Creature in the Well is an upcoming top-down hack-and-slash dungeon crawler with pinball-inspired mechanics. The game is scheduled to release for Xbox One, PC, and Switch on September 6.
In the video above, GameSpot associate news editor Jordan Ramée plays through the first three dungeons of Creature in the Well with the game's creative director, Adam Volker. The two talk through Creature in the Well's creation, including how the game uses The Legend of Zelda-styled dungeons to unify the mechanics of the two different types of games it pulls from. Volker also shows off several of the game's earliest secrets and hidden weapons, including a fan tool that can be equipped to create a tank-like healer build.
You play as BOT-C, the last robotic engineer that knows how to fix the massive weather machine that keeps the town of Mirage safe from constant sandstorms. Unfortunately, the machine has been destroyed by the Creature, a monstrous entity that lives in the town's well. In order to save Mirage, you must journey into the caverns of the nearby mountain where the weather machine is held and fix its damaged components.
In order to stop you, the Creature builds traps throughout each cavern. They can only be overcome by flipping balls of light into the nodes that power them. The nodes themselves act like bumpers in a pinball machine. As Volker describes it, Creature in the Well is a "pinbrawler" where you need to master the fast-paced action of a dungeon brawler with the frantic but tactical awareness that's needed for playing a pinball machine.