Dunkey’s First Game, ‘Animal Well,’ Is The Best Reviewed PC Game Of 2024 So Far

When YouTuber Dunkey announced he was getting into game production with a new publishing company, most people scoffed, as content creators getting into actual game creation or production usually does not go well, no matter how popular the creator (how’s Dr. Disrespects DEADROP going?). But Dunkey seems to have proven them all wrong with Animal Well, the publisher’s first game which is currently tied with one other title as the best-scored PC game of 2024.

Animal Well reviews have just dropped and it’s sitting at a 91 on Metacritic, tied with Tekken 8 for 2024’s highest score. Dunkey’s company is bigmode, and was only announced a year ago. “Our number one priority is to publish some of the very best games out there,” Dunkey said in the initial video debuting bigmode. While his fans received the news positively, the wider industry was skeptical of the sometimes-controversial YouTuber being able to pull this off in any meaningful capacity. Yet, here we are. A homerun at the first at-bat.

Of course Dunkey himself did not actually make Animal Well, but rather published it. Rather, Animal Well was made by one developer, Billy Basso. Basso even designed a custom engine for its release on Windows, PS5 and Nintendo Switch.

The scores are incredible. Here’s what some of the critics are saying about Animal Well:
• Destructoid (10/10) – “Animal Well is packed with more things to do and secrets to find than most other games.”
• Eurogamer (10/10) – “Explore a bright vision of subterranean nature in this astonishingly rich Metroidvania.”
• GameSpot (9/10) – “This is a game that's chock full of pleasant surprises, from the way its items forgo tradition in interesting ways to the visual design and sense of atmosphere generated by its bizarre, neon-soaked world.”
• PC Gamer (9/10) – “A sleep-destroying puzzle metroidvania of baffling depth, Animal Well may go down in history as one of the genre's best.”

Just out of this world reviews for not just Dunkey’s first published game but one made by Basso as sole developer. A wild story here.

Whether Dunkey can maintain this level of quality, we’ll see. I mean there are a limited number of astonishingly good indie games out there, but clearly he had a great eye for working with Basso to release Animal Well, and I will certainly take his next published games seriously after this. Great work to…all two of them.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.