Since when Yoku's Island Express over the past year the world of video games has almost rediscovered a playful world that seemed abandoned: that of pinball machines, of Breakout (Atari 1976) or Arkanoid (Taito 1986). Creature In The Well, tens of years later, he tries to resume certain intuitions and certain mechanics by immersing them in other videogame genres, bringing out a good title capable of satisfying the most refined palates without necessarily having to shout at the masterpiece.
We are talking about a video game that asks the player to shoot balls around dungeons by knocking down obstacles, making them bounce in precise points and activating specific switches hidden behind impenetrable walls. In the role of an engineer robot all loneliness and metallic clash, the player will have to go and explore an infinitely large mountain trying to restore well-being a village plagued by a sandstorm that does not seem to have an apparent end, constantly threatened by a shady creature that is able to perceive only in the infinite abysses of the mountain.
Let's see how it behaves together Creature In the Well su Nintendo Switch
What's in that well there?
Creature In The Well is an action video game with three-dimensional graphics and a fixed camera from above that mixes typical pinball and breakoutlike mechanics (i.e. similar to digital pinball machines) with a more traditional dungeon crawler full of puzzles and pictures to solve. In the role of a robot, an engineer who had previously worked on the construction of machinery inside a very important mountain. Our protagonist will wake up near the village of Mirage, a small handful of houses and buildings in the middle of a desert that seems to have no end and that has been battered for a very long time by sandstorms that whip away anything, preventing anyone to escape the village without getting lost first multiple times.
In the role of the engineer we will slip into the darkest crevices of the mountain, un huge structure full of ancient machinery and by now forgotten functioning, in order to reactivate the technological complex present them in search of a solution for the well-being of Mirage; in this real pilgrimage of ours, inside a sprawling structure that will often end up confusing us, we will find ourselves having to deal with what is the most important inhabitant of the structure: a mysterious figure whose eyes we can only glimpse in the depths of the abyss, a creature that will drive us away from the mountain in the event of a game over by leaning outside a well and joking us from there.
We are talking about game over because yes, while in a pinball machine you simply die when you throw the balls into the wrong holes, in Creature In The Well we will have to deal with our energy and with the numerous threats present within the mountain. Room after room we will explore a technological complex of enormous proportions, with capacitors to be energetically reactivated and safety systems ready to fight us with force fields, EMP explosions and turrets capable of firing spheres of energy.
In order to put the mysterious machines inside the mountain back in order, it will be necessary to charge them again with energy and to do so it will not be enough to attach some plug somewhere. In order to convey energy to the entire structure it will be necessary to recharge certain batteries by bombarding them with spheres charged with energy that will spawn in specific points of the room.
The Adventure Of A Pinball Wizard.
Luckily, our engineer won't have to throw the balls away by dislocating his shoulders. The game offers our brave metal adventurer two tools: a weapon to make the balls fly away and a weapon capable of electrically charging the latter. These two tools, each with a long series of skins capable of adding secondary effects to our spheres, represent the heart of the gameplay. Each weapon will serve a more or less specific situation and will adapt in a particular way to a particular task to be solved; the absence of statistics allows the player to choose the weapons with which to cement a very specific style of play and helps the gameplay to vary along the environments that we will find ourselves facing.
The great mountain of Creatures in the Well it is in fact divided into eight different main dungeons, each characterized by a specific color paletteto. Each dungeon will feature a series of puzzles to solve, with capacitors to be charged electrically or machinery to be restored by ball strokes; The blueprints will ask the player to reload hidden components, destroy security systems, accumulate energy by driving balls crazy in cramped holes, or uncover secrets by completing more difficult challenges than normal.
For each device that we will be able to activate we will get a specific currency as a reward: l'energy. Between one painting and the next, each dungeon will be equipped with doors that they will have to be electrically charged in order to be opened, to charge them it will be necessary to pay a tax in energy. By accumulating a lot of energy in a specific dungeon, eg, it will be possible to rushare the next dungeon without having to explore all the various deviations, going directly to the conclusion of the same.
This choice made by Flight School makes the difficulty of the title almost perfect because it allows any type of player to find the path they prefer and exploit their skills to finish the title, without facing artificial difficulty peaks or who knows what; the only mandatory challenges that we will face during the course of the title they will be bossfights with the same creature from the well. In all this, between one danger and another, there will be time for the player to go in search of passages and secret rooms containing new weapons or new costumes for our protagonist, all made with a very pleasant art direction that shows a world on the verge of collapse in a future that we have rarely been able to taste in a video game.
Push and pull.
Creature in the Well also has on its side a very pleasant graphic and sound sector with which it manages to immerse the player in a very interesting game world. The three-dimensional graphics of the title are made with a splendid cel shading which gives a vaguely cartoonish aspect to the title; many shots could bring to mind the wonderful settings of cartoonists like Jean Giraud or the three-dimensional brushstrokes of slightly more noble titles like that masterpiece by Journey.
Sound effects and music inside Creature In The Well they do not have predominant positions and remain in the background to embellish the adventure with quality and respect; rarefied ambient music will accompany us in the exploration of the temple while tighter pieces will help us to overcome once again the threat of the mysterious creature that inhabits the abyss of the mountain. The sound effects are able to give the player more information about what they have around (distinguishing the sound of the balls that hurt from those that do not, for example) and manage to be pleasant.
The adventure of Flight School she is not perfect but she knows how to defend: to make the title waver a little we find one certain background repetition that winds between one dungeon and another, characterized by an increasing level of difficulty and different color palettes, but largely improved with thematic challenges, specific gimmicks and similar ideas but nothing really that serious. The absence of information and suggestions for solving some puzzles could also make all those who want completism at all costs turn up their noses, but we are talking more about subjective tastes than overt failings.
Creature in the Well is a successful experiment by a software house to start keeping an eye on. An original dungeon crawler that mixes two gameplay very far from each other in order to obtain a successful meltin'pot thanks to an intelligent gameplay that knows how to be appreciated and knows how to hold its own over the duration of the title. Despite game structures that do not always fully convince and small choices not made on the quality of life side, Creature In The Well is nowadays an extremely pleasant title intended for all players looking for an interesting variation on the genre.
