Animal Well: One Year Later! | Interview | PAX East 2024

Time to revisit one of our favorite games of last year's PAX!
Animal Well is a Metroidvania-like game that has you guiding an amorphous blob through a beautiful, expansive, and secret-filled labyrinth. In this wide-ranging and in-depth interview, we catch up with the game's sole developer, Billy Basso, to discuss the last year of development, the appeal of building your own game engine, and more!
Check out Animal Well and Bigmode:
Website: www.animalwell.net/
Twitter: / bigmodegames
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Twitch: / hypocriticgg
Facebook: / hypocriticgg
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Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/4HHwJCv...
#PAX #PAXEast #PAXEast2024 #animalwell #bigmode #interview #indie #indiegame #indiegaming #development #release
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:20 - One year later...
01:21 - Wrapping up development
02:13 - Feedback from conventions
03:43 - Why build your own game engine?
07:03 - The challenges of engine development
09:31 - Left brain / right brain
11:58 - Release date and platforms

[@GodOfWarConnoisseur]

That Billy is a freaking genius in the craziest way like dude is a prodigy without a doubt.

[@Ajbolt89]

Cool interview, thanks for letting him express himself and just talk. It was super interesting.

[@unbiasedfanboy5792]

Having completed the first layer of the animal well lasagna and digging well into the second I can say Billy Basso made a truly special game

[@yutt]

Dude's out here on the most obscure gaming KZbin channel doing great interviews.

[@hypocriticgg]

He’s been very generous with his time for us!

[@lordbobby198]

Fr. I saw the sub count and expected more

[@arctic-1878]

Been playing this game the last couple of days, what an amazing and brilliant game! 10/10

[@AZAMA___]

My old gamer antennas are tilting with EVERYTHING about that game ! It smells really really good, in particular considering the words of this cultured and hard working lad... In the line of Rain World, FEZ, Tunic, or Noita, this will be GLORIOUS 💫

[@maciejsawtyruk5804]

This guy is crazy

[@thought_soup]

Awesome interview!

[@FlatThumb]

I had no idea Animal Well was a solo-dev...very cool! Looking forward to playing it!

[@RaginMasE]

Extremely clever man.

[@LateNightGhost]

Pumped for Animal Well! 🔥 I really hope Billy's t-shirt is available to buy at some point :)

[@dschirm]

Thanks for posting this interview, man! I've been stoked for Animal Well ever since dunkey announced that bigmode was gonna be publishing it, so I routinely check for any new interviews or updates and was excited to find this!

[@Steve-lu1nc]

Maybe I'm ignorant, but a solo dev making the game, game engine and porting it to different platforms by himself is nuts to me

[@hypocriticgg]

It's incredibly ambitious, that's for sure!

[@Terranigma23]

Yeah and especially that he optimized so much his game that it take only like 50 MB of data ahah. He is really the goat. 😁

[@RobinsMusic]

@@Terranigma2334 mb

[@malditasmarujas6144]

The game is absolutely great

[@gusskipner9809]

This dudes awesome, can't wait for Animal Well!

[@BoyGameboyPH]

It would be crazy if there is also an ARG hidden here

[@NMROSTA]

genius man who created one of the best diamond game ever made. It woud be interesting to know more about the psycological part of creating a game and how to handle the intense silence when the programing process is over. Thanks :)

[@scubi1589]

CANT WAIT❤

[@YamchaBro]

great interview

[@SPyKeTheGroundBreaker]

I've never seen this channel before today, but the fact that you are wearing a Halo 5 lanyard is way too much of a coincidence since Animal Well is "Halo 2 meets Halo 3."

[@oowaz]

very cool!

[@MsHojat]

This seems so crazy for a single-dev game. Namely just due to all the mechanics detail and animation detail and such. Like sure Stardew Valley is a great game with a lot of content and sprites and gameplay and such (and obviously takes a ton of work in it's own right, especially considering that it is written from "scratch" rather than using an engine), but it has nowhere near the crazy mechanics and animations that this has, which seems so much harder to code.

[@ItsameAlex]

cool

[@twohornedpuppet85]

Hey fellow REAPER user

[@JorelHill]

slay

[@JamesonHuddle]

Is that a halo 5 lanyard? spooky.

[@hypocriticgg]

Every PAX since 2015 😅

[@JamesonHuddle]

@@hypocriticgg it's like halo 2 meets halo 3

[@hypocriticgg]

How we missed this absolute lay-up, we'll never know

[@Hadkek]

To be honest he's probably a once in a generation mind, but luckily he's pretty young so he'll probably be making games for a while