How to Unlock Fast Travel in Animal Well

Fast traveling has become a staple of the modern gaming experience across genres, and players have come to expect a certain level of QoL, even from Metroidvanias. While games like Dragon’s Dogma 2 subvert player expectations of what fast travel looks like by making it extremely punishing, Animal Well goes a different route.

Instead of letting players warp to discovered locations via certain checkpoints—a standard practice in modern platformers—Animal Well‘s Fast travel is integrated into the game via strategically placed animal mouths in locations that warrant revisiting. Here’s how it works.

How to Fast Travel in Animal Well

Collect 8 Secret Eggs

Secret eggs are hidden inside black chests throughout the map of Animal Well. Most often, they’re either protected by a puzzle or hidden behind false walls, making finding them challenging. Once players find eight eggs (any eight will do), a door will open in the egg room just west of the statue room (shown above).

With eggs in hand, visit the egg room and enter the bottom left door, which should now be unlocked automatically. This path leads toward a golden chest on three glass tiles. Open the chest to find the Animal Flute, the item needed to unlock fast travel shortcuts.

How to Use the Animal Flute

To unlock fast travel with the Animal Flute:

1. Make your way to the top right exit (pictured above).
2. Activate the Animal Flute to wake the Chinchillas and use their heads as jumping pads to reach the exit. This will lead to a small room with a pedestal and a crowhead on the top left.
3. Stand on the pedestal, and you’ll notice a glint in the crow’s eye.

   

4. Activate the Animal Flute and sing any note; the Crow’s mouth will snap open.
5. Jump into the mouth, and you’ll be taken to the Fast Travel room.

In the room with the animal heads, stand on the pedestal in the middle and activate the flute again. A few of the animal heads in the room will open their mouths. Each of these statues is a fast-travel shortcut to a location the player has previously visited. Walking into the mouths will lead players back to those places.

Use the ladder below the pedestal to reach the room below. Stand on the pond’s edge (as shown above), and you’ll see a green fish popping out of the water at regular intervals. This is a code describing how to use the Animal Flute. The fish faces right twice, left twice, down twice, and up twice before stopping.

Repeat the same actions with the Animal Flute: Right, Right, Left, Left, Down, Down, Up, Up. Playing the flute like this will let players warp back to the fast travel room instantly (the one with the animal mouths) from any location on the map. This way, they don’t have to make the trek through the egg room every time there is a need for fast travel.

Fast travel spots are visible on the map as little white dots. They’re extremely hard to spot, even when fully zoomed in, and only appear on the map after players have unlocked them.

Animal Well

Platform(s)

PS5 , PC , Nintendo Switch

Released

May 9, 2024

Developer(s)

Shared Memory

Genre(s)

Metroidvania , Puzzle