ANIMAL WELL
Animal Well is like diving into an intricate maze of wonder and excitement. When I first jumped into it, I realized it's not the kind of game that holds your hand – it actually nudges you to venture out and explore on your own. The game world is an absolute visual treat, with its captivating lighting and stages that pull you into a realm you won't want to leave anytime soon.
The gameplay is refreshingly straightforward. You take control of a character I affectionately call the "little ball guy" (I even checked with the developer, and yep, it's officially a little ball guy, so let's roll with that). This character springs out of a flower, and that's pretty much all the backstory you'll get. On the screen, there's a creature initially scurrying to the right, but don't feel obliged to follow suit. Why, you ask? Well, because this game thrives on the spirit of exploration. Honestly, I'd argue that you can't truly conquer this game unless you have a knack for uncovering secrets and blazing your trail instead of sticking to the beaten path.
Speaking of going against the flow, if you resist the urge to head right like the creature does, you'll stumble upon a hidden room to the left. It's a throwback to those classic games that rewarded you for wandering off the expected course. That's the heart of Animal Well – it flaunts some seriously impressive pixel art and gameplay that stretch far beyond the 10-minute demo I had the pleasure of diving into.
In my chat with the mastermind behind the game, Billy Basso, he told me he wants players to feel a sense of accomplishment as they navigate this world and unearth new avenues for progress. The game delivers a challenge as you leap and bound through this realm, encountering creatures that can be friendly one moment and not-so-friendly the next. Think of it like facing off against a Dark Souls boss – Animal Well offers a fair challenge that'll keep you on your toes.
As the saying goes, "The main game is just the beginning. People will be uncovering hidden puzzles for years." So, buckle up, adventurer, because Animal Well is a journey that promises to keep you entertained and intrigued for a long time to come.
Sam: And we're here at PAX West 2023 with the game Animal Well. I have a very wonderful person here with me: go ahead and introduce yourself to the crowd.
Billy: Hello, I'm Billy Basso, the developer of Animal Well.
Sam: Alright. And who are you on Animal Well and also the company that you're on with as well?
Billy: Yeah, I legally go by the name Shared Memory — that's like the company I had to form to release this game — but yeah, it's just me.
Sam: Okay. Tell us a little bit about Animal Well.
Billy: So Animal Well is a game where it doesn't really explain itself at all. You're kind of left to figure it out on your own, but to actually describe it: you play as this mysterious circle-shaped like character that is born out of a flower. That's how you start the game. And you find yourself in this kind of like underground, lush, subterranean like garden space. And then the game doesn't really tell you where to go. So you explore and as you explore, you'll find a lot of hidden passages and different items, and there are lots of animals in the game and some of them, they might help you, some of them might be dangerous, and it's kind of up to you to decide what you want to do or where to go next.
Sam: If you can go back to day one, and tell yourself something that you think would be helpful — like advice you would have given yourself — what would that be?
Billy: I would say, just like do it (laugh) I guess, in a sense. Like, for a long time, I wanted to do indie development.
Sam: Yeah.
Billy: I don't know if I thought it was truly feasible. I definitely got a ton of enjoyment out of doing it and love games. So yeah, I wish I did it sooner if anything, but ultimately, I don't have any regrets. I kind of had to spend the time learning everything. I was learning to develop the skill set I have to give them like, just things take a ton of time and you have to be prepared for that.
Sam: A lot of the devs I’ve talked to, they pretty much give that answer a lot, or just like, “Just put your head down, keep moving forward. Just keep going, don't be discouraged. If something crashes, something, you know, breaks, just go back in and try to fix it.” You mentioned indie games: what got you into wanting to make games?
Billy: I've always just loved video games. I got an NES for my third birthday.
Sam: Okay, yeah.
Billy: And since then, it's just like, it was during those early developmental years where it just like formed some basic part of my brain where I just love video games — to the point where like, I don't know, it's just like what I think about the most on a day to day basis (laughs).
Sam: Yeah.
Billy: And I think I was maybe like, growing up, I didn't know you could make games or like make a career out of that. I would occasionally see like, you know, ads on TV for like, DeVry University or something or like some program that had like a game program or something.
Sam: Oh, yeah, I remember those.
Billy: Yeah, and it just didn't seem like, legit. So I was like, “"Okay, you can't actually make games…” So, when I went to school, I did it for film and video.
Sam: Okay.
Billy: I was like, “Oh, I guess the next best thing is I guess I'll make movies. They're almost like games but without the interactivity.
Sam: Yeah, telling a story just a different way.
Billy: Yeah, you get to love the animation and like a lot of things that are involved. And then, eventually, while I was in college, I learned to program like, on the side.
Sam: Oh nice.
Billy: And so I quickly discovered that like, that was way more fun, I guess, than like…
Sam: Making movies?
Billy: Making anything manually, you can just write a program and it can just generate stuff, or like you can create something interactive. And then I kind of stumbled into like, I'm like, “Oh like maybe this is how you can make a game. I just like remember making one summer, making a little Space Invaders clone. Or like, kind of shoot ‘em up. And you know, you got the basic loop going where you're like are keeping track with the ship's position and your ammunition and like, a timer to spawn enemies and creating like a basic menu where you can start the game and quit the game and all those sorts of data structures and variable and code you would need to do that. I just sort of eventually realized that I was just like in denial the whole time about like, “I actually want to make games, I'm doing all these things like that are tangential to games and I should just make do and actually make video games. That’s what I really want to do.”
Sam: (laughs) Yeah.
Billy: And I'm just like, acting too cool about it. But then, well, I was in school. I sort of refocused a lot on classes that would help me learn how to do that. And I had to relearn a lot of math that I ignored in high school, physics and algebra and calculus, and all that stuff.
Sam: (laughs) Yeah.
Billy: And just kind of finally had a reason to learn things. Like, they all came together. It's harder to learn new stuff when you don't know what it's going to be used for necessarily. But like, when I realized all of that stuff can be applied to making a video game that will be fun to play, it's extremely motivating.
Sam: It's not just vague, to learn something just to learn it, right?
Billy: Yeah.
Sam: If you actually have a goal — something in mind that you're using this for — that can bring motivation and excitement to it versus hey, here's calculus, just do it because someone told you to
Billy: Yeah, yeah. You're solving a problem. If you want to, like, learn how to find the point at which two lines intersect, that's kind of not that interesting on its own when you're just doing homework problems. But like, “Oh, this will let me be able to do collision detection in a game and like, make it feel solid. Or then I can program a jump arc for the player or like make something explode and like bounce off things. Like, that’s so much cooler.” And when you're programming thing, you have this like visual feedback. So you can write code and adjust it and it's like this interactive experience that's super intuitive and rewarding. You're like getting to see everything. You’re getting to see all the mistakes you're making and sometimes they're interesting.
Sam: Right.
Billy: Like, you'll write code and it does the wrong thing but you stumble into these happy accidents. So it feels much more like exploring than being tested.
Sam: With Animal Well, what are some of the things you want your players — or the players who play the game — kind of come away with?
Billy: I want them to just feel really immersed in the space and feel like they're getting familiar with the world in this game. Like it's somewhere they live.
Sam: Okay.
Billy: And I want them to feel like they really understand it and like have the map in their head and when they find secrets in the game, it feels really special because it feels like they're finding a secret on their own. And yeah, I just want to make a game that's really exciting to explore. And you don't know if there's gonna be something that's like dangerous or really, really cool. Yeah, I just want them to feel really curious and to just take it slow and take the whole world in.
Sam: Last question here for any new indie developers — anyone that's thinking about trying to make a game — I know you've kind of touched on it already, but what advice would you give them?
Billy: I would say just like, make sure you really love it. Because like, game development, and especially indie game development is very, very demanding and competitive and you can't just be doing it for the money. You have to really enjoy just the process itself. Like even if the thought of it not being profitable or being a career or whatever, if that doesn't dissuade you and you still just want to work on it then you're in the right place. It just takes a ton of time to do, to make a game that stands out. And you just have to want it inherently to do that, I think. And if not, my partner Dan has good advice for people who are just trying to make a quick buck in indie games: it's like, you're much better off opening a subway (laughs).
Sam: (laughs)
Billy: At that point, it will be like less work, it's more reliable, and you'll make more money.
Sam: Right. I would ask for a window but I heard, we're not gonna ask that question here. Because I get it (laughs).
Billy: (laughs) Yeah.
Sam: It will come out when it comes out, right? And we are saying Switch, PS5, and Steam?
Billy: Yep. That’s right.
Sam: All right. Thank you so much for taking this time out with me. Again, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Billy: Absolutely, yeah, thank you for coming by and playing the game. And yeah, it was a pleasure as well.
