Videogame history is not static
Arguably not since Spelunky 2 and Hades in E350 (we’d love to pretend it’s more than serendipity that both are making their return to Edge this issue) have two major games released in close proximity felt in quite such close conversation. Strictly speaking, Animal Well and Lorelei And The Laser Eyes belong to different genres, but in so many ways their primary intent is to evoke similar feelings. Both carry an aura of mystery and danger despite being combat-free.Both have been designed to leave much unsaid or unexplained, and to leave their endings beyond easy reach. “We suspect very few will make it to its conclusion” reads a letter from Simogo supplied with our review code, while Billy Basso has suggested that Animal Well’s final layer may take years to peel back. Both are, at their core, compact but intricate puzzle boxes; like Spelunky 2 and Hades, they simply pursue their goal to challenge and perplex the player from very different angles.
We appreciate the irony, then, that one of the most important features they share is their use of static cameras. It’s an approach that – particularly in the case of Animal Well – harks back to the medium’s early days, when the technological cost of smooth scrolling was prohibitive, and worlds had to instead be presented as a series of rooms. While talking to Basso for p99’s Post Script, he touches upon how almost all 2D games immediately transitioned to scrolling cameras as soon as it was possible to do so. “There are advantages to that,” he says. “There are a lot of times I wish I could do things like show off parallax between the layers in the game.” But his self-imposed choice to stick to a fixed perspective has had its own benefits. “I can compose the scene exactly how I want it to be. It helps make areas more memorable, because they’re more distinct locations that don’t blend together at all,” he adds. “And, yes, it lends well to the survival-horror influence where I get to do jump-scare surprises or play with people’s [expectations]. I can surprise them when they cross those boundaries and see something wildly different from what was on the last screen.”
It’s remarkable how much of this also applies to Simogo’s game, with its similarly precise compositions helping its individual rooms stick in the memory – in spite of its setting’s deliberately maze-like construction. Although its closest antecedents aren’t the same early 2D games but rather the medium’s tentative steps into three dimensions. But that survival-horror influence – latent at first, but occasionally more overt – makes its presence felt throughout. The sound design naturally does its fair share of heavy lifting, but it’s those fixed viewpoints that most amplify the sense of unease as you explore. There is a strong sense that you’re being watched by an unseen observer, some malevolent voyeur flick
