Despite some of its flaws, the few hours you’ll spend with Creature of the Well will be some of the most satisfying you’ll spend in all of gaming in 2019.

As random as it sounds, combining robots, pinball, and hack and slash game play absolutely works. The Creature in the Well is by no means a casual game due to its difficulty, though the slow but steady ramping of skill required and the satisfaction of completing a dungeon section are more than enough to keep almost any gamer trying to beat just one more room.

Creature in the Well manages to inject the geometry-focused experience of pinball into the frenzied gameplay loop of a dungeon crawler to craft a unique puzzle action game. On occasion, the game's hands-off approach to conveying information is a hindrance, but the well-structured dungeons and monstrous antagonist more than make up for it--producing an engaging hack-and-slash experience that allows for satisfying experimentation.

Creature in the Well is a hypnotic flipper ‘n’ slash with astonishing art design. A brilliant mix that explodes in pure arcade pleasure, despite its dungeon crawling being quite repetitive and little inspired.

Creature in the Well inovates in many ways, and has a great atmosphere. But the game is damn tough and will discourage many players.

It’s dark, a little bit funny, and it delivers puzzles that are more satisfying to solve than defeating standard dungeon crawling monsters.