Animal Well Bosses Guide

Five encounters, none of them fights

Animal Well has no attack button, so a boss is a behaviour you exploit rather than a health bar you drain. Every one of them is solved with an item, a route or a trick, and three of the five can be finished without touching the boss at all.

Ghost dog — the chase you end by carrying something

The ghost dog materialises the moment you take the disc off its pedestal, and it is the one enemy in the game that does not respect the screen boundary. It follows you everywhere, phases through walls, and damages you on contact with its head.

It cannot teleport. That single limitation is the whole counterplay: a flute warp puts distance between you that it has to walk back.

Three things end or avoid it:

• Put the disc or the mock disc back on the pedestal and it stops appearing.
• Deliver the mock disc to the M. disc shrine. That defeats it and opens the gate to the P. flame.
• Carry the mock disc to the shrine without ever taking the disc, which means the chase never starts.

It is also distractible: throw a firecracker and it wanders to the blast instead of you, and throwing or riding the disc makes it circle you rather than charge. It ignores every other tool.

Chameleon — feed it five hedgehogs

The chameleon is only partly visible, guards the V. flame, and has two attacks. Its tongue reels you in and eats you for eight hearts of damage — instant death, because four red plus four blue is the health cap. Its other attack, shedding and firing tears of blood, only does normal damage, and throwing a firecracker is what triggers it.

The only way to kill it is to bait the tongue and let it swallow five hedgehogs. It will also eat chinchillas, but spits them out, so chinchillas are not progress.

One edge case worth knowing: with the golden heart from the groundhog you have nine hearts, so you survive an eight-heart tongue and get a broken message instead of a death screen.

Killing it is required for the V. flame, the S medal and the Razzle Egg.

Ostrich — two of them, two different problems

The first ostrich guards the G. flame. It pecks, and it can peck through one-tile-wide walls, which is what makes hiding feel unfair. Counters: an active firecracker stops it pecking, standing on a bubble above its head makes it strike the ground under you instead, and a one or two-tile-high hole makes it fail entirely.

The second ostrich is caged in the room with four buttons. While caged, it turns to face you, and that spins the wheel cage and reverses the connected horizontal elevator. Freeing it drops the cage and stops the elevator — with the right timing you can stop the elevator where the Golden Egg buttons are reachable, which skips the wheel.

Once free it can crush you under the cage, and standing still in the centre of the cage’s hitbox kills you regardless of health. The wheel protects you from being tracked: the ostrich only remembers whether you were on its left or its right, so you can lure it rightward all the way to the trapdoor that kills it.

The skip that matters: go down to the mice area and stand in the room left of the G. flame room. Use the slink and your own body on the two pairs of buttons and the way right opens without freeing the ostrich at all.

Seahorse — the only boss that can drown you

Two seahorses live in the seahorse area: the first in the room before the B. wand chest, the second in the room before the B. flame. They shoot water jets to knock you into the water, and contact costs one heart.

They are also the most useful enemies in the game, because their jets are puzzle components:

• They move behind you and fire in the direction you are facing, which lets you position the jet deliberately.
• The jets are reflected by paddles and fill vessels.
• You can reflect a jet too.
• The first seahorse’s spray is wider and also produces bubbles.

Changing direction continuously while a seahorse is submerged keeps it from surfacing, which is how you buy time in the tight rooms.

Manticore, first encounter — four buttons, then a detonator

Lighting all four beacons disables the seal and lets you into the enclosure. You cannot damage the Manticore, so the encounter is a navigation problem: activate four yellow buttons while it hunts you, and the gate outside the room opens.

Its attack is telegraphed. Its eyes flash blue, then it fires a pair of ricocheting lasers that also destroy glass blocks you cannot break yourself. Light is its weakness — the lantern repels it and makes the laser less likely, and a firecracker makes it flee for the duration.

After you leave the enclosure it keeps chasing: use the crank to raise the platform across the water, then climb the platform sequence with it behind you until you reach the grassy field. There, the detonator bombards it with fireworks and disintegrates it. That is Ending 1 and the end credits.

Manticore, second encounter — hatching a new one

Put the 65th Egg in the incubator and a second Manticore hatches. Fireworks do not work this time. Instead, work through the barriers to the left of where it hatched:

1. Let its laser break the glass — the thing that was a hazard is now the key.
2. Use the wheel to move the door.
3. Use the remote and the B. ball to break the rest of the wall.
4. Play the animal flute on the flute spot to calm it.

A calmed Manticore swallows you, and you wake in an empty void controlling both Manticores. That is Ending 2, and it is where the story actually resolves.

Related guides

• Animal Well flames guide — which flame each boss is guarding
• Animal Well endings guide — all four endings and their requirements
• Animal Well ghosts guide — blue ghosts, light and the non-boss threats
• Animal Well tools guide — the pairings each encounter expects