ANIMAL WELL tricked us. We thought we were playing a weird Metroidvania – but ANIMAL WELL evolves into something much more galaxy-brained after reaching the first set of credits. After completing the game once, you’ll have the full map to explore and a bunch of mysteries to unravel. There are many more items to unlock, eggs to find, and secret bunnies to secure. Some of these mysteries are so complicated, the developers thought they’d never be found. And that isn’t speculation. There’s an audio message in the game where the developers repeat that sentiment. And I don’t blame them. Some of these secrets are truly insane.
While we tried to solve as many of these puzzles as possible, some are literally impossible to figure out without the full breadth of the community. Some secrets were different for each playthrough – some secrets were hidden in the game code just to throw people off the trail – while others required a fax machine. Yes, seriously. We’re going to talk about all the biggest secrets in ANIMAL WELL so you can enjoy our pain vicariously. My head is spinning thinking about how to explain these secrets, much less solve them. We’re diving back into ANIMAL WELL for one more rundown.
#1 Groundhog’s Day
Early in the game, you’ll encounter a really creepy Groundhog to the southeast of the central hub of the map. This ugly thing retreats in its hole whenever you approach – and even after finishing the game, there doesn’t seem to be any solution to this thing. It runs off no matter what you do. Most of us won’t even realize this ugly thing is a Groundhog. But it totally is. And that can only mean one thing.
If you don’t want the Groundhog to hide in its hole, you’ve got to wait for a very specific day. Yep, you need to revisit this creature on Groundhogs day. For those of you that don’t know, and why would anyone need to know this, Groundhogs Day is on February 2nd. Set your day on PC or Console and the groundhog will be waiting outside its hole with a special prize. Take the golden item and you’ll get a permanent double health boost. This is one of the most useful Easter eggs in the game – most of them are pretty useless, but this is one meta puzzle we won’t forget.
#2 The Egg Song
We’re jumping ahead to start with an unbelievable puzzle – one that’s technically possible to solve even if you’re an amateur sleuth like us. I’m proud to say I figured this one out on my own. I can’t make that claim for entries at the end of this list.
After completing the game, you’ll find more locations to explore and tools to collect. There’s a strange portal at the top of the well that must have a use, a locked door in your apartment past the final boss lair, and lots of medals to find. We’ve not got the entire map to clear out, and your final goal is getting all 64 Eggs. Eggs are collectibles hidden all over the map, and finding them requires using all the tools you’ve got. We can’t get into the details now, but trust us, finding all those eggs is hard. We’d be here for hours.
Get all the eggs, and eagle-eyed players will notice mysterious lines on all the eggs. Using the UV Lamp reveals strange lines – and anyone that’s knowledgeable enough about numerology will see that the lines indicate binary code. Translating the code into numbers and then using a different number wheel for your Flute Item – this thing is a whole other secret can of worms – you can translate the numbers into directions. And with that, you’ll have a hidden code you can play in the Egg Room.
You’ll need to perfectly play 64 notes on your Animal Flute to reveal the secret path to the second ending. And there are more endings to come. But even if you’ve solved the code yourself and played it perfectly, you won’t complete the puzzle. Nope, there’s a truly evil trick hidden in these eggs. One of the eggs is upside down. That’s the kind of cruelty we should expect from an indie developer.
Flip that egg back rightside up to get the correct number and you’ll solve this puzzle. The new ending path will unlock down in the final boss area, but we won’t discuss that just yet. Let’s rewind and cover some of the other Easter Eggs we found on the path to the secret second ending.
#3 Freeing The Wheel
Way before you can find all the eggs, you’ll need to unlock the Wheel Tool – which is literally a hamster wheel your little plant guy can roll around in. In the Ostrich Area of the map, you’ll definitely notice five caged cats. Unlocking the cages is pretty straightforward for this game. If you’ve unlocked the Animal Flute, all you need to do is play the matching notes written on the wall in secret locations. Find all five songs, play the notes and save the cats. Easy, right?
After saving the cats, you can return to a strange room with a giant Lynx. This Lynx will sing a song and unlock the hanging cage in the center – that’s where the Wheel is located. But, there’s a twist to this whole secret. A twist that’s actually required much, much later in the game.
You can skip all that cat rescue. There’s a secret method. Instead of letting the Lynx sing, you can break into the secret room and play the song yourself. You have to listen carefully and I really don’t know how the community put this all together, but if you copy the Lynx song with the Animal Flute, you can unlock the cat cage early. I have a tin ear, so this was never an option. But we’ll have to explain why this is so important later. Seriously, stick with us. We can’t spoil the future just yet.
#4 Playing Breakout
The Bouncy Ball items is initially one of the most seemingly useless – you’ll get this ball tool in a pretty funny way. By checking around the map with a UV Lamp, you’ll spot Kangaroo symbols on the wall. This indicates the room is where a kangaroo might appear. Go to these locations and scare the angry kangaroos away with fireworks. Scare enough and you’ll get all the pieces of the Kangaroo Medallion. This unlocks the kangaroo room – naturally, it’s shaped like kangaroo – and get you the Bouncy Ball.
So, what is the Bouncy Ball for? You can use it to distract dogs, but your trusty disc toy is already really good at that. The Bouncy Ball actually serves a very funny purpose that makes it one of our favorite tools. Even better than the Remote Control.
The Bouncy Ball, when bounced on very specific blocks, becomes a game of Breakout. If you’re not really, really old you might not even know what Breakout is. It’s a game where you’d bounce a little diamond around trying to break all the rectangular blocks on a grid, all while moving your paddle so it doesn’t hit the bottom of the screen. There’s even a Breakout minigame in one hidden area that’s required to get an egg. The developers were definitely getting creative and nostalgic with this one. What’s next, a Pacman tool? Maybe a Tetris block?
#5 The Second Ending
Okay, now we’re ready to talk about the second ending. This is only the start of the mysteries, and secrets get more painful from here. To unlock the secret ending, you’ll need to find all 64 eggs and play that really long Animal Flute melody – and the final door will open. Get the 65th Egg and we can begin the secret ending process.
Travel down to the final boss area – returning to the area where we needed to flip switches and avoid the Chimera – and find the secret Incubator Room to the left. After hatching the egg, another Chimera will appear and start chasing you. We’ll need to trick the boss into breaking glass with its eye laser attack. After breaking the glass in the upper-right corner of the switch rooms, you’ll be able to finish the game.
Going to the last room, the Chimera will chill out… and let you jump straight into its mouth. Sure, we’ve been trying to avoid getting eaten by this thing for most of the game, and now we’re jumping right in. A cutscene plays out as the Chimera leaves the Animal Well entirely and flies around in the night sky outside. We’ve finally escaped!
But this isn’t the end. You can now control the Chimera! And we want to move up. Moving up reaches a mysterious floating island with statues and a bunch of bunnies. If you’ve found bunnies, they’ll appear here. Yes, this is what all those bunnies we’ve found are for. Because there’s yet another ending to unlock. Strap yourselves in, the puzzles are only going to get more impossible to understand. And one of the worst is next.
#6 Solving The Mural
After reaching the mysterious bunny island on the other side of the portal, our goal is to find and rescue all the bunnies from the ANIMAL WELL. Not so easily done. One of the first mysteries we found after the first ending was a big mural – using the Remote in the tile mural room sets off an explosion, revealing a terminal that your little plant guy can use to change all the pixel-like tiles on the mural. And if you want to solve this puzzle, you’ll need to change every single tile.
This is the first puzzle on our list that absolutely required a community to solve. There are fifty pieces of this puzzle – and you’ll only get one. Putting them all together reveals a full image, but you’ll only get a tiny fraction of that image. There are websites dedicated to collecting all the fragments and letting you put them together yourself if you want a challenging puzzle that isn’t totally impossible to solve solo. And if you’ve got the patience, you can turn the mural into a cute picture of a resting bunny. Inputting all the correct pixels down to the last one will solve the riddle and get you one of 16 bunnies you need to get. The next bunny is a whole lot easier to find, thankfully.
#7 The Dream Bunny
This bunny is simple to collect but so fun and creative we had to put it on this list. If you’ve been scouring the map for bunnies and haven’t found any more, there’s a good reason for that. One bunny is hidden in a place you rarely get to see in video games – this bunny is hiding in your dreams. To see the bunny, your little character has to remain still long enough for them to dream. While dreaming, a thought bubble will appear over their head and the spectral image of a bunny will appear. If you’re really fast, you can jump up and grab the bunny straight from the dream bubble.
That’s such a fun, weird puzzle we had to put it on our list. There are much harder puzzles we’re skipping – like one puzzle where you have to observe falling sparkles in the starting room, but only if you observe the sparkles in three different save files. We’re going to talk about one that’s even weird next.
#8 The Origami Secret
After completing the game, players on PC get a special bonus. If you have a printer connected, you’ll be offered to print out an Origami Pattern. Following the origami pattern, you’d be able to create the image of a bunny. The fact that it’s a bunny, even right after finishing the game once, should set off your puzzle senses. Looking at the origami print out that you physically have more closely, community members were able to discover a pattern on the paper. There’s a hidden code for your Animal Flute in the origami!
And we really can’t show any of this. But we can explain the alternate method for console players and everyone that doesn’t have a crummy printer. Down in the dog area of the map, there’s a plant-filled bowl object with a barcode around the rim. Translating the barcode also reveals the same hidden code. Really, I think the origami pattern is a much easier puzzle.
#9 The Big Bunny
Here’s where ANIMAL WELL gets weird. Like, really weird. Like, so weird we can barely explain what you’re supposed to be doing. After completing the game, solving that big egg Flute puzzle and riding the Chimera up to the bunny islands, there’s another mystery to solve. We can still hop inside the Chimera and fly it around like a vehicle – and there’s a reason for that. There’s one last location to discover. By flying the Chimera in a specific order of directions, you can find the ‘true’ ending.
How do you learn the directions? By examining the bunnies! There are 16 bunnies to find – and not all the statues actually correspond to bunnies you’ve found. That would make way too much sense. No, each bunny has a different ear configuration. By combining the ear patterns with the translation guide found in the locked office room in your apartment, you’ll be able to generate a set of coordinates. Follow those directions with your Chimera skycab and you’ll reach a mystical island temple with one more animal to observe.
Say hello to the big bunny. This very big creature is blocking your way, so there’s only one direction left to go. Jump inside the bunny’s mouth and navigate through the intestines until you hop out the bunny’s big butt. On the far end, you’ll break out of your cocoon and grow wings. This is finally, finally, the true ending and the last puzzle you can solve.
#10 The Final Puzzle
Okay, yes there’s more. One final puzzle to unlock that’s truly never meant to be solved. By completing hidden objectives all over the map – including playing the Lynx’s song in the cage room, remember how we said that’d come up again? There are more hidden objectives you’d never figure out yourself, like resetting your step counter after 99,999 steps, or eating 100 blueberries that reveal weird scrambled messages. Those messages can also be translated into directions, and you’ll be able to fly your new true ending wings to yet another hidden place in the vast night sky.
Using the Spinning Top tool, you can dig through the dirt and discover a time capsule at the bottom. This is something truly unique – a message from the developers. They’ll express surprise and pride that anyone ever found this secret, because it means the community cared enough to find it. That’s the kind of passion we can appreciate, and even if you followed a guide or watched a video, getting this far in a game this obscure takes a level of dedication that makes even the biggest game studios jealous.
