Animal Well, the first game published by YouTuber Dunkey’s Bigmode, has a release date

Puzzle Platformer Animal Well now has a confirmed release date of May 9, 2024, on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam.

Animal Well will be priced at $24.99/£20.99/24,50€ and will include full Steam Deck support, publisher Bigmode announced.

The game is the first title published by Bigmode, the publisher established by popular YouTuber Jason ‘Dunkey’ Gastrow.

The game is said to be the culmination of seven years of art, code, music, and game design from solo developer Billy Basso.

“I started development on Animal Well seven years ago and spent the majority of my evenings and weekends since that time working on it,” Basso said in a statement.

“I quit my day job about 2 years ago to finish the game and couldn’t be prouder of how the game turned out. This has been my passion for a long time, and I’m so excited to finally share it with the world.”

Gastrow, who founded Bigmode with his wife Leah, has over seven million subscribers to his YouTube channel Videogamedunkey and more than 1.2 million Twitter followers.

Speaking in an announcement video in 2022 in which he revealed that he was launching Bigmode, Gastrow said he was “sick of watching from the sidelines” and believed he could use his reach and experience critiquing games to help launch new indie titles.

“I’ve been on YouTube for 11 years now, and one of the core themes of my channel has always been to slam dunk soulless cash grabs into the garbage can and lift up and praise the truly inspired works of art in this medium,” he said.

“I want Bigmode to act as my seal of approval, which is something that I do not apply lightly. I am not looking for creative control over your games, but I do want to be involved. I’m sick of sitting on the sidelines waiting for great games to appear. Now I want to get in there and help make it happen.”