The Well (PC) Review

 

„What did I just play?” is the main question I ask myself after playing ‘The Well’. A short warning, if you find topics like mental insanity or cannibalism in a videogame disturbing, than The Well isn’t the game for you.

You play as a lonely hermit, who very quickly goes completely crazy and loses his mind. The story of this game is very unsettling, but at least you can’t accuse The Well of having a predictable plot.

The gameplay is very simple, which in a lot of other Horror Games would be less of a problem, since the narrative could carry the game. Since the Well doesn’t really deliver in that department, I actually found it a bit boring. You just walk around and click on things. The only exception is a forest section, which feels quite disconnected from the rest of the game and only further highlights how bad the gameplay actually is. You hunt a bunch of people in a, for no reason, very overpopulated forest with absolutely terrible gunplay.

The visuals are also pretty ugly in The Well. The developer tries to hide this to some extent by putting the whole world in a huge cloud of fog, but this is certainly no Silent Hill. The house of the player doesn’t look like a place where somebody could actually live. It is nearly completely empty. The ground outside doesn’t look like actual grass and the whole playable area is surrounded by walls of ground texture. Even for an indie game, this is one of the ugliest I have seen in a while.

A first time playthrough should take around 20-30 minutes. The game is very linear with only 1 ending and offers no real replay-value. It does however provide 8 pretty easy Steam achievements, from which are 6 unmissable and 2 can be unlocked quite easily.

 

Result:

The Well is an insane Game and I don’t mean that as a compliment. Unless you are interested in playing as a disturbed insane cannibal, the game doesn’t have anything to offer. The gameplay varies between boring and awful. The visuals are remarkably hideous. The only positive aspect is, that The Well isn’t one of those games, where you will not know how the story progresses after a short amount of time. For me, that’s not enough however and I would advise against playing this game.

 

3/10