave Yeah. I was, um, I was thinking like it's the type of thing. Like if I made YouTube videos, maybe like in a couple of years, I would do a retrospective of like, did you know that like all of these fucking games came out on the same day? Like all of these indie games, animal, well, crow country, 1000xResist crypt master. 00:57:23.32 Jenny Yeah. 00:57:26.71 Dave There's a whole bunch of stuff. 00:57:27.80 Jenny It's a banger of a day, like all of them, good games. 00:57:29.18 Dave Uh, yeah. And we all had to like, well, I don't know. I don't say we all, but I had to pick what I was going to play and I picked Animal Well and I was not disappointed by it. 00:57:37.10 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:57:40.68 Dave And now I've gone back and played, you know, some of the other stuff. And I hope that other people will do the same thing. 00:57:43.84 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:57:46.11 Dave If you picked one of those other games, go back and play Animal Well. It's really good. 00:57:50.19 Jenny Yeah. 00:57:51.60 Dave So before we get into spoilers, we always do a bit of housekeeping and we'll kick off the housekeeping section by turning it over to you, Jenny, to talk about the many things that you do around gaming. ah We mentioned Geeks and Grounds earlier. We mentioned Ah Wholesome Games and we mentioned Ivy Road. And I know you've got other stuff around the industry too. So tell people what you do and where people can find you. 00:58:14.92 Jenny Yeah. Well, like you said, I do a fair number of things, but I think the passion project or where my heart really lies is with Geeks and Groundsbecause that's like a personal pet project where I actually come from a teaching background. 00:58:26.78 Dave Mm hmm. 00:58:28.78 Jenny And so one of my favorite things to do with my students was book clubs. And I was like, what if we did that, but with a video game, which, you know, origin story for so many podcasts. 00:58:39.39 Dave ah Yeah. 00:58:39.52 Jenny ButI decided why not take a spin, do a version of my own. And that's where Geeks and Grounds came in. And it essentially is a game of the month club where every month we take a game, we really deep dive into it as a community.I found also that, you know, I was rushing through games and I felt like I couldn't remember what I had been playing or like how it impacted me. And So I was like, you know what, maybe for one game a month, let's take it a little bit slower. And, you know, we're going to dedicate the entire month to just playing it, talking about it and enjoying materials around it, like movies that maybe tie in or books that tie in. And, um, occasionally we do interviews with developers. And so, um, if folks are interested, I think folks, honestly, like your podcast is a great, like 00:59:29.45 Jenny comparison partner with it because you do these deep dives as well and you really take time to not just talk about a game and move on, but really dig into what makes it really strong. 00:59:30.04 Dave Mhmm. Mhmm. 00:59:41.10 Jenny What are some of the critiques of it? And I think folks who enjoy this probably would enjoy hanging out with us on Geeks & Grounds too. 00:59:49.70 Dave Mm hmm. 00:59:50.50 Jenny um So yeah, geeksandgrounds.com. That's where you can find everything about it. And then I also create content under the handle Kimchica. So you can find me on like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and that's just under Kimchica. 01:00:02.78 Dave Yeah,Geeks and Grounds is a wonderful new discovery for me in the last several months.And like you said, the book club, but it is the book club that will do multiple episodes as you work through the game. No spoilers for things beyond the things that you're talking about on that day, like 01:00:21.07 Jenny Mm 01:00:21.93 Dave real book club style like I could say that Tales from the Backlog is a book club but it's like okay you got you know you have one week until Final Fantasy 16 you're gonna play the whole thing in one week no you're not but ah Geeks and Grounds is one that you could play along with 01:00:37.21 Dave Uh, so recently, um, some games that have been on tales from the backlog of people want to go and do that real week by week book club style, uh, stuff like 1000xResist and Gris and a little game that I love that I don't see people doing podcasts about, OneShot. Um, really love that game. 01:00:56.56 Jenny yes Oh my gosh. 01:00:58.26 Dave Yeah. 01:00:58.52 Jenny Have you, I haven't, cause I've been, it's funny, tales from the backlog. I have a backlog that I've been listening to where I'm picking episodes from tales of the backlog and listening to, um, you have a OneShot episode. 01:01:10.11 Dave I don't because I started the podcast and I played OneShot. I wrote up an outline and everything. And then like, it was very early on. So I didn't know a whole lot of people, but I couldn't find a guest. 01:01:20.05 Jenny Yeah. 01:01:21.13 Dave So I didn't do it. 01:01:21.24 Jenny oh I mean, if you ever want to do a OneShot episode, I could totally talk about that game. 01:01:22.65 Dave I might have to revisit it. 01:01:26.36 Dave There we go. Yeah, I really like that one. And then you, as we're recording this, by the time people hear this, it will be over. But I am looking forward to your Citizen Sleeper coverage because I love that game. 01:01:40.44 Jenny Mm hmm. 01:01:43.42 Dave Andthere is a lot to discuss. so 01:01:46.19 Jenny Yeah, I'm very excited. 01:01:47.49 Jenny It's been cool. Like I think what's been really nice too is it's, it has forced me to take games a little bit slower and pay attention to things. 01:01:50.02 Dave Mm hmm. 01:01:55.83 Jenny And, um, honestly, what's been great is community members are bringing up stuff that I would have never put together and ever noticed. And so it's like a real testament to this idea of you, you get from media. What you have experienced you can look at it through your own lens, but other people are gonna have other experiences that inform how they Take in whatever media and it's just really fun to hear the conversations that we're having. So yeah, it's great . I love it. 01:02:25.66 Dave Yeah. 01:02:26.80 Jenny it's been a passion project of mine that I like started actually a few years ago stopped because I was too busy and I started it back up again last year andyeah I hope to continue for a very long time I'm 01:02:40.39 Dave Well, yeah, I hope it continues too, cause I'm having a good time ah listening along. ah Yeah, so I will give the recommendation for everyone to check out Geeks and Grounds and I'll throw a link down in the show notes so people can find that easily and listen along, join the conversation. 01:02:45.31 Jenny honored 01:02:57.94 Dave And of course, you know, check out wholesome games and stuff like that. Lots of good games being showcased there too. ah So lots of good stuff, again, You're doing a lot around the industry and a lot of good work. 01:03:11.18 Jenny yeah 01:03:12.73 Dave So we will try to send people your way. 01:03:13.52 Jenny Thank you. Oh, I appreciate it. 01:03:18.95 Dave All right, so now ah time to talk about myself for a minute, but if ah people want to support this podcast, if you've enjoyed what you've listened to, consider, you know, of course, subscribing so you'll hear the next one, but also you can join the Discord server and join the conversation about the games that we're playing and discussing.Animal Well is a good one. If you missed the concurrent discussion about Animal Well, you wanna hop on the Discord server and talk because we had a lot of people playing it. ah Hop in and talk and you know tell everybody about the discoveries that you made. it's ah It's a fun game to share the things that you found. And then of course, it is a full community, not just people talking about the podcast. So video games, talk about what's going on in your life, share pictures of your pets, stuff that you're cooking, all of that stuff. We have a great group of people there. 01:04:08.49 Dave ah So there's an invite link down in the show notes for the Discord server. Also, you will find a link to my other podcast. It is called a top three podcast. We do the top three lists. It is a comedy show, so a very different vibe to this show. ah and let's see yes you can leave a rating and review if you've enjoyed this that will help people find this episode and that's what we want and last but not least if you want to support monetarily patreon.com/realdavejackson is the place and you'll be able to vote in polls for what games i do on the show you'll get bonus episodes and a bunch of other treats so 01:04:48.53 Dave That is the whole spiel. We're going to take a break and when we come back it's full spoiler time for Animal Well. 01:06:32.25 Dave Okay, Jenny and I are back in its full spoiler time for Animal Well. This is not going to be a linear walk through everything that happens and what we discovered.The spoiler gloves are all the way off. So we might spoil like very, very deep secrets that I didn't even discover myself in the next couple of minutes. So ah please be mindful of that. Go play Animal Well if you want to avoid all of that. 01:07:08.53 Dave but we are in the spoiler section. So let's go. And ah first of all, the first thing I just want to say is that I held this back, but like, I don't know if I needed to hold this back earlier, but better safe than sorry. I think so there's layers to the secrets, right? And there's like, I think there's like four or five commonly agreed upon layers to the secrets. 01:07:31.64 Jenny Mmhmm. 01:07:31.85 Dave You've got like, the layer with the flames, you've got the eggs, you've got the bunnies, you've got all the shit that's after the bunnies, and then like maybe there's something deeper after that. What I think is great is that while you're doing the first layer with the flames, you'll find a bunch of eggs. And then you'll notice you keep getting rewards for eggs and you'll notice that you didn't find them all. So you'll be hopefully curious and inspired to go search for eggs. 01:08:05.65 Dave While you're on the hunt to find all the eggs, you will find at least one bunny. There's one that's in plain sight in the game. 01:08:12.91 Jenny Mm-hmm. 01:08:13.86 Dave And there's, I only found two bunnies, by the way. 01:08:18.14 Jenny Same. I've only found two so far. 01:08:19.82 Dave OkaySo, So, But you'll, when you're doing the egg hunt, you'll find a bunny in plain sight and you'll get an achievement, a pop-up that says like found a bunny. And then you'll be like, Oh, okay. There's probably more bunnies. And then when you get on the hunt for more bunnies, you will just keep finding more weird stuff hidden around the map. And the way that I like. 01:08:45.17 Dave Billy set this up where when you're in one layer, you'll find stuff from the next layer down and you keep following that pattern all the way down. I think this is amazing to just inspire people to keep digging. 01:08:55.27 Jenny yeah 01:08:59.37 Jenny Yeah, I again, when I said in the elevator pitch, I was like, secrets for secret sales, ah secrets sake. That's not I don't think that's a bad thing. Again, I love secrets. I love feeling smart. 01:09:12.34 Dave Yeah. 01:09:14.87 Jenny I love the light bulb moment. And so for a game I think I have these layers where as a player, I can also decide. I can say like, hey, you know what? Layer one, the four flames, getting the credits, like that felt good to me. I can stop. That's great. 01:09:29.62 Dave Mm-hmm Yep 01:09:30.39 Jenny um For me, I was like that, but I still have eggs to hunt. So of course I'm going to do layer two. And I knew, and because I'm talking with friends, I knew there was going to be like bunnies to find, but I had only found two. I have only found two. and now that I found eggs, I'm just like, I mean, I might as well. And so this idea of just allowing people to say yes and to a game and have stuff there for them, I think is just so fun. 01:09:52.48 Dave yes 01:10:00.95 Jenny And again, I think one of the things that I would normally critique in a game is, oh, I wish there was a narrative to tie it all together. And I think we can talk more about 01:10:10.88 Dave Yeah. 01:10:12.64 Jenny the lore of the game I think there's some really good lore I don't think you know there's not really a narrative narrativeand again it's weird because normally that would be a bit of a ding for me but but in this game it's not simply because the secrets are so fun with how layered they are so yeah I think you hit the nail on the head there 01:10:33.88 Dave I think that, again, I agree with you. I'm not bothered by the lack of a narrative at all. And I think the reason I'm not bothered by it here is because it's so clear from the beginning that there is not a narrative driving you forward. 01:10:47.55 Jenny Mmhmm. 01:10:48.24 Dave You never get any shred of love, this is why I'm here. This is why I'm going after the flames. Nothing. 01:10:57.61 Jenny Mmhmm. 01:10:57.66 Dave So you have no expectation of that being fulfilled, I think. And if, if you need a story, then that lack might be, like you said, a ding, but for me personally, I would rather have nothing at all than a story that's, you know, underbaked or something like that. So the fact that like I'm within the first hour of the game, I'm like, okay, no story. Cool. We're off. You know, that's fine with me. 01:11:23.93 Jenny Mm-hmm. Yeah. 01:11:25.52 Dave So, um, how many eggs did you find? Did you get all of them? 01:11:30.02 Jenny Um, I am very close. I have, um, 73 eggs. 01:11:35.59 Dave What the, I thought there was that's more than I thought was possible. 01:11:37.47 Jenny Or wait, no, sorry. Sorry. No, not 70. 01:11:39.52 Dave Okay. 01:11:40.10 Jenny No, sorry. 53. Sorry. 01:11:41.99 Dave 53. Okay. That makes what you, I was going to say like, Oh, it goes even deeper than I, okay. 01:11:43.85 Jenny Uh, yeah. No, no, no, no. 53. 01:11:49.26 Dave But the fact that I thought it was possible should tell you something about this game here. 01:11:52.13 Jenny No, yeah, no, sorry. There's no layer four or five, or I don't know where we're at. 01:11:56.10 Dave Extra eggs. 01:11:57.62 Jenny um No, I think I'm at the point where I have to look at a guide now,because I feel like I've exhausted every egg. 01:11:57.67 Dave Yeah. 01:12:02.77 Dave Yeah. 01:12:06.72 Jenny Because I think, from what I've seen, there's like 64? 01:12:10.86 Dave 64. 01:12:11.18 Jenny 60? 01:12:11.77 Dave Yeah. 01:12:11.96 Jenny OK, yeah. So yeah, I'm not, I was really hoping I could get all the eggs, but there are a couple where I'm like, I just, I feel likeI've heard other people say, I'm calling this out because I've had multiple friends tell me egg 14 for them. They were like, egg 14 couldn't figure it out by myself. And I'm like, I'm going to figure it out. Egg 14. I have not. So I think I may have to join and look, look it up at some point. 01:12:35.68 Dave Oh. 01:12:38.96 Dave Yeah, so I got 46 by myself, no guides. 01:12:42.64 Jenny Nice. 01:12:43.47 Dave um Well, not totally by myself. People in the Discord server would help if I post a screenshot, like, I don't know what's going on in this room. 01:12:50.74 Jenny Mm hmm. 01:12:51.01 Dave People were really good about giving a hint that's not the solution. And that helped out with probably several of them, but I got 46. 01:12:58.30 Jenny Yeah. 01:13:00.26 Dave I did like three or four passes through the map and just came up with nothing extra. 01:13:03.56 Jenny Mm 01:13:05.70 Dave So I'm at that point too, where it's like, 01:13:07.62 Jenny hmm. 01:13:08.21 Dave I could go look up the rest of the eggs, but then I would just be following a guide to unlock the eggs. If I'm going to do that, I might as well just watch it on YouTube at that point. So that's what I did. 01:13:17.97 Jenny Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm most nervous about. 01:13:19.20 Dave um 01:13:21.03 Jenny And I think why I have avoided looking stuff up for so longis because I think once you just have a map of where specific objects are, it becomes less of a, I don't know, it's just like, okay, you just have to walk to the spot, essentially. 01:13:38.22 Dave Yeah, it's like all the mystery and all the exploration is gone. And like, I'm very pro looking at guides, I do it in almost every game that I play. 01:13:46.63 Jenny Same. 01:13:48.73 Dave But for this one in particular, like the entire thing is about 01:13:48.70 Jenny Same. 01:13:53.48 Dave the discovery. And I feel like once that barrier is broken, I will not do any of my own exploring anymore. 01:13:58.05 Jenny Mmhmm. 01:14:00.31 Dave So that's where I stopped.Two bunnies that I found were the one that you see, of course, I got that one. 01:14:06.88 Jenny Yep. 01:14:08.36 Dave And then I got the one for doing the mural, which I looked up the answer to. 01:14:12.55 Jenny I haven't gotten the mural. I got one, I believe, with the crows. 01:14:18.29 Dave Oh, okay. 01:14:18.52 Jenny um There's a bunny that you can get with the crows if I'm remembering them. 01:14:21.79 Dave What do you have to do with the crows? Do you remember? 01:14:24.04 Jenny Yes. So gosh, if I'm remembering correctly, there is a room in the green area with ah crows that are kind of in a three by three with the center blank. And so what I did was because the crows are making noise and they go in a very specific order. And so I sat there and I tried to play the order on my flute and that revealed an area that had a bunny. 01:14:48.93 Dave Okay. 01:14:49.44 Jenny And that was actually my first bunny. 01:14:49.92 Dave Gotcha. 01:14:51.75 Jenny The one you could see took me a bit to actually get to because I couldn't figure it out. 01:14:54.99 Dave Yeah, you need an item to unlock a door to get to it, I think. 01:14:58.33 Jenny Yep. 01:15:00.23 Dave A lot of music puzzles when you get deeper down. And I guess if we were, if this was like a full spoiler cast, I might've mentioned that in a thing that I don't love. 01:15:04.88 Jenny Yeah. 01:15:12.07 Dave I don't love the number of music puzzles just cause like, I'm not particularly inspired to figure out music puzzles.The one with the cats was about as difficult as I wanted to do. And I couldn't find the code for the third cat anyway. So. 01:15:28.63 Jenny Okay. 01:15:29.69 Dave um Yeah, anything more than that, I'm kind of like, I don't really I don't know. But there's a lot of music puzzles later on. 01:15:35.03 Jenny Yeah. There are a lot of music puzzles.And again, this was the hard part, because when, again, I was on the plane, that was at the point where I was primarily egg hunting. I had rolled credits on the first level of the game. 01:15:51.04 Dave Oh, yeah. 01:15:51.74 Jenny And so as I was egg hunting, I was like, man, I know I know that I'm missing out on puzzles, because at this point, it's not about looking for the flames. It's about paying attention to all of the little details.But yeah, I will say one of the joys, though, which we didn't get to talk about earlier, was the fact that relatively early on, I got the flute and teleportation. 01:16:14.17 Dave Mhm. 01:16:16.21 Jenny And the fact that the game gives you that pretty quickly and in the game itself,at least during my playthrough, saved me so much time.Being able to use teleportation was a gift. and I appreciated that. 01:16:29.96 Dave Oh, yeah. And yeah, it gives you that flute really early on. 01:16:36.27 Jenny Mmhmm. 01:16:36.33 Dave And you I think like the only thing that it really hints you at is like you can play the flute to unlock those fast travel tubes. 01:16:45.65 Jenny Mmhmm. 01:16:47.04 Dave That's about it. And then you have like this wonderful fast travel that will warp you back to the main fast travel hub room. 01:16:51.35 Jenny Mmhmm. 01:16:58.32 Dave But it doesn't tell you about it. The only way you'll figure it out is in the room under the big fast travel hub room, there's a fish doing this weird little thing in the water. 01:17:07.73 Jenny Yeah. 01:17:07.82 Dave And I sat there for a while looking at that fish being like, that fish is really weird. There's gotta be something going on. Why is it like, why is it upside down? And then like, that's one of those light bulb moments where you're like, okay, let me try to play this, you know, whatever it is, up, up, down, down. 01:17:19.34 Jenny Mhmm. 01:17:26.49 Dave whatever on the flute. And then it's like so sudden when you warp to like the first time that it happened like startled me because it's so it's like whap and then you're suddenly in another room. 01:17:30.58 Jenny Oh man. Yeah! 01:17:39.44 Jenny It's really, it's so good.I will say in terms of finding tools, I did not find the bubble wand until like my second flame. So I was going hard mode and like some of these jumps, I don't know how I did it. 01:17:52.28 Dave Ooh. 01:17:57.40 Jenny Like there's one jump in particular where I think I was using the Frisbee. essentially in places where the bubble wand was supposed to be used in ways to try and get like the double jump. Um, so it was, I was playing on hard mode, I think for like the first section of the game. And once I got the bubble wand, I was like, Oh my God, no wonder everyone's like already at credits. 01:18:17.62 Dave Hmm. 01:18:22.93 Jenny Cause the first like, 01:18:23.68 Dave Yeah. 01:18:25.69 Jenny honestly, probably four hours, five hours of my playthrough was like without bubble wand, struggle bussing. 01:18:30.34 Dave Hmm. 01:18:32.84 Jenny And then the rest of it was cake. You could cheese it, which we should talk about the bubble wand and some of the hacks with or not hacks, but strategies you could do. 01:18:38.57 Dave Yeah. 01:18:41.02 Dave Yeah. 01:18:43.44 Dave Yeah, those things that they're there the whole time and the game is, it's not it's not withholding it from you. 01:18:46.32 Jenny Mm hmm. 01:18:50.08 Dave It's just, you know, you've got to figure out that you can chain those bubbles and infinite jumps for yourself. 01:18:50.34 Jenny yeah 01:18:56.72 Jenny God. 01:18:56.92 Dave And it was one of those things where it was like, this is like the perfect example for what we talked about earlier. 01:19:02.99 Jenny Mm-hmm. 01:19:03.45 Dave These items have one very obvious use. You blow the bubble, you jump on top of it, and now you can get to that higher place. 01:19:09.63 Jenny Mm-hmm. 01:19:12.22 Dave But the bubble wand can also be used as an elevator to go down slowly so you can take stock of like these new rooms in these vertical shafts. 01:19:22.01 Dave ah And then there's that thing where if you press the shoot bubble and jump at the same time, you will jump on top of the bubble you just shot out. and normally you can only have one bubble out at a time, but if you're landing on top of the bubble, you just blew, it doesn't matter. 01:19:38.62 Jenny Yup. 01:19:38.70 Dave So that was one of those things where it was like, a friend of mine, shout out to Juliet, she gave me like the tiniest hint that like, hey, there might be more to that bubble one. I've been fucking around and I think I can do some cool stuff. And I was like, hmm, okay, let me fuck around. And then I found it and I was like, oh my God, I can go anywhere. And this is here the whole time Billy Basso obviously knew that this is a possibility, but just that confidence to be like, yeah, if you figure it out, you can go anywhere. 01:20:00.60 Jenny Yeah! 01:20:11.53 Dave Have fun. 01:20:11.60 Jenny Yeah. Yeah. Just go ahead and use it. Yeah. I found it by pure luck because I was panicking from something. I was panicking at something and I can't quite remember what, but I was spamming the buttons essentially cause I wasn't thinking. I was just like, Oh, let me do this. And I found it just happened by accident that I jumped onto a bubble as I blew the bubble. And there was a moment and I like, I remember because I fell into water or died or something and then I was just like, wait a second, what did I just do? 01:20:44.95 Dave yeah 01:20:45.14 Jenny And I was able to replicate it and it was the best feeling ever. I will say I haven't gotten the hang of it because a friend of mine was telling me, because I can do it where you're moving primarily horizontally or you can kind of make your way up. But I have, I struggle with the pure vertical version of that. 01:21:00.70 Dave Yeah. 01:21:02.20 Jenny I have a friend who can jump vertically because I think with the bubble wand you have to have a bit of room so the bubble doesn't hit a wall and pop or hit a plant and pop. 01:21:09.19 Dave Yeah. Mm-hmm. 01:21:12.71 Jenny He can do it vertically and not have to have any horizontal movement. It's incredible. I have not gotten the timing down. I can kind of just hover in place and not gain any ground, but it was really amazing watching him play and just like move up. 01:21:29.87 Jenny So he truly unlocked a next level strategy with the bubble wand that I have not been able to replicate. 01:21:30.09 Dave Oh. 01:21:36.56 Dave That's, uh, that's, that's crazy. I didn't even know you could do that. Like, I think you can shoot a bubble under you when you jump, but yeah. 01:21:39.85 Jenny Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah, it's like the timing, I think it's not the same time, like when you're moving more horizontally. 01:21:49.77 Dave Mm hmm. 01:21:49.99 Jenny Um, there's a little bit of a, like a desync in terms of when you blow the bubble and when you jump, but he can, he does it where he likes to gain little bits of ground up, which is so cool to watch. 01:22:01.30 Dave Yeah, that's crazy. Cause there are those like very tight vertical shafts where they're obviously like, okay, you're not going to do your fucking bubble trick here, but yeah, that's, that's super cool. 01:22:06.08 Jenny Mm-hmm. 01:22:09.83 Jenny Yeah. 01:22:12.88 Jenny Mm-hmm. 01:22:13.03 Dave Um, so that was a really fun discovery to find. Um, I'm curious, we talked about this earlier about the scary spots, those parts that, uh, that spooked you. 01:22:20.33 Jenny a no 01:22:22.65 Dave So give me one. 01:22:24.18 Jenny The first one that truly got me was the ostrich. 01:22:29.33 Dave Oh yeah. 01:22:29.33 Jenny um just this ostrich is one of the like guardians of the flame that you encounter.all right No, it's actually not a guardian. It's just like a sub, I don't know, boss. I don't even know what to call it. 01:22:41.54 Dave Yeah, just like a mini boss, I think. 01:22:42.46 Jenny Just like a mini boss. But you're walking around and this ostrich,you know it's got scary music and so it's like, okay, I get it. I'm supposed to hide from the ostrich as it's like pecking around. I go and you have these little nooks that you can go underneath this area's ground so you can like have a little hiding spot. I'm thinking, oh, this is great. I'm hiding from the ostrich. Its head comes down and it goes at a right angle and it finds you if you are not far enough in the corner or if you move and make sounds. 01:23:08.49 Dave yeah yeah 01:23:18.11 Jenny Terrified me. I was so scared of that ostrich for a while. So that was my first scary moment no Yeah It's so scary 01:23:22.23 Dave And it. Yeah, I think that was probably the first for me, too. And like part of it, too, is that it doesn't attack you when you're down there. It just gets its face right up next to yours and just squawks in your face like real loud and you're like, oh, my God, please leave. ah So one of the first ones for me is like a continuation of this because I think the ostrich is close enough to the starting zone that a lot of people will find it pretty early on. 01:23:51.47 Jenny Mm-hmm. 01:23:51.59 Dave And that's the one that teaches you. I can hide underground. And then when you go up to the dog area, there's a couple rooms where there's a dog and you have to go underground to avoid it. 01:23:55.68 Jenny Yep. 01:23:58.19 Jenny Oh! 01:24:04.43 Dave And then you get to a third room and there's a dog and you're like, all right, you're here whatever, I'm going underground, smell you later. 01:24:11.47 Jenny It's 01:24:11.96 Dave And it follows you down there. And it's like, it's horrifying. 01:24:15.15 Jenny terrifying! 01:24:16.82 Dave And it's just like ah just like a wiener dog or something like that. but 01:24:19.84 Jenny Yeah, I love wiener dogs. I'm like, this is one of my favorite kinds of dogs. I was like, that's so cute. 01:24:25.42 Dave Yeah. 01:24:25.65 Jenny Yeah, watching its little body wind up and down that like little cavern. Oh my gosh, heart attack. 01:24:32.93 Dave yeah and that was probably one of the most panicked moments for me in the whole game. 01:24:33.94 Jenny It was great. 01:24:39.98 Dave Because you have to go through this little maze down there to get it out the other side. 01:24:42.70 Jenny Mm-hmm. 01:24:44.16 Dave And it's like, I don't know, kind of difficult to get through it. And all the while you've got this like pursuer snaking its way through this burrow and it's ah real creepy. 01:24:54.27 Jenny Yeah. Yeah. 01:24:55.62 Dave um 01:24:55.63 Jenny Even if you know the direction you're going, I found that in those panic moments for me, at least, um, because so many of these jumps are at 90 degree angles and you kind of have to hit like there's a level, it's not like precision platforming, but there's a level of precision you need to like make some of these tight corner movements. 01:25:07.05 Dave Yeah. 01:25:17.23 Jenny And, uh, yeah, when I started panicking, that was not happening at all. 01:25:22.16 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. It was definitely a panic moment. Um, side note, other scary stuff in a second, but side note, when you realize that you can throw the Frisbee and have it bounce to get the dogs distracted and they just jump up and they bark at the Frisbee like idiots. 01:25:38.93 Jenny So cute. 01:25:39.17 Dave I like to laugh out loud. It was so good. I love it. 01:25:41.54 Jenny Same. I loved that detail where it was like, again, it's this idea of you're using toys. And so being able to have dogs play with the toy, you know, specifically the Frisbee, I thought was so smart and fun. 01:25:56.75 Dave Yeah. 01:25:57.45 Jenny um It took me a little bit to understand that you can't let them catch the Frisbee. They need to be distracted by it. 01:26:05.46 Dave Yeah. But just this infinite loop of the Frisbee going over their heads and them jumping up and barking at it. 01:26:07.15 Jenny home 01:26:10.91 Jenny Yeah. 01:26:12.07 Dave Their bark sound effects are so dumb and lovable. 01:26:17.26 Jenny and Really quick other side note, layers here. 01:26:17.31 Dave I love it.Yeah. 01:26:22.66 Jenny um What I also found very interesting about the visuals, and I still, I'm in the midst of my bunny hunting, egg hunting, so perhaps it'll be illuminated later, but 01:26:22.98 Dave Yeah. 01:26:34.80 Jenny I think the fidelity of the animals is really interesting because some animals are super detailed and very realistic looking , and I think specifically like the dogs have some of the most interesting variation because some of the dogs are more. abstract, I would say, than others. 01:26:54.53 Dave Yeah. 01:26:55.07 Jenny And some are more cartoony than others, especially once you get closer to the Manticore area. Um, so I don't know what it means, but it's another level of like, what is, what are we, what are we seeing here? What is this place? Cause it's sort of this fever dreamish, abstract representation, but some of it's re yeah, I don't know. I don't know if you noticed that or if you have any insight there. 01:27:17.39 Dave Yeah, what? 01:27:20.76 Dave For sure, because like you know the wiener dog we talked about, it's you know it's brown, it looks like a regular dog. 01:27:24.61 Jenny Mm-hm. 01:27:27.45 Dave The dogs that are jumping up to catch the frisbee, like there's a room with three of them in it, and this is how you have to get past it. They're blue, like they're ghosts almost. 01:27:36.65 Jenny Uh-huh. 01:27:38.12 Dave So ah that was weird. There's also like an actual ghost and the next thing that scares the shit out of me is when you take the disc out of that altar and that big ghost, which we debated on the Discord server. Is this a cat or a dog, Jenny? 01:27:54.34 Jenny I thought it was, I've been calling it ghost dog simply because it's in the realm of all the other dogs. 01:27:57.42 Dave Okay. It's in the dog zone, yeah. 01:27:59.67 Jenny So I was like, yeah, I was like, this is this dog house over here. so 01:28:04.22 Dave Yeah, I, it looks like a cat to me and part of me will never admit defeat, but I get it. It's probably a dog. I, I'm aware. Uh, but when you take that discount and this ghost appears and you know, jump scares you, but you're like, okay, whatever every other animal in the game, I can just run to the next room and it will be fine. 01:28:25.36 Jenny Mhmm. 01:28:25.47 Dave Not this one. It will follow you the whole way. And this is one of those big things that got brought up. Everybody who played the game in our Discord server came in talking about this moment in particular and how to solve this puzzle because 01:28:40.30 Jenny Mhmm. 01:28:43.51 Dave I feel like solving it, and I don't feel it. Definitely, to solve it, you have to give up and go explore. 01:28:48.86 Jenny Mhmm. 01:28:50.73 Dave And eventually you'll find the place where you're supposed to take that disc. And then it's a matter of executing, platforming, doing some quick puzzles to get up there without this thing catching you. Because it will pursue you indefinitely across the entire map. 01:29:06.60 Jenny Yep. 01:29:06.77 Dave And this was a fun puzzle to figure out. like What do I do with this? Because I can't just live the rest of my life with this thing chasing me. 01:29:15.18 Jenny Yeah, I'm curious what, what ended up being your solution to that puzzle? 01:29:21.22 Dave Uh, for me, I had already unlocked and discovered how to use fast travel. So I quickly traveled up to the place closest to where the disc was supposed to go. 01:29:31.85 Jenny Mm-hmm. 01:29:32.47 Dave And that is it doesn't like to give you a big head start or anything. It catches up immediately to you, but it cuts your journey in half. 01:29:40.91 Jenny Mmhmm. 01:29:41.14 Dave So I know there were people in the discord server that did the entire thing without fast traveling. So hats off to them. 01:29:47.17 Jenny That is impressive. 01:29:48.64 Dave Yeah. 01:29:48.61 Jenny Like kudos. The true gamers over there. 01:29:51.17 Dave yeah for 01:29:51.33 Jenny Wow. 01:29:52.72 Jenny For real. Yeah. I also, you know, I should have been a little bit more wise and just fast traveled directly to, I think it's the bearhead that you're like fast traveling to. I don't know if this is real, but I went, because the disc area that you need to deposit is sort of in the upper mid quadrant of the map, I would say. 01:30:15.49 Dave Yeah, for real. 01:30:17.25 Jenny I quickly traveled to the ah fast travel hub, which is on the lower left-hand side. And in my head, I'm like, oh, if this dog is technically like actually getting tracked and traveling, maybe I can buy myself more time by sending it over here and then fast traveling over there. I don't know if it actually worked, but I was able to successfully do it. So however it did, it worked. 00:01:35.59 Jenny um So yeah, it made me again, it made me feel smart, even though maybe that made absolutely no difference in how the ghost dog chased me. ah But yeah, but that puzzle took mebecause I forgot that I had the flute for a little bit. 00:01:09.70 Dave Yeah. 00:01:51.44 Jenny So I tried to run without fast travel. And thank goodness I remembered the flute because I don't think I could have done it. So kudos to everyone in your community again. 00:01:27.52 Dave Yeah, everyone who did that, it's, uh, it's really impressive because there's a lot of rooms that you have to go through. 00:02:06.66 Jenny I know. 00:01:33.21 Dave And like a lot of the rooms, like the, the, I keep wanting to call it the cat, the cat, the dog will, it will just kind of float around. Like it doesn't like beeline right for you, but you can't mess up too bad on the path. 00:02:20.34 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:01:48.83 Dave And there's this one room. 00:02:27.96 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:01:52.57 Dave After you fast travel, I think it's the next one on the right from the bare place where you come out, where there's these three blocks that you have to hit a switch, the blocks will rise up and you can jump to the other side. And the third one, I just had a lot of trouble with that. So that was the one where it was like, I, if I can get this, then I'm good. And there's also like a room close to where you put the disc. There's a door that you can use one of your like disposable keys to unlock the door and it makes it way easier to get through there. 00:02:25.16 Dave So I'm glad I did that.So yeah, that was ah one of the things that scared me when it first popped out. 00:03:07.80 Jenny Mhmm. 00:02:33.67 Dave But then one of I think one of this game's most famous puzzles, I would say how to just how to get through this. So that was, it was fun to figure out I had a good time. 00:03:19.18 Jenny Yeah. 00:03:22.41 Jenny Yeah. And I think it was one of those, again, going back to the idea of feeling like you are so familiar with a place that you can feel like you have this really good sense of confidence in how to navigate it. Like I remember even after I figured it out, I was like, Oh, I should use my fast travel and see if I can distract the dog and then, you know, fast travel there. and I did a few dry runs where I was practicing. Um, and it's just, again, I don't do that in games. It's not something that I typically would 00:03:17.50 Dave Hmm. 00:03:53.19 Jenny be excited about, but I was really excited to do it because I was like, oh, this is going to show that I really understand how this game works and how this area works. And I know exactly how to optimize my jumps and timing and everything. So it felt really, really good. 00:03:33.46 Dave Yeah. 00:04:08.99 Jenny Um, I did have one more scary moment, and this was probably the area where I got, I wouldn't say frustrated, but it gave me the most trouble. 00:03:36.86 Dave Yeah. 00:04:18.80 Jenny And that's actually the final boss in your first run, first level of beating the game. And that's like the Manticore. 00:03:49.82 Dave The Manticore. Yeah. 00:04:27.69 Jenny The first time the Manticore's like spidery leg came onto the screen and you see this dark shadow and terrifying face peek in. 00:04:02.09 Dave Yeah. 00:04:40.06 Jenny I panicked so hard. I was like running in circles around myself, realizing I could just hop down essentially. 00:04:49.61 Jenny And then it had laser eyes, which was really difficult for me. 00:04:16.97 Dave Yeah. Unexpectedly. 00:04:20.94 Dave Yeah. ah Yeah. And the music is intense during this ah this final encounter, too. 00:05:00.22 Jenny Yes. 00:04:27.47 Dave um I did not like this. I think it's like it's a really creepy and cool design for a monster. 00:05:09.85 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:04:34.51 Dave And the music is, you know, like I said, it's going nuts back there. But I didn't like the process of how to get past it. 00:05:17.77 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:04:42.70 Dave Going through and hitting all of these switches and not only taking several attempts to map out a route, but then taking several attempts to get it right. 00:05:25.19 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:04:55.24 Dave ah The one thing that I think saves it and feels like it was something that might have been added a little bit later was there's a lot of fireworks. And like Every switch that you hit, you'll pick up some firecrackers. 00:05:42.92 Jenny Mhm. 00:05:07.75 Dave And firecrackers will buy you just a couple of seconds to jump down somewhere and get started on the next part of the process. 00:05:53.20 Jenny Yeah. 00:05:17.80 Dave I think if there was like half the number of fireworks in there, I would have gotten legitimately mad during this. As it was, I was just pretty frustrated. 00:06:00.56 Jenny yeah 00:06:03.76 Jenny I think, yeah, it was just,I mean, again, I acknowledge and I am known to panic in these moments and it really is not beneficial. Like in this encounter specifically, it's like if you cannot effectively confidently jump, you just need to hide from the lasers and I just never took that to heart in the way I should have. 00:05:55.33 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:06:31.25 Jenny Even as a player, I'm like yelling at myself in my head like hide and my fingers would just do whatever they wanted to do. 00:06:01.68 Dave Yeah. Yeah. Your fingers are button mashing. 00:06:03.96 Dave i but i've been there. Yeah. 00:06:41.28 Jenny Yeah, it's my natural state and I try to fight it as best as I can. 00:06:10.37 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:06:46.49 Jenny um But yeah, it was just so intense. And I think this combination of the puzzles right before the manticore I thought were wonderful because there's this element in the puzzles right before that boss encounter where you are using the slinky or jumping down, you're using the frisbee, you got to get you know you're using the bubble wand to jump back up and you're using that to solve all the switches that to me was like oh my gosh this feels like like the final test i am graduating i'm using these tools back to back and switching them and they're all in the same room that felt so good and then it did feel just. 00:06:32.33 Dave Yeah. 00:07:24.15 Jenny Like, I almost wish the boss encounter was closer to the previous room's experience than what it was, simply because it wasmore, again, I use the word frustrating loosely, but it was more frustrating than, like, empowering to play for me. 00:07:07.24 Dave Yeah, the rooms before it were definitely the final exam for the more traditional puzzles. 00:07:48.80 Jenny Yeah. 00:07:13.41 Dave The figure out what items to use, what timings to throw them out, and be in the right place at the right time. 00:07:56.12 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:07:20.85 Dave I just realized we didn't talk about the more traditional puzzles at all yet.And that's what they are. 00:08:01.20 Jenny Yeah. 00:07:27.23 Dave It's a lot like, you have these items, they have very specific uses for the puzzles. but it's a lot like figuring out the sequence, the timing, and then you set this like a Rube Goldberg machine up with your slinky going down and your disc flying across the room. And you set this up and then you get to the right place at the right time so you can sneak through this door before it closes, stuff like that.And I like those for the most part in the base game. And then I liked the final challenge because with most of those puzzles, 00:08:03.58 Dave The worst thing that's gonna happen is you are not there when you should be and you just go back and try it again. 00:08:44.05 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:08:10.65 Dave Most of them don't die or anything if I remember right. 00:08:48.03 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:08:14.78 Dave But then with the Manticore, then we get back into like, we get back into boss runs and like there's a couple of there's a couple of those puzzles on the way from the phone to the Manticore where you have to like rotate the crank and like do that whole thing and like as I'm in i'm frustrated by 00:08:57.73 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:08:33.58 Dave You know, I got lashed to death or something like that. Now I got to do this crank and I got to jump through the door and do this whole thing. And it's like, I just think I'm kind of over boss runs as a concept, but I agree with you. 00:09:20.36 Jenny listen 00:08:47.09 Dave The stuff right before Manticore felt like a good final test of those types of puzzles. And then you get the final exam of like, okay, how do you execute under pressure? 00:09:29.75 Jenny and thing 00:08:59.62 Dave Let's go. It's panic time. 00:09:37.09 Jenny like kind I know I'm not good. Why must you do this again? 00:09:04.16 Dave Yeah. But eventually we get it.And it's the ending. It's like the quote, the first ending. 00:09:15.04 Dave When you go down and you hit thatTNT and all the fireworks go off, it's visually really, really trippy and cool. I took a bunch of screenshots. 00:09:57.91 Jenny So cool. Yeah. 00:09:23.63 Dave I really enjoyed that. And also a little cathartic. 00:10:00.55 Jenny It's beautiful. It is. And it's interesting because again, it's like, there's a, there's a lot of lore. I hesitate. I don't want to call it a story, but there's a lot of lore. in this world and like things do have rules and history so I think what's really interesting is like we know in this area there are a lot of like generally there are creatures in the higher levels of the well that don't enjoy the fireworks or light but there are also creatures who don't mind it. 00:09:54.46 Dave Hmm. 00:10:31.84 Jenny um down in these lower levels, they all are like very much creatures of the dark. like You feel like they don't like light. they and They're super averse to the firecrackers. So seeing this, like again, I'm like, who put this TNT here? 00:10:12.15 Dave Yeah. 00:10:47.90 Jenny Why is this here? And who likes why we are doing this to this manticore? um 00:10:20.82 Dave Yeah. 00:10:57.98 Jenny just a lot of questions, but then you get a key and this is where the things go just off the wall for me. 00:10:24.10 Dave yeah Yep. 00:10:29.70 Dave This, yeah, this is so like, we mentioned briefly, non-spoiler section, we talked about this weird juxtaposition of like this lush, natural environment, and then these man made things that don't seem to fit perfectly well, but nothing stands out more than after you beat the manticore, 00:11:20.52 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:10:50.64 Dave and you unlock the door and you walk into your house and it's like there's a tv and a couch and there's posters on the wall and there's uh the little big mode uh mascot stuffed animal in there and it's like what the what and then you go in the next room and there's a giant cuckoo clock and so you thought like okay i beat the game but then the but then the game is like okay so you beat the final boss but like 00:11:38.87 Jenny yeah 00:11:42.11 Jenny Right? 00:11:19.24 Dave You didn't beat this game. We're going to present you with the weirdest mysteries. Like if you're, I guess I can get, if someone likes to beat that and they're like, okay, uh, this is weird. 00:12:05.39 Jenny Mhm. 00:11:31.50 Dave I don't understand it, but I'm finished. I guess I would get that. 00:12:08.91 Jenny Mhm. 00:11:34.47 Dave But me, I saw this house and this clock and I was like, I guess I got to keep playing and figure out what this is. Now, spoiler, I never did figure out what that was, but I was inspired to keep going. 00:12:17.24 Jenny Yeah. The clock? Yeah, I think and I'm the same way where I think, you know, I've i've talked to some folks who are like, yeah, I beat the first layer. I've found all the flames, defeated the Manticore. I know there's more, but I'm okay. I'm cool.I also was like you where For me, the thought that I had as soon as I saw that like the bedroom, office room area was, OK, the game's now really beginning. 00:12:52.94 Jenny like this is This is the real Animal Well to me. 00:12:17.63 Dave yeah The real Animal Well starts here. but 00:12:57.82 Jenny um This is where we're really going to start digging deep.Yeah, and again, this is like this weird juxtaposition and this specifically this idea of childhood and of digital. 00:13:16.42 Jenny toys specifically or just like toys and digital content like childhood combined with this idea of natureis really, really fascinating to me. 00:12:42.51 Dave Yeah. 00:13:27.32 Jenny And I don't know what is being said or if there's anything being said or if it's maybe just a fever dream. And Billy is just like, I like these things and I'm going to put them in a game. That's it. 00:13:02.58 Dave Yeah. 00:13:38.81 Jenny ah It's not that deep. Maybe that's what it is. But I feel like there's more and I am also still in the journey of uncovering it.The clock was fascinating because it was driving me up the wall because as you play, now you know it's like every hour,you hear the sound of like a cuckoo clock chiming. 00:13:19.86 Dave Yeah. 00:14:00.74 Jenny And I was like, where is this dang clock? It's like It was driving me so up the wall. I was so frustrated cause I was like, I'm feeling like I get, I'm getting most of the map, but I am, there's no clock. I have seen nothing in the way of a cook clock. And so finally seeing it at the end of the game was a level of catharsis love, like, okay, at least this answers that question before we add like 50 more. 00:13:41.00 Dave Mm hmm. 00:13:50.62 Dave Yeah. Yep. I don't know why, but I was surprised to see a physical clock down here. Like, I mean, it's huge. 00:14:34.18 Jenny Hmm. 00:14:00.81 Dave There's no reason it should be here if you think this is a real place at all. 00:14:39.89 Jenny Right. 00:14:05.76 Dave Like why? But for some reason, I just kind of thought like this is a weird sound effect that plays every now and then. 00:14:42.59 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:14:13.31 Dave but I didn't expect a giant clock. And so that, like you said, it just opens up all these other questions like, okay, what happens if I'm here when it strikes midnight? Which I timed out and I went down and waited for it. 00:14:58.71 Jenny Right. 00:15:01.41 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:14:26.47 Dave Kind of disappointing, nothing happens, nothing interesting.Maybe I don't have the right items for it. There's a bunch of symbols and stuff on the clock that I just maybe don't understand. 00:14:38.04 Dave But one thing I like too is you, 00:14:43.77 Dave You get to the clock, you get to the house. The house has another locked door in it. So there's a new mystery to go hunt for, try and find that key.And then next to the clock in a little hidden path, which by this point you should be able to identify, like that's not a real wall. 00:15:34.96 Jenny Mmhmm. Mmhmm. 00:15:02.94 Dave I can walk right through that. 00:15:39.99 Jenny Right. 00:15:04.55 Dave um There's a, I think it's a squirrel in there that has a stopwatch that shows your playtime. So I was like, okay, this is important. Otherwise they wouldn't show this to me. 00:15:50.02 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:15:14.70 Dave So that was interesting. Um, I never found that key though. I don't know what's in the house. 00:15:56.04 Jenny Same. I have not found that key yet. I'm going to continue. This is a game that I'm definitely continuing in.Yeah. And I think, again, there are certain animals that I feel like have a significance to them. Obviously bunnies, we know that collecting bunnies is part of a layer in this game. 00:15:39.19 Dave Mm hmm. 00:16:19.31 Jenny um The squirrel is also really interesting to me. I don't know if it's simply meant to act as a guide or if it's meant to do anything else deeper within this game, but it doesn't... 00:15:50.35 Dave Mm hmm. 00:16:32.52 Jenny I'm not um. We start the game by seeing a squirrel and following it at a couple of key points. Like I think most notably before, right before the seahorse guardian, or I don't know if it's a seahorse, it's kind of a seahorse-y looking thing. 00:16:14.97 Dave yeah yeah 00:16:50.52 Jenny Um, the one that was shooting the bubble water, um, the squirrel is there. 00:16:17.32 Dave yeah yeah 00:16:55.37 Jenny So we see the squirrel at key points as well. also at the end of the game with a stopwatch. And so I'm like, what does squirrel mean? Or is it just a squirrel? Because Billy likes squirrels. I don't know. 00:16:32.33 Dave Yeah, actually,I might be misquoting this, so apologies if so, but ah Billy Basso did a Reddit AMA and someone asked a question like that was like, why animals? What's the significance? And he might just be you know joking too, but he just said, I think animals are cool. That's why that's why it's animals. So, you know, he might be being coy, but yeah. 00:17:30.64 Jenny Oh, Billy. Are you sure? 00:16:59.24 Dave Um, I did definitely notice the theme of all the childhood things, all the weapons, weapons, all the items you pick up, the bubble wand, the frisbee, a top, a remote control, um, firecrackers, all kids toys, basically. 00:17:40.87 Jenny h 00:17:48.44 Jenny Yeah. 00:17:53.82 Jenny yeah 00:17:18.50 Dave Um, I did definitely notice that and I thought that was like I feel like there has to be something there even if the answer is just this is a child's imagination come to life as a video game world. 00:18:08.78 Jenny Mm. 00:17:36.09 Dave A child looking into a well and seeing like 00:18:11.66 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:17:40.55 Dave what could be down there? And then this is the answer to that. And all these, if you, if you imagine, you know, a little kid like Ness or something like decked out with all your toys out in the yard and they are somewhere and you see a well and you're like, we'll go down there and go on an adventure and see what's at the bottom of that well. 00:18:32.84 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:17:58.17 Dave And this is the answer to that. We have this weird world where things don't make a whole lot of sense if you try and map it on to how like, again, real world ecosystems work and animals that don't live together and stuff like that. But if you put it in that, that framing of like a child's imagination, I think it works with that. 00:18:56.38 Jenny I think one thing, ah sorry, just to go back to the clock as well as one detail,one thing about all of these childhood elements again is the very 80s and 90s feel that it has for me. 00:18:26.63 Dave Yeah. 00:19:12.30 Jenny um But I thought the clock in particular was most interesting because that had a very older feeling, like it's a grandfather. clock or I guess, is that what it's called? 00:18:48.00 Dave Yeah. 00:19:24.18 Jenny Where it's like kind of the old wood ornamental looking clock. It has the Roman numerals. 00:18:52.36 Dave Yeah, real serious clock. 00:19:29.30 Jenny Yeah. And so what was interesting to me again, is this like, okay, everything else has been very, like when you save the floppy disk pops up, like that's a relic. Um, you're using an old telephone, like the one where you pick up and it's an actual receiver, um, instead of, you know, and so I thought also. 00:19:06.10 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:19:10.03 Dave Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. 00:19:14.31 Dave Got the CRT TV in the house. 00:19:53.43 Jenny the CRT TV. And so again, it's like there are these choices that I don't yet know why they were made, but because everything is so specific and so intentional in the game, I feel like it's a choice that I need to pay attention to that this clock for whatever reason, it looks like a grandfather clock that's older than everything else that you've engaged with in the game. 00:19:19.51 Dave Yeah. 00:19:42.85 Dave Yeah, I wonder if the same people that put together all the From Software stories could play Animal Well and put together like a definitive lore and here's how all these pieces fit together. 00:19:58.05 Dave VaatiVidya is busy right now with the Elden Ring DLC, but maybe we can get him on the case. 00:20:39.03 Jenny Oh my gosh, that would be great. 00:20:05.56 Dave But yeah, I wasn't able to put together anything other than what I already said. Basically like the through line connecting all of these thingsit is interesting. Did you find the Tamagotchi with the pedometer in it? 00:20:57.03 Jenny I did. and I haven't figured out if it does anything else though. It just has bonded my steps and that's it. 00:20:28.60 Dave Yeah. So it counts. Okay. So you pick up a pedometer item that counts your steps, but a couple rooms to the right of the clock, you can throw your top down and there is a Tamagotchi that you can jump inside of. 00:21:17.11 Jenny and so Yes. 00:20:43.86 Dave You found that, right? 00:21:20.97 Jenny Yeah. 00:20:46.28 Dave Yeah. And you have to be, you have to get inside the Tamagotchi with fewer than 100 steps in order to get past these gates. Uh, so, cause your pedometer resets when you hit a thousand or 10,000 or something like that. 00:21:33.06 Jenny oh yeah 00:21:04.29 Dave So you have to get in there. You can get these treasures and you can pick up some items. I think one of the items that you pick up in there is the remote control. 00:21:51.28 Jenny No, because I got the remote control before even finishing the first. 00:21:20.08 Dave Okay. 00:21:56.19 Jenny run. So maybe it's just another path. 00:21:21.75 Dave Oh, weird. 00:21:58.19 Jenny Yeah. Because I got the remote control. How did I get the remote control? I forgot, but I know I got it around the time I had three flames. 00:21:31.85 Dave Okay, okay, so no, I'm definitely wrong then, just miss misremembering that. 00:22:11.86 Jenny Yeah. 00:21:36.79 Dave um But you do pick up some items in there, but then if you jump in the Tamagotchi with like like right as your step counter resets to zero and you can get all the way to the last treasure chest, which I looked up online, because I didn't have the patience to do this myself, you get one of the hints for like the ultimate deepest puzzle 00:22:29.59 Jenny yeah 00:22:35.24 Jenny Yeah. 00:21:59.93 Dave which I looked up on YouTube and like, this is one of those things I looked up on YouTube and when I saw it, I was like, I would have never figured this out. So I'm glad that I'm at least seeing it, but it's wild. 00:22:46.16 Jenny Yeah. 00:22:12.59 Dave ah The stuff that like, is that like the deepest level? 00:22:50.38 Jenny There's another level of puzzles. Oh my gosh. 00:22:17.32 Dave Yeah. Yeah. Past the bunnies, past the matches and candles, past the eggs. There's another layer with these, 00:23:03.08 Jenny Absolutely wild. 00:22:29.51 Dave Yeah, I don't know. Do you want me to tell you? I know you're still playing it. 00:23:07.70 Jenny Yes. No, I am very okay. 00:22:33.19 Dave Okay. 00:23:09.46 Jenny I'm at the point where I'm like, I think I'm just going to be using the community and looking stuff up because I think I've exhausted my brain at this point. 00:22:38.19 Dave Yeah. Okay. 00:22:43.37 Dave Yeah. So that's the point where I got to as well. So there are certain things that you have to do in the game and you'll get these messages 00:23:21.65 Jenny Yeah. 00:22:54.06 Dave in Unicode, which I just learned about. I did not know what Unicode was until yesterday, but they're like symbols, basically. 00:23:39.57 Jenny yeah 00:23:04.34 Dave um So one of the things is if you get to the last treasure chest inside the Tamagotchi, it opens it up and it just gives you a Unicode message. 00:23:44.08 Jenny Yeah. Mm-hmm. 00:23:13.50 Dave There are other weird things that you have to do to get these messages, like trapping the kangaroo in a pit and throwing a bunch of fireworks at it, and it will curse at you in Unicode. 00:23:59.56 Jenny What?! Oh! 00:23:30.70 Dave So you get that message.One of the others is if you speed run and beat the game from a fresh file in under an hour, It will likely give you one of those. 00:24:14.63 Jenny Oh my gosh. 00:23:40.94 Dave Yeah.There's also another treasure chest that you can only reach if you get to it without dying. Did you find the room with the skulls? It's right next to the, so you get through the Manticore, you go to the next level, you wrote you jump over a little body of water, and then you go down. 00:24:32.36 Jenny Mmhmm. 00:24:03.29 Dave And when you get down to the bottom, you hit the TNT and the fireworks go off. But on the path down, there's a hidden wall. 00:24:43.40 Jenny Man, I'm not recalling it now, yeah. 00:24:13.04 Dave And inside that room, you get a treasure chest. There are two treasure chests. One of them is blocked by these skulls that appear when you die. So I had like, I don't know, 30, whatever skulls in there. Every time I died, I could still reach the one on the top, but there's another one on the bottom you can only get to if you don't die, which is crazy. 00:25:10.52 Jenny That is so it means. 00:24:37.66 Dave Yeah. 00:25:13.70 Jenny Oh my gosh. That's incredible.No, I have not discovered that room. And I'm pretty sure it's full. 00:24:47.28 Dave Yeah. 00:25:23.34 Jenny I'm gonna have to start a fresh file. 00:24:50.54 Dave The good thing is in this, the video I was watching explaining these Unicode messages, the good thing isif you die, you can just like don't save again and it will not count. So that's helpful. 00:25:39.50 Jenny Okay. 00:25:05.72 Dave Cause one of the things you have to do to get the, one of the things, one of the Unicode messages, you have to go around the world, eat 100 pieces of fruit without taking damage. 00:25:54.41 Jenny Oh my gosh! 00:25:20.65 Dave So they were like, after you get a couple save and like it will save it. And if you get hit, just shut it off, start again from your save and it will like keep that progress. 00:26:02.97 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:25:31.72 Dave So that's very nice. But there's like eight of these ways to get these Unicode messages and they are insane. Like, I don't know how anyone found half of these, but. 00:26:18.32 Jenny Yeah. 00:25:43.99 Dave Once you get all of those, I have in the notes here, the picture of the house, right? 00:26:22.96 Jenny Mm-hm. 00:25:49.72 Dave ah The picture of your room. And to the left of the TV, there's that poster with those little colored blocks. 00:26:32.50 Jenny Mm-hm. 00:25:57.67 Dave And someone figured out that those Unicode messages map into those colored portions on that poster and it makes a map. 00:26:42.57 Jenny No. No, what the heck? 00:26:10.84 Dave it's fucking 00:26:47.48 Jenny How are people so smart? 00:26:13.99 Dave I know, right? 00:26:50.12 Jenny Like this is another like this is something I would never figure out. 00:26:17.98 Dave Yeah. 00:26:53.80 Jenny Oh my God. 00:26:19.02 Dave And so this also blew my mind. There is a place in the game that's like space. It's like the Zelda lost woods basically. 00:27:03.63 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:26:28.98 Dave And you have to follow this map to get through it. The person was flying. They turned into butterflies in the video. I watched how they did that. I have no idea, but apparently that's a thing. 00:27:18.15 Jenny What? 00:26:42.76 Dave what i texted What I texted you earlier and was like, this shit goes, like it blew my mind. 00:27:20.50 Jenny Yeah. 00:26:47.89 Dave This is what I meant. So you go through this map, all these directions, and ah you follow it like the Lost Woods, and eventually you get to a time capsule. 00:27:25.43 Jenny Wow. 00:27:33.77 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:27:00.46 Dave And inside the time capsule is a Walkman, another 80s, 90s type thing. 00:27:39.23 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:27:07.46 Dave You put on the headphones with the Walkman, and there's an audio message from Billy Basso congratulating you on finding the puzzle he thought no one would ever solve. 00:27:51.75 Jenny Oh my god! That's so good! Oh wow. 00:27:19.22 Dave there's i And I feel really bad. I forget the other guy's name, ah the business partner. 00:27:59.61 Jenny Mm-hmm. 00:27:24.90 Dave um There's a message from him. i'm telling you that they're proud of you and worried for you for all you've done. And then there's a message from Dunkey saying that he's been trapped in the game for 277 years and thank you for letting him out. 00:28:09.58 Jenny Yeah. 00:27:41.74 Dave Classic, right? 00:28:17.32 Jenny Oh my gosh. 00:27:43.46 Dave So i this is the I think this is the ultimate secret and like it's one of those things I'm really glad I watched the video because I think it's crazy 00:28:19.86 Jenny That's amazing. 00:28:24.58 Jenny Mm hmm. Mm 00:27:56.92 Dave Like I thought I knew how deep this all went, but this video was like, here's how the final secret in Animal Well works. 00:28:33.34 Jenny hmm. 00:28:05.79 Dave This video picks up like three layers lower than I thought was possible, which is wild. 00:28:47.76 Jenny Now I'm curious, do you think that there's still stuff in Animal Well that we have not yet uncovered? 00:28:21.59 Dave Um, I wouldn't be surprised. Honestly, like you so earlier, you said something that stuck with me secret for secret sales. And like some of these things that I've talked about are secrets for secrets sake, right? They're not, well, I guess the one that lets you fly, that's a definite gameplay benefit because they can just fly around the map. Um, Other than that, all of these things are just like you found this really weird and cryptic thing and then you put those weird and cryptic things together and you find this other secret and none of this has real effects on your gameplay or anything like that. It's a secret to find because it's fun to find secrets. 00:29:03.88 Dave which is ah when you said it that way, I started to think like, yeah, there is stuff later that it's just for the joy of finding secrets. And, you know, normally I like my secrets in video games to be something that's going to help with gameplay or some new story lore or something like that. But when you're this deep in Animal Well, if you're doing the work, I feel like you're so motivated by the hunt for secrets that just finding it and finding that audio message from Billy Basso is worth it. All the work would probably be worth it. Plus you can fly now. So I don't know, I think it's cool. And I guess just because someone found this doesn't mean there's something else later. Like kind of get the feeling that Billy Basso has a bit of troll in him just a little bit, right? So saying, um, 00:30:05.38 Dave saying you found the unsolvable puzzle. If there's one more after that, that wouldn't surprise me. Jenny Yeah, I very much agree. 00:32:02.06 Jenny Oh, man. 00:32:03.20 Jenny Yeah, I thinkAgain, I recall in an earlier interview where someone asked aboutlike the three, sort of the three tiers that we keep talking about, you know, Oh, first there's flames, then there's eggs, then there's bunnies. Is there anything more? And in that interview, he said, Nope, three tiers sounds pretty good. Or something, you know, he said some other words, but basically that's what he said. 00:01:22.92 Dave Yeah. 00:32:30.13 Jenny So I feel like at this point, I think Billy is wonderful and I don't believe him. 00:01:32.69 Dave Yeah. 00:32:39.32 Jenny Whenever he says anything about the game. 00:01:35.67 Dave 100%. Yeah. 00:32:42.63 Jenny oh Yeah. And I say that with love. 00:01:39.62 Dave Yeah, for sure. It just keeps going. And I think, ah you know, I think it's perfect how 00:32:48.54 Jenny and 00:01:46.99 Dave everybody can just kind of figure out the point where they're gonna jump off, like the point where they're satisfied, like you said earlier. 00:32:59.54 Jenny Yeah. 00:01:54.31 Dave And for us, it sounds like it's at pretty similar points, ah but there was a person in my Discord server who got all the bunnies and ah they may have continued on after that. And so everyone's gonna decide for themselves. And then there's these, the people on YouTube who did all the work Um, finding that time capsule and everything, like it's just crazy to me and impressive. 00:33:21.93 Jenny Oh my gosh, yeah. 00:02:23.38 Dave Like, and I'm not, you know, upset or anything. It's just genuinely impressive that when I went to search for, you know, animals, well, final secrets or whatever. The thing that came up on the screen was obviously the same game, but it was kind of not the same game that I played. like It's almost like you're playing a different game at that point, which is super cool. 00:33:51.59 Jenny Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Again, it's it's the idea of 00:34:02.25 Jenny knowing that your journey through the game is also going to be so different from other people, which is why I up until this point have avoided going online and looking anything up reallyand only talking with friends who I knew could like give me what I wanted and not just like spoil things for mebecause I knew that with the way this game was structured, if I went in and looked online, like I have no idea. I honestly wouldn't have even known how to search for some of the questions that I had because they're so weirdly specific and everything is so non-linear. 00:03:26.28 Dave Yeah. 00:34:37.44 Jenny It's not like you can go to a walkthrough and be like, I'm on chapter three. Let's see at this exact point. 00:03:36.31 Dave Right. 00:34:43.96 Jenny Soyeah, it's been really cool. I will say again, the bubble wand was like a relatively late get for me, which was really interesting.So I remember hearing and seeing a bunch of my friends talking about the bubble wand, the bubble wand, and I'm like, man, how far in the game are you? And then later realizing they got it as like their first item, basically like first or second, and I'm over here just 00:04:02.23 Dave Yeah. 00:35:12.66 Jenny I don't know what I was doing, but I was not going to some of the more obvious places initially, which is great. 00:04:12.24 Dave Yeah. 00:04:14.64 Dave Yeah, that was my first item too. I think it was bubble wand, then yo-yo, then frisbee, then the slinky. I think that was the four for me in that order. 00:35:29.47 Jenny he 00:04:25.62 Dave And then find the top later. There's a ah upgraded bubble wand that you find where you can shoot out men as many bubbles as you want. That's one of the ways to get the Unicode message is 00:35:44.67 Jenny Oh, okay. 00:04:39.65 Dave is ah Above, above the part with the statues where you jump down to go to the last little section before the Manticore, uh, there's a woodpecker or not woodpecker hummingbird up there that pops the bubbles. 00:35:55.71 Jenny and fool 00:35:58.48 Jenny Hummingbird, yeah. 00:04:53.71 Dave And one of the ways to get a Unicode message is to just shoot a million bubbles with the upgraded wand and it gets mad at you. 00:36:06.15 Jenny Oh my gosh. 00:05:00.54 Dave And again, it kind of curses at you and flashes that message up on the screen. So. 00:36:13.74 Jenny It's amazing. Oh, my gosh. I will say I was looking at my notes and there was one other bunny that I have not collected, but I think I found. 00:05:19.64 Dave Okay. 00:36:26.19 Jenny um And it's so if you are because I will often putgames just like down and look and see it. Look at idle animations because I think they're really cute oftenwith this game. I put down my steam deck. I was just listening to the music and my little blob went to sleep and I was like, that's super cute. And then I ended up getting caught up in writing in a journal or like I was using my planner and I kind of left it up and I looked up and it actually was dreaming of a bunny. 00:05:52.64 Dave Ooh. 00:36:59.77 Jenny So I don't know what that means. I don't know how to get it out of my dreams and into the physical realm or if it is, I don't know, but that's like, so I guess I have 2.5 bunnies, I guess. 00:06:09.93 Dave Interesting. 00:37:17.22 Jenny Yeah. 00:06:10.97 Dave I wonder, I wonder if that is a solution because the bunnies are so much more, they're so much more secret than the eggs. Like you really have to be thinking hard. 00:37:26.75 Jenny Yeah. 00:06:23.25 Dave Uh, and it would be funny if one of those is just related to, Hey, just put the game down for five minutes, see what happens, which would be cool. 00:37:36.83 Jenny I know as soon as I touched it, I was like, man, maybe I should have just let it go. Maybe eventually it'll run out, but I haven't done it yet. Um, yeah. But I think I was looking it up because again, I'm at the point where I'm like, I'm okay starting to look things up because I've just hit the wall where I don't think I can figure out the rest of itwithout a little help. 00:06:49.27 Dave Yeah. 00:37:58.64 Jenny And I think what I was looking up said there are 16 bunnies. 00:06:56.24 Dave Yep. 00:38:03.38 Jenny um So it's what, 40? No, how many eggs? 00:07:02.00 Dave 64 eggs, 16 bunnies, nine candles, and they're, 00:38:08.83 Jenny 64? 64 eggs, 16 bunnies. 00:38:14.88 Jenny I feel like these are all multiples. like There's got to be a math problem in there somewhere. 00:07:12.94 Dave um, they're square, square roots at least. 00:38:19.88 Jenny um What's it called? Yeah, they're all square roots. So, okay. 00:07:18.79 Dave Yeah, but I, you know, I don't know. 00:38:25.94 Jenny Yeah, four flames. 00:07:21.32 Dave I don't know where that pattern goes, if anywhere, probably somewhere. I don't know. 00:38:32.22 Jenny Again, and who knows, again, maybe Billy's like, I'm going to put things that look and sound like puzzles, maybe aren't even anything. 00:07:33.08 Dave Yeah, there's got to be at least a couple red herrings in there for sure. 00:38:40.59 Jenny Just to be fun. listen 00:07:37.92 Dave um Real quick secrets, I guess, before we wrap up here. ah Did you know that if you put in codes from ah Fez and Tunic on the flute that your little dude will turn into ah the Fez guy and ah the Fox from Tunic? 00:38:49.60 Jenny Yeah. 00:38:59.98 Jenny No. That's amazing, like just like a tune from the game, like a song, like a theme song or. 00:07:56.77 Dave Let's see. 00:08:01.41 Dave Uh, I think so. It's something like that or some kind of, you know, if there's a code that's like up, up, down, you know, related to those directions, um, you will do that. 00:39:11.12 Jenny Wow. 00:39:15.24 Jenny Mm hmm. 00:08:11.79 Dave I just, uh, confirmed. 00:39:19.21 Jenny oh 00:08:13.38 Dave I just watched a little, uh, gif of it. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but 00:39:23.30 Jenny That's so cool. 00:08:19.53 Dave There is that. So like you can see the obvious references to games like this that are super dense with secrets and ah player discovery, Fez and Tunic are probably like two of the ones at the top of that list. 00:39:27.02 Jenny Oh my gosh. 00:08:33.29 Dave So to see like the direct reference to it is ah you're like, okay, yeah, this is why it's going through your head when you're making this game. 00:39:43.22 Jenny That's cool. 00:39:48.94 Jenny Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. Again, it's like you get the feeling that it's a love letter, but hearing something like that, it's like that's just confirmation, you know, the homage that he's paying, you know, in the respects he's paying to like the games that have also contributed to this genre. 00:09:00.11 Dave Yeah. Yep. 00:40:07.35 Jenny Oh, so cool. 00:09:01.16 Dave A hundred percent. So, um, that is an animal. Well, for our purposes, uh, there are many secrets that I don't think we discussed and despite me looking up the, you know, the, the quote, the final secret, there are plenty of secrets that I don't know exist. I don't know what happens when you get all the candles. Uh, I found an incubator. I don't know what will happen. I don't know what I'm supposed to put in that thing. 00:40:32.48 Jenny What? 00:09:27.08 Dave Yeah, uh, real weird stuff. I assume it's something related to getting all the eggs, but the point is. There's still stuff that I don't know. And I think that you're probably right. There's probably still stuff that ah Billy Basso is just waiting at home. Twirling is a mustache or whatever, just waiting for someone to find it. 00:40:51.48 Jenny yeah 00:09:46.91 Dave So ah this has been a really fun episode. The non-spoiler part, talking about the game's you know mechanical merits and things like that. And then just a good old-fashioned, like, Here's the stuff that I found. What did you find? Type discussion in this spoiler section. 00:41:08.15 Jenny and 00:10:03.54 Dave So I really thank you for taking the time to come on the podcast and chat with me about it. 00:41:15.22 Jenny Yeah, thank you for having me. Again, I've been looking forward to this all like well ever since we talked about it, honestly,because this is the kind of game where if you have the possibility of talking with other people about it, like take it, it just enriches it so much more. 00:10:15.72 Dave Yeah. 00:10:26.48 Dave Yeah. A hundred percent. And I just, uh, just sent you the, uh, the picture of the little tunic, uh, guy. 00:41:36.91 Jenny oh Yes, thank you. 00:10:33.90 Dave It's super cute. 00:41:40.57 Jenny That is so cute. Oh my gosh. 00:10:36.34 Dave Yeah. 00:41:44.65 Jenny I love it. 00:10:39.94 Dave Soat the end of the episode, we'll give one more call for everybody listening. If you've stuck around to the end, as always, you're my hero. And another call for you to go check out the things that Jenny's doing, like Geeks and Grounds podcast, Wholesome Games. And if, you know, Jenny's on all kinds of other showcases and industry things around. So if you see her, go support, ah follow on Twitch, stuff like that. So down in the show notes, again, you'll find a link to all of that stuff. And yeah, this has been great. Thank you again for coming on. Good conversation. 00:42:19.78 Jenny Yeah, very, very happy and honored to be a part of the backlog now. 00:11:18.12 Dave That's right forever etched in a backlog lore. So thank you everybody for listening all the way to the end. And as always tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.