A deep, dark hole.
Have you ever heard the expression “it’s the Dark Souls of…”? Well, I guess that could be applied to Creature in the Well, except not in exactly the same way. Creature in the Well is a curious title, as it mixes up some familiar game types to create something unique; a cross between a pinball/breakout game, puzzler and dungeon crawler. So, I guess that makes it the Dark Souls of pinball puzzler dungeon crawlers!
I will get to where it mimics Dark Souls a little later, but let us start at the beginning. The player takes control of a lone BOT-C unit, a robot who is the last of its kind. Where once there were thousands, there is now only one, and he finds himself in the town of Mirage, a place ravaged by a never-ending sandstorm. As well as all of the dust and sand, Mirage is home to a mysterious facility buried deep within a mountain, which has been shut down and is now home to the titular creature. It is the job of our little robot to restore power to the machines, defeat the creature and hopefully get to the bottom of the sandstorm that has turned Mirage in to a ghost town. Much of the story comes from either the few characters that you encounter or from workstations found in the heart of each area. I recommend reading everything you come across and talking to all of the NPCs multiple times throughout the game.
Price: $14.99
Platforms: PC, Switch, Xbox
Price I’d pay: $9.99
In order to power up the facility, the robot must make it through a series of dungeons, each filled with pinball style puzzles to solve. Every room has a set of bumpers that must be hit with power balls in order to create an electric charge. This charge is stored and can then be used to open up doors to other rooms. Make it in to the heart of each area to trigger a boss fight, which when completed powers up one area of the mountain. In order to complete a room players will have the use of two weapons; one that powers up three balls and another that fires them out. Powering the balls up is as simple as getting near a ball, which are often found on podiums in the room and holding the X button, players then use the right stick to aim their shot and press the Y button, which fires them out. Being a puzzle game, there will be differences to many of the rooms, such as security turrets that need to be hit to be disabled and bumpers that must be hit within a certain amount of time.
Throughout the adventure I would come across items and upgrades that aided me in my quest, including upgrades to health and enhancements to weapons, which were incredibly useful later on. The gameplay is simple and intuitive, but what isn’t great is some of the issues I had with the control, especially using the X button. Many of the puzzles require split second timing when switching between using the X and Y buttons, and on several occasions the X button failed to register, which resulted in my losing my momentum or even my life. This is especially frustrating during the encounters with the creature, as there are often a lot of things going on at any one time. This is where the game becomes a little “Dark Soulsy’ and where my biggest frustration came from. Every time I died the creature’s arm swooped in from above, picked me up and dumped me outside of town. This meant that I had to walk through town back to the mountain and then walk all the way back to the room I was in, which could take a few minutes each time.
The puzzles and enemies also reset, which can add time to the journey back. Luckily any door I unlocked stayed unlocked, so I could just try and run past any enemies I came across. I don’t understand why there isn’t a quick restart option as it literally pulls players out of the game, when all they wanted to do is get straight back in to the action. Each area does have a teleport station that takes players straight to the boss battle, but it only works if they have already reached that point in the game, and they still have to walk to the teleporter from outside, which in the end, doesn’t shave that much time off. At the start of the game players won’t notice it much, as it breaks everyone in gently. But the deeper players go, the more difficult the game gets and I found myself dying quite a bit, which meant I spent more time walking than playing.
What Creature in the Well does have is an abundance of atmosphere. Although colourful, the visuals do a great job of selling this time and sand ravaged town and the haunting sounds of the mountain mixed with the clanking and creaking from the machinery were perfect in sucking me in to the world and making me care about its inhabitants and what happened to them. All of the NPCs are bizarre and have their own personalities, as does our little hero even though he doesn’t say a word. It makes it feel like Mirage is this real place that is part of something bigger.
Creature in the Well is a unique game the likes of which I have never experienced before. Sure, it steals ideas from here and there, but glues them together in a new way. And while the game is fun for a while and has an interesting world, it cannot escape its repetitive nature and its decision to make every death a chore to walk back from. It is worth playing to at least step in to the world for a little while, but how much mileage you get will be dependent on how long you can tolerate the games frustrations.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
