Looking for a co-op game to play with my daughter (and mourning the lack of yearly, or even twice-yearly Lego games), I stumbled across this on PS++++++++ (or however many plusses I have). We’d enjoyed the first game a while back so why not?

It’s more of the same, really. You have to pick up and carry (or throw) furniture from houses to your truck, sometimes you have to do the reverse, and other times you’ve weird requirements like chucking certain things in portals or catching farm animals. All against the clock, and frequently with doors that are one-way, platforms that move, drones, and things that need to be broken (or not broken) in order to progress. With a multidimensional rift you have to sew back up with the help of some IT gnomes or something. Obviously.

There are plenty of silly moments that made us laugh, and it’s all very stupid in all the right ways. Much like the first game. Oh, and toilets. Of course there are toilets. There’s a whole level where you have to collect them. A++ would play again.

What if Jet Set Willy was a Metroidvania and it was a still all pixels but all the pixels had thousands of colours and there was amazing light and shadow effects and you got special toys that gave you new skills and it was all creepy and weird and there were ghosts and rooms in total darkness and there were puzzles and switches and you could warp around the map by climbing into the mouths of animals? Animal Well.

Well, maybe it’s not too much like Jet Set Willy but it definitely felt like the natural evolution of it had 3D gaming never existed or something.

The story in Animal Well is seemingly thus: You are a blob which hatches and then for Reasons have to find four mystic flames to light candles on four totems and then defeat some big evil. Bit of an ask for a day-old baby blob but games not have to make sense. The game plays out as mostly a platformer, where you explore a world which, in Metroidvania style, becomes larger as you gain skills that let you open pathways to new or previously unreachable areas.

These skills come in the form of toys, like a yoyo which lets you hit buttons from a distance (or round corners), a slinky that can “wall” down steps or drop through certain platforms, and a flying disc (not a Frisbee for legal reasons) that can hit switches across large gaps, but can also distract dogs that would like to eat you. You can also jump on the disc and use it to travel across chasms.

These skills make for some usual puzzles and gimmicks to navigate round the world, which is beautifully drawn with some amazing pixel art. It looks pretty good in screenshots but it’s when everything is in motion that you really get the benefit of the lighting effects. I also liked the tiny little controller rumbles and feedback you get from jumping around.

Although there are plenty of baddies in the world, including a few bosses, you can’t really damage most of them with your “weapons”. You can with some, and stun others, but most of the time you have to either avoid them, trap them, or cause environmental damage by dropping rocks on them or something. There are also quite a few benign creatures that you can coax into use as platforms, switch triggers, or blockers in various ways too.

As well as the main goal, there’s a lot of hidden stuff to find. Markings on walls, shapes, oddly lit things. Some unlock secrets, others seem just for fun. They reminded me a bit of Fez, although Animal Well isn’t quite as deep and complex as that.

There are also a load of literal Easter Eggs to collect, mostly hidden in secret places, which unlock a few extra, but optional, items. I suspect for some the real end game is to get all of them, and I got about 55 of the 64 but just couldn’t find any more and didn’t want to resort to a guide. I did have an amazing time playing Animal Well though, and love the fact it was a PS++++++++ free rental because I was this close to buying it on the Switch when I noticed it was on PSN!

Remember a while back I completed a game called FAR: Lone Sails? If not you can just click that link. I refer to it because the ending of that game was a bit of a damp squib and didn’t make any sense. Turns out, this sequel is actually sort of the other half of the game and that’s why.

Whereas in Lone Sails you had a land-boat where you travel across what appears to be a dried up sea, in Changing Tides you pilot a sea-boat across what appears to be a flooded world. The game plays out in much the same way, with the same sorts of puzzles and areas you get out of your boat to do things which allow your craft to progress (like open big gates or operate cranes or something) but this time there’s more water. In parts of it, you actually become fully submersible.

The tie-in to the previous game is a bit of a spoiler, but when you get to the end of Changing Tides suddenly everything – assuming you recall the ending of Lone Sails at least – makes sense.

So the game isn’t really any better or worse than before, although they’ve fixed everything being too small a bit (it’s still a little too small, but it’s easier to make stuff out – this might be just because I played this on the PS5 not the Switch). It’s just more of the same only not quite the same as it’s a slightly different. Which is fine, I think?

What even is this? I’ve completed it and I’m still not sure. I think it fits into the same sort of category as something like Electroplankton or Noby Noby Boy where although there is a goal of sorts, it’s the toy you play with along the way that’s the real game.

In Nour, you’re given a large restaurant table, and each plate on it takes you to a different scenario. In each, the controller buttons spawn different food and drink items, so you might be able to build a burger from component parts, or populate a stew with meat and vegetables. You may be expecting this to therefore resemble Cook, Serve, Delicious! or Cooking Mama, but no – it’s all sorts of weird instead.

For starters (that’s a restaurant joke there) you don’t have set meals to make. It also doesn’t seem to matter how or even what you make, even if it’s a horrible mess. In fact, just spamming the buttons eventually causes a jellyfish to appear, it then steals one of your items, and things get a bit trippy. There’s also some musical toy component to the game, as spawning items makes noises, and doing it rhythmically makes even more trippiness happen. Then there’s the tools to make things bigger or smaller, or chuck them about.

Look, it’s very strange and I’m not able to describe it fully.

The aim appears to be to make all the jellyfish happy or satisfied or I don’t know what, and then you can progress onto the next plate where you can bung stuff in a microwave or make smoothies with meat cubes in or re-enact a HowToBasic video with unlimited eggs. Do all the plates, and it’s time for the credits.

Is it a game? A toy? A very abstract musical instrument? A soothing bubblewrap/fidget spinner alternative? I don’t bloody know.