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The first title to come from Bigmode, an indie publisher started by YouTube personalityvideogamedunkey, isAnimal Well, and man, is it making a splash. This clever, combat-free,secret-heavy Metroidvaniatasks you with gathering a few item upgrades and making use of them in some creative ways to solve a number of puzzles.
One of the most critical upgrades you’ll get is the Bubble Wand, which allows you to blow a singular bubble, jump on it, and use it to reach brand new heights. No more are those higher platforms off limits in Animal Well with the B. Wand upgrade!
Our guide on how to get the Bubble Wand in Animal Well avoids them where possible but does contain some spoilers for Animal Well. If you haven’t started the game yet,we suggest you turn backnow! It’s best togo in as unaware of the story and mechanicsas you may.
How To Get The Bubble Wand
Coded as theB. Wandin the game, the Bubble Wand is an upgrade in Animal Well that allows you toblow one bubbleat a time. You’ll then watch it rise to the appropriate height beforeusing that bubble to double-jump and reach higher ledgesaround the dark, creepy map.
You’ve no doubt seen ledges your blob can’t reach as you wander through the Well, if you have before finding the Bubble Wand, and it’s not a bad idea tomark your mapliberallyonce you get the Stamps with places you’d like to backtrack to.
You’ll have64 Stampsavailable, so use them to remind yourself of interesting spots to come back to with different upgrades!
To get the Bubble Wand, you’ll need to do quite a bit of adventuring. From themain telephone by the four flameswhere you emerged from the starting spot in Animal Well,go left, where you’ll find a fewgreen penguin statuesand two fruits by their feet. Grab them if needed, thenkeep going left for two screens.
You’ll soon see a room with achest on a glass platform, so grab that if you’d like beforejumping down the opening in the bottom left cornerof the room. This puts you on awalkway above a pair of swans, so progress across andjump up into the top left cornerof the room to proceed.
How To Solve The Fish Fountain Puzzle In Animal Well
In this room, you’ll find afish-like statue spitting water, which rhythmically hits a horizontal platform nearby beforebouncing offand splashing onto the wall to fizzle out. The fountain immediately spits another stream. At the bottom of the two horizontal platforms in this room are two cranks, with alocked door to the left.
The other important structure is thepillar to the right of the blocked path, on which you can faintly see a black bar that resembles the blockade on the door. To open the door, you’ll need to carefullyangle the two platforms so that the water from the fountain ricochets and fills the basin atop the pillar.
Water that bounces into the basin will gradually turn the barely-visible black bar yellow. The positioning shown in the image above worked for us. Then,once the bar is fully yellow, the blockade will open, so you can thenhead leftonto this newly unlocked path.
The room ahead hasfour columns of bubblessteadily rising from someplace off-screen. You can safely jump onto andride the bubbles, but theyslowly sink under your weight, but you can use this to your advantage to safely reach some hard-to-hit spots.
Bubbles don’t pop until you jump off of them, meaning you’ve got time to safely ride them down. Additionally, should you ever be able to angle it in such a way after getting the Bubble Wand in Animal Well, you canstep off a bubble onto a platformto get off without popping it, if you need to keep using the same bubble to keep climbing.
Youcanjump ahead to the pathway in this room, but you can’t do anything here yet. Instead,ride the left bubble down to the next screen, where you find the four fish responsible for making the bubbles.Quickly jump to the opening on the left.
This room has another four fish creating a bubble path toward aladder on the left, so time your jumps carefully andhop across the bubblesto reach the other side beforeclimbing the ladder. If you went left in the original bubble room a moment ago, you’ll notice theroom full of dark squares.
Before jumping up onto the platform above,step on the green button. This will activate thefanswith whales on them in the space above, which you can then use tojump for a longer period of time, allowing your blob to reach some new heights! This is good news, too, because you’ll noticefour yellow buttons on the ceilingamong the green vines.
Jump to the top row of fanswith the extended boost the air flow gives you, and thenhop across the top row of fans, hitting the buttons on the ceiling. Hitting all four unlocks thepath in the top left cornerof this room, so hop back that way and go inside.
There are some things to see and do a bit higher than you can probably reach in this room, sogo to the left along the bottom of the screento proceed. On the next screen, you’ll find anothertelephone, so save your game if you’d like to respawn here. From the telephone,climb down the ladderto the left.
The room below has plenty of spikes, so carefullyjump to the opening on the right, being careful not to fall down onto the points. In the next room, keepjumping right along the platformstoward theladder in the bottom right cornerof the room, and head down. Before you do, though, prepare for Animal Well’s version of a boss fight.
How To Beat The Seahorse Puzzle And Get The B. Wand
Here, you’ll find a creature that ought to look familiar - theSeahorse, whoseflame flickers in the large central areajust after where you started Animal Well.
As soon as you step off the first platform and head toward the middle of the room, itsurfaces from beneath the waterand begins tospit bubblesat you, so we hope you’ve gotten good atusing the bubbles to reach higher spacesby now!
Like the room before this, you’ll noticethree yellow buttons on the ceilingabove several platforms above the water. As you move around the room trying to figure out how to hit them, theSeahorse surfaces to spit four bubbles at you in a stream of waterbefore diving back beneath the water and repeating the process,following you around the room.
The water the Seahorse spits along with the bubbles can and will push you off the edge and into the water (or into thespikes on the left or right walls), so plan your movements accordingly.
You need touse the bubbles like steps to jump and hit the buttons on the ceiling, which requires luring the Seahorse to specific locations. When it pops up, itspits in the direction it’s facing, but you can tell ahead of time which way this will be based onthe way its shadow moved as it chased youacross the platforms.
Because of this, you canmanipulate the Seahorse’s bubbles as neededto create some steps for yourself to reach the ceiling and hit all three buttons, which unlocks apathway in the upper left cornerof the room. You’ll also need touse the bubbles to jump up hereafter unlocking the door.
In the next room, hop to the glass platform in the center andopen the chestto unveil Animal Well’s Bubble Wand upgrade!
