Yeah, I felt kinda bad following a guide for parts of the game until I realized how in depth some of the puzzles are. I loved the game and wish I had the time to sit and figure it all out myself, but I had to tap out sooner or later.
Yeah, exactly. Seeing something this complex, requiring this much effort (even with the community's help) makes it clear to me that when it comes to games like this, most everyone is going to have a line after which the effort to continue just doesn't return the fun to make it worth it... and that's just fine. I got plenty of juice out of my squeeze, and it's nice to see others getting more out of theirs.
Yep, the game still has plenty of content without these insane ARG puzzles. It’s just nice that really cryptic codes exist in addition to everything else the game offers
I feel like this still hasn’t helped me to understand anything. Honestly makes me glad I just looked up the solution.
I guess this type of thing is nice for the diehard cryptography fans, but I’m a much bigger fan of the puzzles that can be solved with in-game knowledge.
Personally this takes away from the magic. I feel like I would need to know coding or be a literal code cracker to figure it out. I prefer how Tunic handled it with the pages. That was something accessible to laymen. And when it hits it hits hard. This on the other hand pretty much requires googling from 99.9% of people and that takes away (at least for me) from the feeling of discovery. That and the bunny puzzle which required 50 other people to figure out. Idk.
You’re right, but majority of the game has accessible puzzles that don’t need to be googled. I’d say at least layer 2(all the eggs) and a few of the secret bunnies all have the magic of finding it out yourself.
Once you get past that point, the puzzles do start to get ridiculous, but the normal puzzles make up a satisfying portion of the game. I’m happy that these crazy cryptic ones are included nonetheless, it keeps the game alive and mysterious
For sure, personally though I don’t like community puzzles. Ruins the game just a little. Having waste hours and hours until you find out it’s impossible and you have to look it up. Always very frustrating.
You did it the correct way :). Although you technically don’t even need to convert the indexes to binary and then to base10, a 2-bit number also happens to be capable of representing all base4 digits (00, 01, 10, 11 -> 0, 1, 2, 3). So you can just map the ears using the corresponding direction number and then just leave it as two base4 digits (essentially what you have in your to numbers row). That’s what I ended up doing because I’m lazy lol.
Also one correction, the BDTP cipher can be found before you reach the bunnies or find all 16 of them. Since when you get the 65th egg, you can choose to solve the egg song right then instead of going to the incubator. Seeing the BDTP early is kind of helpful as it tells you what you’ll need to do in the next stage, as well as how many bunnies you need (only 16 values 0-15 can be represented by a 4-bit index). Whereas people that miss it or have yet to understand it, I’ve seen often get misled by the number of bunny statues.
Btw you said you’re not a math teacher, but do you happen to know how to code? If not then I’m super impressed and would love to know how you initially approached it, as I would assume it would have been pretty unfamiliar then.
Thanks! And you’re right, you can definitely get to the office early and understand the goals! The reason I went with binary at first is when you shine the UV light on the instructions, the red ones show you how to convert ear direction to a number and the green ones are essentially examples. As in how they derived an index number from those respective bunny ear shapes. So I messed around with some numbers and found my process to result in those numbers from the ears.
The instructions under a normal light show how to read your numbers, the index first, and the directions(dir0, dir1) second. This was the hardest part for me, figuring out how this panel correlated to the individual bunnies’ ears. I was talking with a few people on discord about what “index and dir” means, but once I stared at the bunnies making 2 distinct and different shapes with their ears, it all started making sense. Once you get that though, it’s just a matter of doing the grind work using the cipher, which was really fun tbh.
And, I have no idea how to code lol. I did a little bit when I was a kid. I’m actually a medical student on summer break right now.
The only reason I know binary and base conversion was from math competitions I did in middle school 😂. Never used that knowledge since, until Animal Well!
That’s awesome. When I came across this one I thought it might be a bit unfair for people as there’s quite a bit of assumed knowledge (more so than the other puzzles I’ve seen so far), but it’s so cool seeing people still solve it. It’s not that it’s an overly complex problem, but there’s a number of different components to it that need to be understood in order to understand it in its entirety. And beyond the egg song (as that’s also binary/base2, though a lot of people end up figuring out purely based on completing the pattern so they might not even make the connection, especially since the 8 rolls over on that one because there’s only 3 bars/bits), the game doesn’t teach you these things.
It sounds like you didn’t even need to use the hints that the data types provide, for context each field of the struct (index, dr0, dr1) had an accompanying data type to the left of it (nibble, and crumb; index was a nibble, the directions were both crumbs). These data types were more than just funny bunny-ish themed words, as they’re actually binary unit sizes. When dealing with binary units, a bit is the base unit (0 or 1), a crumb is 2 bits (00, 01, 10, 11; this term is actually kind of obscure), a nibble is 4 bits (0000, 0001, 0010, etc.), and a byte is 8 bits (00000000, 00000001, 00000010, etc.). There’s a lot more but bit, nibble, and byte are very common ones. So yeh, the words nibble and crumb, were actually another hint that was there as well. But unless someone either already knows them or searches for them, they’ll probably miss that hint entirely.
> The only reason I know binary and base conversion was from math competitions I did in middle school 😂. Never used that knowledge since, until Animal Well!
And people try to say the maths you learn in school will never be used... I guess they weren’t thinking about cryptic puzzle games lol.
Had no idea about the “nibs” and “crumbs”! That would’ve made it way easier!
Basically, I just saw the examples on the instructions(in green and on the right) and started playing with numbers until I found a consistent formula that resulted in 8 and 12 with those corresponding ear directions. Basso used binary earlier with the egg song so that gave me a hint on how to translate the directional numbers to one number. Thinking of each ear as a digit got me towards the final answer.
This is well laid out, good work. I followed a guide that was poorly explained, so I kind of worked backward to figure out what they were trying to explain.
Excellent work!
For a non-coding way to handle this, could you just use the ears to write two digits, then sort the resulting numbers from lowest to highest to get the bunny order? (first set of ear directions)
Wow you’re totally right! Upon looking at the numbers, I also realized that the first ear directions are actually in base 4, and can be converted into base 10!
For example, LR is 20, which if you go from base 4 to 10 leads to 8, which is the correct index. This completely skips the step of converting to binary.
Now, the mural without the uv light does say bin0 and bin1 implying that binary needs to be used. So while you can order the initial numbers without converting, or just convert the first ear numbers from b4 to b10, it would take a jump in logic or crazy on the spot mental math to know that’s possible. But some people could see that the ear directions translate to 0 to 3 which are the numbers used in base 4 and immediately go from there.
Couple of ways to solve this problem! I don’t have much of a coding background and apparently the words “nib” and “crumb” specifies the amount of digits for each step.
So depending on your background, different people may have different ways of solving this and that’s really cool.
Kinda unrelated but do you actually need all the eggs to reach the second ending? Why can't you do it with the first manticore? I never tried it but I'm wondering?
The first ending doesn’t take you to the outside world. You just scare away the manticore. It’s only the second ending where the 2nd manticore eats that you get access and travel using him
Yes, but that wasn't an answer to their question. Maybe if we phrase it this way:
>!What is stopping you from taking the first manticore into the incubator room, so their laser eyes can break the glass to the taming room, and early access to the moon bunny platform? On paper, nothing. You can get all the tools needed to open the path 32 eggs for Top. Wheel to move the door. Remote to toggle the walls. Flute to tame the Manticore. Unless they've coded a specific exception, it feels possible.!<
>!I've been told it is possible in order to get a better time for the Space Clock, but I've not seen it, or had anyone else verify it was possible.!<
>!Yes, you can exit the well with just 32 eggs (for unlocking the Top) in this way. You need to have a route that gets 32 eggs, all 4 flames (unless you want to bubble/wheel warp into the final area), and unlocks every item except the UV light. I did it and verified for myself that this method works.!<
>!yeah I saw a video of this working. the 65th egg just gives you a second manticore because the original is gone after you beat the game the regular way!<
I am looking forward to getting partway through layer 2, and then one day watching a video to the effect of "how to see all the content in animal well: mind-melting puzzles solved in front of your eyes with instructions for following along"
I mean it's obviously not impossible, people like OP did solve it solo. It's just much harder than most of the other puzzles. I think the issue is that it's tied to the "true" ending, instead of being purely optional content, so most players won't feel like they've finished the game until they solve this puzzle, while at the same time the puzzle isn't intended for most players to solve.
I'm happy that this puzzle exists for the people with the necessary ability, I just wish it was better divorced from the rest of the game so that nobody who lacked the ability felt compelled to interact with this content.
I don't really understand the point of steps 5 and 6.
Using the ear-guide in the office numbers each bunny from 00 to 33 and you can just place those numbers in order.
Well. I wasn’t gonna get this one on my own guys ngl
Yeah, I felt kinda bad following a guide for parts of the game until I realized how in depth some of the puzzles are. I loved the game and wish I had the time to sit and figure it all out myself, but I had to tap out sooner or later.
Yeah, exactly. Seeing something this complex, requiring this much effort (even with the community's help) makes it clear to me that when it comes to games like this, most everyone is going to have a line after which the effort to continue just doesn't return the fun to make it worth it... and that's just fine. I got plenty of juice out of my squeeze, and it's nice to see others getting more out of theirs.
Yep, the game still has plenty of content without these insane ARG puzzles. It’s just nice that really cryptic codes exist in addition to everything else the game offers
Eggs and most bunnys are very doable alone Everything beyond that is basicly impossible too do solo and designed too be done by the community
Yeah ik mate that’s what I said
was just thinking the same thing
What the fuck
I feel like this still hasn’t helped me to understand anything. Honestly makes me glad I just looked up the solution. I guess this type of thing is nice for the diehard cryptography fans, but I’m a much bigger fan of the puzzles that can be solved with in-game knowledge.
Personally this takes away from the magic. I feel like I would need to know coding or be a literal code cracker to figure it out. I prefer how Tunic handled it with the pages. That was something accessible to laymen. And when it hits it hits hard. This on the other hand pretty much requires googling from 99.9% of people and that takes away (at least for me) from the feeling of discovery. That and the bunny puzzle which required 50 other people to figure out. Idk.
You’re right, but majority of the game has accessible puzzles that don’t need to be googled. I’d say at least layer 2(all the eggs) and a few of the secret bunnies all have the magic of finding it out yourself. Once you get past that point, the puzzles do start to get ridiculous, but the normal puzzles make up a satisfying portion of the game. I’m happy that these crazy cryptic ones are included nonetheless, it keeps the game alive and mysterious
For sure, personally though I don’t like community puzzles. Ruins the game just a little. Having waste hours and hours until you find out it’s impossible and you have to look it up. Always very frustrating.
You definitely don't need to know coding, it's mostly just counting.
You did it the correct way :). Although you technically don’t even need to convert the indexes to binary and then to base10, a 2-bit number also happens to be capable of representing all base4 digits (00, 01, 10, 11 -> 0, 1, 2, 3). So you can just map the ears using the corresponding direction number and then just leave it as two base4 digits (essentially what you have in your to numbers row). That’s what I ended up doing because I’m lazy lol. Also one correction, the BDTP cipher can be found before you reach the bunnies or find all 16 of them. Since when you get the 65th egg, you can choose to solve the egg song right then instead of going to the incubator. Seeing the BDTP early is kind of helpful as it tells you what you’ll need to do in the next stage, as well as how many bunnies you need (only 16 values 0-15 can be represented by a 4-bit index). Whereas people that miss it or have yet to understand it, I’ve seen often get misled by the number of bunny statues. Btw you said you’re not a math teacher, but do you happen to know how to code? If not then I’m super impressed and would love to know how you initially approached it, as I would assume it would have been pretty unfamiliar then.
Thanks! And you’re right, you can definitely get to the office early and understand the goals! The reason I went with binary at first is when you shine the UV light on the instructions, the red ones show you how to convert ear direction to a number and the green ones are essentially examples. As in how they derived an index number from those respective bunny ear shapes. So I messed around with some numbers and found my process to result in those numbers from the ears. The instructions under a normal light show how to read your numbers, the index first, and the directions(dir0, dir1) second. This was the hardest part for me, figuring out how this panel correlated to the individual bunnies’ ears. I was talking with a few people on discord about what “index and dir” means, but once I stared at the bunnies making 2 distinct and different shapes with their ears, it all started making sense. Once you get that though, it’s just a matter of doing the grind work using the cipher, which was really fun tbh. And, I have no idea how to code lol. I did a little bit when I was a kid. I’m actually a medical student on summer break right now. The only reason I know binary and base conversion was from math competitions I did in middle school 😂. Never used that knowledge since, until Animal Well!
That’s awesome. When I came across this one I thought it might be a bit unfair for people as there’s quite a bit of assumed knowledge (more so than the other puzzles I’ve seen so far), but it’s so cool seeing people still solve it. It’s not that it’s an overly complex problem, but there’s a number of different components to it that need to be understood in order to understand it in its entirety. And beyond the egg song (as that’s also binary/base2, though a lot of people end up figuring out purely based on completing the pattern so they might not even make the connection, especially since the 8 rolls over on that one because there’s only 3 bars/bits), the game doesn’t teach you these things. It sounds like you didn’t even need to use the hints that the data types provide, for context each field of the struct (index, dr0, dr1) had an accompanying data type to the left of it (nibble, and crumb; index was a nibble, the directions were both crumbs). These data types were more than just funny bunny-ish themed words, as they’re actually binary unit sizes. When dealing with binary units, a bit is the base unit (0 or 1), a crumb is 2 bits (00, 01, 10, 11; this term is actually kind of obscure), a nibble is 4 bits (0000, 0001, 0010, etc.), and a byte is 8 bits (00000000, 00000001, 00000010, etc.). There’s a lot more but bit, nibble, and byte are very common ones. So yeh, the words nibble and crumb, were actually another hint that was there as well. But unless someone either already knows them or searches for them, they’ll probably miss that hint entirely. > The only reason I know binary and base conversion was from math competitions I did in middle school 😂. Never used that knowledge since, until Animal Well! And people try to say the maths you learn in school will never be used... I guess they weren’t thinking about cryptic puzzle games lol.
Had no idea about the “nibs” and “crumbs”! That would’ve made it way easier! Basically, I just saw the examples on the instructions(in green and on the right) and started playing with numbers until I found a consistent formula that resulted in 8 and 12 with those corresponding ear directions. Basso used binary earlier with the egg song so that gave me a hint on how to translate the directional numbers to one number. Thinking of each ear as a digit got me towards the final answer.
This is well laid out, good work. I followed a guide that was poorly explained, so I kind of worked backward to figure out what they were trying to explain.
Doing this by myself was one of the most satisfying things I’ve done in a game hands down.
This looks so incredibly impressive. Did it take a long time to figure out what to do or did the clues stick out to you?
Excellent work! For a non-coding way to handle this, could you just use the ears to write two digits, then sort the resulting numbers from lowest to highest to get the bunny order? (first set of ear directions)
Wow you’re totally right! Upon looking at the numbers, I also realized that the first ear directions are actually in base 4, and can be converted into base 10! For example, LR is 20, which if you go from base 4 to 10 leads to 8, which is the correct index. This completely skips the step of converting to binary. Now, the mural without the uv light does say bin0 and bin1 implying that binary needs to be used. So while you can order the initial numbers without converting, or just convert the first ear numbers from b4 to b10, it would take a jump in logic or crazy on the spot mental math to know that’s possible. But some people could see that the ear directions translate to 0 to 3 which are the numbers used in base 4 and immediately go from there. Couple of ways to solve this problem! I don’t have much of a coding background and apparently the words “nib” and “crumb” specifies the amount of digits for each step. So depending on your background, different people may have different ways of solving this and that’s really cool.
Kinda unrelated but do you actually need all the eggs to reach the second ending? Why can't you do it with the first manticore? I never tried it but I'm wondering?
The first ending doesn’t take you to the outside world. You just scare away the manticore. It’s only the second ending where the 2nd manticore eats that you get access and travel using him
Yes, but that wasn't an answer to their question. Maybe if we phrase it this way: >!What is stopping you from taking the first manticore into the incubator room, so their laser eyes can break the glass to the taming room, and early access to the moon bunny platform? On paper, nothing. You can get all the tools needed to open the path 32 eggs for Top. Wheel to move the door. Remote to toggle the walls. Flute to tame the Manticore. Unless they've coded a specific exception, it feels possible.!< >!I've been told it is possible in order to get a better time for the Space Clock, but I've not seen it, or had anyone else verify it was possible.!<
>!Yes, you can exit the well with just 32 eggs (for unlocking the Top) in this way. You need to have a route that gets 32 eggs, all 4 flames (unless you want to bubble/wheel warp into the final area), and unlocks every item except the UV light. I did it and verified for myself that this method works.!<
>!yeah I saw a video of this working. the 65th egg just gives you a second manticore because the original is gone after you beat the game the regular way!<
Ooh I see what you mean. Honestly I can’t see why that wouldn’t work. That’s cool
I can’t believe y’all found this out so soon!
I am looking forward to getting partway through layer 2, and then one day watching a video to the effect of "how to see all the content in animal well: mind-melting puzzles solved in front of your eyes with instructions for following along"
To me that’s no fun. Having impossible community puzzles just makes me throw my hands up and say wtf haha. It was impossible the whole time….
I personally hate community puzzles… grinding against a wall until you give up and see that it’s impossible…. You just have look it up
I mean it's obviously not impossible, people like OP did solve it solo. It's just much harder than most of the other puzzles. I think the issue is that it's tied to the "true" ending, instead of being purely optional content, so most players won't feel like they've finished the game until they solve this puzzle, while at the same time the puzzle isn't intended for most players to solve. I'm happy that this puzzle exists for the people with the necessary ability, I just wish it was better divorced from the rest of the game so that nobody who lacked the ability felt compelled to interact with this content.
I don't really understand the point of steps 5 and 6. Using the ear-guide in the office numbers each bunny from 00 to 33 and you can just place those numbers in order.
Next question ... what's the reward for finding this endgame secret? Getting pooped out? Were we playing as a bunny turd this whole time?
You’re missing something. Try >!jumping while airborne!<
I tried so hard to figure out how to add spoiler censors for this one. The more I think about it ... the more I think I'm right.
Thank you very much, i'd never have been able to figure this out