Billy Basso spent seven years building a labyrinth that hates you just as much as it loves you. Honestly, looking at the animal well full map for the first time is a recipe for a headache. It’s a dense, non-linear pixel-art claustrophobe’s dream where every single screen feels like it’s hiding three different secrets, and half of them require items you didn't even know existed. You start as a little blob. You end as a seasoned explorer of a neon-soaked underworld.
The game doesn't hold your hand. At all.
Most people jump into Animal Well thinking it’s a standard Metroidvania. It isn't. While games like Hollow Knight or Metroid Dread eventually give you a clear path, this game is more of a "knowledge-vania." The map is a giant puzzle box. You can see a ledge, but you can't reach it. You see a weird statue, but it does nothing. Then, five hours later, you find a Slinky or a Yo-Yo, and suddenly the entire layout of the animal well full map shifts in your head. It’s brilliant. It’s also incredibly frustrating if you're trying to find that one last egg to unlock the true ending.
The Layered Nature of the Well
Everything in this game happens in layers. You've got the first layer: just getting the four flames. That’s the "easy" part. Then there’s the egg hunt. Then the secret bunnies. The map is literally designed to be peeled back like an onion.
If you look at a complete rendering of the map, you’ll notice it is strictly a 16x16 grid of "rooms," but each room is a microcosm. The design philosophy relies heavily on "negative space." Billy Basso, the sole developer, used a custom engine to ensure that the lighting and physics interacted with the map in ways standard engines like Unity just couldn't handle. This is why the water ripples perfectly and why the shadows of the giant stalks feel so heavy.
Navigation and the Warp Room
Early on, you'll feel like you're walking forever. You're not. You just haven't found the fast travel hub.
Deep in the center of the map, there’s a room with a giant squirrel statue. This is your lifeblood. By using the Animal Flute—probably the most important item in the game—you can warp here from almost anywhere. You'll find different flute songs carved into the walls or hidden in the background art. Pro tip: look at the birds. The way they are positioned often hints at the notes you need to play. It's subtle stuff that makes the animal well full map feel alive rather than just a digital playground.
Breaking Down the Four Main Quadrants
The map is roughly divided by the four flames you need to collect to "beat" the first phase of the game. Each area has a distinct color palette and a specific "vibe" that dictates how you move through it.
The Emerald/Green Forest (Top Right)
This place is deceptive. It looks peaceful, but the kangaroo will absolutely wreck your day. This area teaches you about verticality. You’ll spend a lot of time using the bubble wand here to create temporary platforms. If you're looking at the animal well full map and notice a bunch of empty vertical shafts, that’s usually where you’re meant to "bubble jump" your way to the ceiling.
The Violet/Purple Ruins (Bottom Right)
This is where the ghost dogs live. It sucks. The movement here is all about momentum and timing. You'll find the Disc here, which acts as both a projectile and a platform. Mastering the "disc ride"—where you jump on the disc as you throw it—is mandatory for filling out the bottom-right corner of your map.
The Blue/Water Caverns (Bottom Left)
Water is everywhere. It’s slow. It’s methodical. You'll deal with pipes and currents. The Slinky is the MVP here. Watching a neon Slinky tumble down a set of stairs to hit a switch while you race across a closing gate is peak Animal Well gameplay.
The Red/Fire Depths (Top Left)
Hot. Aggressive. Lots of puzzles involving the firecrackers to scare off the shadow creatures. This area feels the most "traditional" in terms of platforming challenges, but it still hides some of the most obtuse secrets in the game.
Those Damn Eggs
You cannot talk about the animal well full map without talking about the 64 eggs. They are scattered everywhere. Some are behind fake walls. Some require you to play a specific song to a specific wall. Some are just sitting in plain sight but require a high-level movement trick to reach.
Collecting these isn't just for completionists. It’s how you unlock the office. It’s how you get the UV light. The UV light changes everything. When you go back through the map with the UV light turned on, you see hidden messages scrawled on the walls in neon paint. It’s a literal "map within a map."
I spent two hours staring at a wall in the dog area because I knew an egg was there. I could see the chest on the other side of a thin wall. I tried the bubble. I tried the disc. I tried the slinky. Turns out, I just needed to go three rooms over, find a hidden pipe, and travel through the "walls" themselves. The game rewards you for thinking outside the screen boundaries.
The Mystery of the Bunnies and the True Map
Once you have the 64 eggs, you think you're done. You're not even close.
There are 16 secret bunnies hidden throughout the well. Finding them is... well, it’s insane. Some require you to count the number of pixels in a specific mural. Others require you to find a hidden remote and use it on a TV screen that looks like background fluff. This is where the community had to come together. The animal well full map actually contains data that can only be decrypted if multiple players share their findings.
There is a 50-piece mural hidden in the game. Each player gets a different piece of the mural in their specific save file. To see the "full" secret, the community had to manually stitch together 50 different screenshots from 50 different players. This revealed a massive QR code. This isn't just a game; it's an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) disguised as a platformer.
The Mural and the Winged Secret
If you manage to solve the mural puzzle, you get the wings. The wings allow you to fly. Suddenly, the entire animal well full map becomes your oyster. Those ledges that were "impossible" to reach? You just fly to them. It changes the game from a tense survival-exploration hybrid into a god-simulator. But getting there requires a level of dedication most people simply won't have without looking up a guide. And honestly? There’s no shame in that. The puzzles in the "post-post-game" are meant to be solved by a collective, not a single person.
Common Misconceptions About the Map
One thing people get wrong is thinking there are "missable" areas.
Technically, there aren't. You can always go back. However, there are things that become significantly harder if you do them in the wrong order. For example, if you trigger certain world events before getting certain eggs, you might find the environment more hostile than it needs to be.
Another big mistake? Ignoring the "Map" item itself. You don't start with a map. You have to find it in a chest early on. If you've been playing for 30 minutes and you're still drawing things on a piece of paper, go find that chest. It’s usually tucked away in the starting forest area.
Technical Marvels of the Well
It’s worth noting that the entire game is under 40MB. That is tiny. For context, a single high-resolution photo from your phone is probably larger than the entire animal well full map and all its assets.
Basso achieved this through clever procedural generation for textures and a heavy reliance on math-based rendering rather than pre-baked sprites. This is why the game looks so crisp even when you zoom in. It also explains why the game runs so well on the Steam Deck and Switch; it’s basically just running a bunch of very efficient math equations in the background.
Actionable Steps for Completionists
If you're staring at your map and see a 98% completion rate, here is how you fix that.
- Check for "Fake" Walls: Use the Disc everywhere. If the Disc passes through a wall instead of bouncing off it, that’s a secret passage. This is the fastest way to fill out those annoying black squares on your grid.
- The UV Light Sweep: Once you have the UV light, do a full lap of the map. Look for white markings. These often indicate where to play the flute or where a hidden door is located.
- Listen to the Audio: The sound design is a directional hint system. If you hear a faint "tinkling" sound, there’s a secret nearby. If the music shifts slightly, you’ve entered a room with a puzzle you haven't solved yet.
- The Bubble-Jump Meta: Practice jumping on your own bubbles. If you jump and immediately blow a bubble downwards, you can hop on it. Repeat this to climb infinite heights. This is the "glitch" that isn't a glitch—the developer intended for you to master this to find the highest points on the animal well full map.
- Use the Stamps: The in-game map allows you to place stamps. Use them. Mark every chest you can't reach and every weird statue you don't understand. Don't rely on your memory; the well is too big for that.
The beauty of Animal Well is that the map isn't just a guide—it is the game. The act of filling in those little squares and realizing how the rooms connect is the core loop. It's a masterpiece of spatial design that rewards curiosity above all else. Just don't feel bad when you have to look up the mural solution. Nobody was meant to solve that alone.
🔗 Read more: How to Connect a Switch Pro Controller to PC: The Methods That Actually Work
Go back into the well. Look at the background. There is probably a secret right in front of you that you missed because you were too busy running away from a giant ostrich. That's the magic of the well. It's always deeper than you think.