Ben Madilynn
I wrote most of TheGamer’s guides for Animal Well earlier this year, and despite not enjoying platformers or Metroidvanias, I was enamored. The mysteries continued to pile up, each area was creepier than the last, and I was unable to put the game down. So when Bigmode reached out with a chance to chat at PAX West with developer Billy Basso, I couldn’t resist picking the mind of the man behind the game that upturned what I thought I knew about my preferences.
With so many people – myself and our Editor-in-Chief Stacey Henley included – heralding the Ostrich boss as the moment when it clicked for us what the game was going to be, I asked Basso about the big bully of a bird. He told me that the Ostrich was one of the first bosses he came up with, and that the final level he designed was the second meeting with the Ostrich after challenging you to realize you can switch the direction of the lift in that section of the game. Basso refers to this as one of the more challenging casual puzzles, laughing, “In a way, it’s kind of like my version of the Water Temple from Zelda, you’ve got to really have the whole level in your mind.”
I told him how effective the creature had been at conveying the precise vibe of the game in a single encounter, and Basso knew he had to do something to make it clear the game isn’t just another pixel platformer. “Animal Well is the kind of game that doesn’t really communicate very well why it’s special,” he says. “It’s a game about secrets and holding back information, and I think that’s what makes it interesting to play, but it’s hard to market a game like that – I can’t just show the best parts.”
Despite the game having launched more than four months ago, it still consumed about half of Bigmode’s booth on the show floor at PAX West. It had even more real estate during PAX East in March, where so many fans got to go hands-on with the demo for the first time. Bigmode is a publisher created by YouTuber Dunkey, and fans were surprised to see such a dark game coming from a studio formed by someone known for his comedy.
Basso’s business partner, Dan Adelman, committed to taking the game to industry events to try to get the project off the ground, and Bigmode got involved at Summer Games Fest 2022. At that point, Basso had worked on it part-time for four years but knew that Bigmode expressing an interest was a huge opportunity, despite initial trepidation.
“Early on, I was a little concerned about maintaining creative control, but they ended up being very friendly and respectful of the game,” he tells me. He’d send Bigmode builds of the game in search of feedback, and says feedback came without the expectation that he would implement it precisely. “They’d give me a lot of really useful information, but I could still decide what I want to do with it.”
Basso isn’t oblivious to the support bolstered by publishing with Bigmode, citing Dunkey’s online community as pivotal to the game becoming what it has. Steam wishlists skyrocketed after Bigmode announced its involvement. “Dunkey’s fanbase really, really respects him,” Basso says, and tells me that “having the Dunkey stamp of approval” helped market a game that was difficult to market on concept alone without giving away too much. He noticed the common refrain in the comments was, “You’re saying this is really good, and maybe I don’t know why immediately, but I’ll check it out.”
With so many eyes on the game following Dunkey’s involvement, Basso had the freedom to do things like the rabbit mural, a puzzle that gives each player one piece from a 50-piece puzzle and tasks them with figuring out how to solve it. It’s possible to solve on your own, Basso confirms, telling me how Adelman had gotten good at speed-running the section leading to the reveal of the piece and managed to put it together across roughly 250 playthroughs, but it’s meant to be solved collectively.
“People are really impressive,” Basso says. “I want to take any opportunity I can get to thank the fans and community for always going above and beyond my expectations for how much people can care about this thing I made. I’m going to be thanking them for the rest of my life. Things will never be the same, now that I’ve finished this game.”
Now that Animal Well has been out for a few months and the biggest (Easter) eggs have been found, Basso is “in the very early stages of setting up a new project.” As he wraps up his post-launch responsibilities with the game, he’s eager to take what he learned from every aspect of making and marketing Animal Well and applying it to something new.
