#14
Animal Well landed in 2024 with a striking audiovisual identity and some of the most densely layered secrets I have seen in a metroidvania. The surface game is complete and satisfying. The deeper layers, the ones the developer hid specifically for the most obsessive players, go somewhere else entirely. I found it rewarding right up until the point where the secrets became too cryptic for me to follow without outside help, which is a personal threshold rather than a flaw in the game. Sits in honorable mentions rather than the top ten because the audience for its deepest content is narrower than most. The first eight hours are broadly excellent though.