Creature in the Well

Genre: Top-Down Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Creature in the Well is a top-down Action-RPG where players take the role of a robot exploring a facility built in a mountain and trying to power its systems on after many years of dormancy, all while a massive intelligent creature lurking in the shadows responds to your efforts with increasing disapproval.

This game has a stylized presentation using simple cel-shaded graphics and a subdued soundtrack to create a somber, slightly ominous feeling in the otherwise mostly-peaceful setting. It’s a presentation that works well for the game, and feels vaguely similar in tone to games like Hyper Light Drifter.

While there is a healthy amount of written text for those who care to look through logs, in addition to the occasional conversations with various characters (including the creature itself), the game mostly lets the player gradually piece together what’s going on. Everyone calls you an engineer and comments that the rest of your kind were destroyed, so clearly you’re a relic of a failed mission to do… well, what you’re doing now. But exactly what happened all those years ago remains a mystery.

The gameplay here is interesting. Mostly it involves moving from room to room in the facility and powering up that room’s machines. To do so, players have two melee weapons they need to use in tandem – a “charge tool” you use to gather balls of energy, and a “strike tool” you use to bat those balls at the machines. Some machines will repel the balls back at you, requiring you to catch or dodge them to avoid taking damage, and some rooms require you to go through a series of steps, sometimes timed or with other machines posing different hazards.

Despite that you’re waving around a pair of melee weapons throughout the game, this game doesn’t really have what you would consider traditional combat or even much in the way of traditional enemies – The machines are mostly stationary, and you cannot interact with them directly. And while there are puzzles here that require you to activate the machines in a specific way, I wouldn’t go as far as to call this a puzzle game, because most of what you’re doing does require dexterity instead of puzzle-solving ability.

Overall, this is a decent skill-based game, and the game does a decent job injecting things with a fair amount of variety, although there are definitely moments where you feel like you’re just going through the motions so to speak. Go into a room, sling balls at the machines while avoiding hazards, power up the machines, open the door using that power, then do so again in the next room. There are a few twists here and there, but mostly you’ll be doing the same sort of thing throughout the game.

There is one other complaint I have, and that is that some areas in this game require precision aiming, and the controls aren’t really set up well for that. Players have to constantly keep swinging at the energy balls with the first weapon until they’re ready to use the other weapon to launch them, and being the slightest bit off in your position or aim can result in those balls missing their mark by a mile, which can get frustrating when you need to hit something juuuuust right to cause a precise ricochet.

In the end, Creature in the Well is a solid Action-RPG with a good presentation and some unique game mechanics, and while it can get a bit repetitive and has a few annoyances here and there, it is nevertheless a solid experience that’s pretty unique, and well worth a look.

tl;dr – Creature in the Well is a top-down Action-RPG that has players controlling a robot on a mission to power up an ancient facility room by room using a pair of melee weapons to sling energy balls at machines. The gameplay here is fairly unique and the presentation is good, though the game can get a bit repetitive at times. It’s definitely worth a look, though.

Grade: B

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