“I’m Tired Of Seeing Games Do The Same Things Over & Over Again” | Animal Well – The First Interview | The Duel Screens Podcast #120

Revealed earlier this week on PlayStation Blog along with many other upcoming PS4/PS5 indie games, Animal Well is a title that even its creator Billy Basso – former Associate Software Engineer at Netherrealm Studios – and Dan Adelman – indie game business and marketing man extraordinaire – have a hard time describing. We recently invited to pair onto The Duel Screens Podcast to share more about details about this enigmatic PS5 console exclusive.

“The biggest challenge we’re gonna face in the marketing side of things is screenshots won’t do this justice – even short video snippets don’t do it justice!, says Adelman – who’s worked on indie games such as Axiom Verge, Chasm, Mages of Mystralia, and is now working alongside side Basso.

On the surface Animal Well appears to be a conventional paring of pixel-art puzzle-platforming and metroidvania-like exploration. In reality, it is anything but.

“I’m just tired of seeing games do the same things over and over again. Even in the genre of metroidvania: every game you get a double jump, every game now you get that mid air dash…it’s like there’s an indie game starter kit.”

With Animal Well, Basso intends to defy expectation, to create a world so full of mystery that players will be discovering its well-hidden secrets for years to come. It is a game that will also benefit greatly from PlayStation’s involvement:

“Because of Sony’s interest in the game, we’re now starting to think about how can we make it even better for the Playstation 5 platform?“, a question that Basso asks while he intends to push the PlayStation 5 hardware with intense lighting and visual effects.