tThe dark opening of a well has always been an attractive focus of human fascination. Giver of life-sustaining water, it is also seen as a portal to a labyrinth of risky secrets; our fables are filled with crying children whose curiosity got the best of them, relegated to an eternity of humidity gazing into the distant, unattainable circle of light. animal pit, an indie game seven years in the making, sends us into one of these twilight labyrinths, a cave system of dripping, darting creatures whose fur is tinged with luminescence. The objectives are unstated but obvious: explore, map, emerge. It is a search that soon becomes an obsession.
You play as an amorphous blob (hardly the most aspirational cipher), but what you lack in, say, limbs, you make up for in courage and inventiveness. To start, you can only jump bravely between rocks and platforms. But over time you will gain new tools, gadgets, and abilities that allow you to access previously unreachable passages and tunnels. As you move deeper into the cave system, your map fills up, inch by inch.
Hanging light bulbs swaying in the underground breeze provide the light that describes your surroundings, but you’ll have to look closely at each scene to notice the half-submerged gears, pulleys, and levers that open up the world. As much as animal pit It’s about exploration, it’s a game built around puzzles and secrets, in which your ingenuity is called upon to match that of its designer. And it’s in those moments that you stumble upon the solution, and everything falls into place, and the world opens up a little more, allowing you to delve a little deeper, that animal pit stands out.
At a time when big video game companies are focused on creating video games designed to function like a sport, with seasons, passes and endless matches designed to dominate your free time, what a joy to be presented with such a complex game. and content. This is a perfectly made contraption, with a beginning, a middle and an end, intended to inspire joy and build culture and not, thankfully, shareholder value.
