Pinball is quite an entertaining pastime, and if you combine its mechanics with elements of other genres, the result can be at least unusual. We’ve already seen how miraculously pinball was added to the Metroidvania in Yoku’s Island Express, and now we got the game Creature in the Well, inspired by dungeon crawling adventures. However, if in those we usually arm ourselves with a sword to fight hundreds of monsters and collect trophies from them, here there is only one monster. But the dangers don’t become less.
Balls and mechanisms
The main action of the game takes place in the depths of the mountain, where an ancient technical center is located, overflowing with all kinds of mechanisms. Once upon a time, it was built in order to, if necessary, protect the town of Mirage from a sandstorm, but its designers did not know about the Creature living there, which eventually destroyed all the engineers and practically killed the inhabitants of Mirage. One engineer still survived and escaped, after which he decided to restore power to the center and fight back the Creature alone. We have to play for him.
The design of the center’s compartments is very non-standard – these are rooms connected by corridors, filled with traps, obstacles and energy spheres. To get rid of an interfering object, you need to make sure that the sphere hits it, and often this must happen several times. When the ball is used, it bounces off walls and objects, and after a few seconds another sphere appears in its place, which can also be repelled. As a result, at some point five or even ten balls begin to fly across the screen, but they disappear if they do not hit obstacles for a long time.
The main character does not have any special abilities, but he has two types of weapons. Using the first, you can simply quickly repel the spheres, and when using the second, they are attracted to the character, after which they can be thrown aside. As a result, by and large, not so much is taken from pinball here – the character acts as the only movable flipper, there is no drain at all, except that the bumpers are in place and in large quantities.
Baseball Hell
In all compartments these bumpers https://gentlemanjimcasino.co.uk/games/ are dangerous for various reasons. In one they move non-stop, in the other they shoot spheres like tennis guns, or release stars one after another that cannot be repulsed with weapons, all that remains is to throw balls at them. Timers often appear above the bumpers – you destroyed one of them, when suddenly five more appeared, and you need to deal with them all within ten seconds, otherwise you start walking through the room from scratch. There are a lot of ideas, and all are implemented well – in Creature in the Well always wondering what awaits in the next location.
But it also happens that rooms are repeated, and this can happen even within the same compartment. I ended up in the same room with a bunch of bumpers and three spheres too often, and other interiors were repeated – either this was intended, or the developers rushed with the release. Problems and timed puzzles are fun to solve when the game offers new conditions, but these attempts to stretch out the playthrough are a little frustrating.
The unbalanced difficulty that you notice during boss battles is also disappointing. Meetings with the Creature are very well explained by the plot: the very creature that caused the whole mess to brew does not believe in the engineer’s abilities and tries in every possible way to suppress his motivation. Therefore, if the hero’s health bar runs out completely, the Creature does not kill him, but simply throws him back into the city – they say, let him try again, nothing will work anyway. And if there is nothing terrible in dying in an ordinary room, since you can quickly run again to the same place without having to solve the riddles again, then with the boss it’s not so simple.
These battles are divided into phases, which are usually more than three. There is no way to restore health between them, and sometimes the first stages are so difficult and even unfair that health ends in a matter of seconds. I had significant problems only in one battle, where not only the boss threw stars at the character, but they also endlessly flew out of the bumpers – I spent much longer with this episode than with the others. A couple of others were also difficult, but not so much, and this would not be a problem if they all came across at the end of the passage. But no – the most difficult part was waiting for me in the middle of the plot.
Three steps from beauty
These flaws aren’t enough to kill interest in the game, but how much better would it be without them?! It has all the ingredients of a successful indie game: an unusual style, good music, a pleasant atmosphere and accessibility for all categories of gamers, except for the clash with the Beast. The rooms here do not have to be completed honestly – when difficulties arise somewhere, just go to the door and open it using the accumulated energy, if you have enough of it. And they release this energy in very large quantities, especially if you explore locations completely and do not run to the final section.
For those who like to explore every corner, there are plenty of secret passages where you can find new costume skins and additional weapons. Instead of a rusty pipe, for example, you can take a hammer, which slows down the speed of the balls when you try to hit them. And instead of a sword, arm yourself with fast and accurate double daggers or even a wooden spoon. There are also cores hidden here that are necessary for purchasing improvements in the city, but nowhere is it really explained what exactly they do. The health bar does not increase – perhaps the hero simply becomes more resilient and withstands more blows? So far no one has been able to give an exact answer. And in general, the game is reluctant to share tips – how and where to get treatment here, for example, guess for yourself.
But the plot here, unlike many indie games, is more than understandable, and the information about the universe given out one teaspoon at a time is interesting to read. There are text records of dead engineers and management – someone’s granddaughter was pregnant, someone was afraid for the future, some workers heard strange sounds and could not understand whether it was their colleagues making noise, or someone living inside the mountain. These are interesting details, but they are not presented in the best way – after another victory over the boss, you go to three terminals and read small paragraphs. If you really want to enrich the universe, don’t stop there – let there be more inhabitants in the city who are ready to chat, or let notes be found more often and in different rooms.
All this, of course, is nitpicking, but there is Creature in the Well something that catches you from the very first minutes, and finding rough edges in it (and even more so lowering the rating because of them) is especially offensive. Mix pinball and hack & slash with team exploration of locations Flight School Studio it definitely worked out – the game is non-standard, offers interesting mechanics and constantly throws up new challenges, thanks to which it does not get boring and forces you to approach each problem differently. It’s definitely worth a try for all fans of original indie games, which have practically no analogues. But when you come across the same rooms over and over again, and then get stuck on a boss in the middle of the passage, you regret a little that the developers could not get rid of noticeable shortcomings.
Pros: an interesting idea combining pinball and dungeon exploration; the emergence of new dangers makes the passage exciting; It is not necessary to complete all the rooms, but this will open secret rooms with useful bonuses; unusual visual style and suitable music.
Cons: sometimes unbalanced difficulty; sometimes repeating rooms; the universe should have been revealed better.
