Why Animal Well is 10x bigger on Xbox (and 3x on PlayStation)
Plus: Checking in on Flappy Bird's crypto adventure and more. This is Game File's first Notebook Dump!
Animal Well, one of the year’s best and smallest video games, got its biggest edition last week.
The secret-filled exploration game that I’ve raved about all year, isn’t any longer on Xbox, where it just debuted. But its file size is way bigger. On PC, the game is less than 38 MB; on Xbox, it’s listed at 361 MB.
It’s the same game, so why the size difference?
“Every Xbox Series game requires you to package in a gameOS file that is 326 MBs,” the game’s solo developer, Billy Basso, told me last week. “So that is [as] close to the minimum size it could be.”
For comparison, the Switch version of Animal Well is 84 MB.
The PS5 version is over 100 MB. (As Basso told Game File in May, for that version, he had to include a 4K game image for the PS5’s system menus. That one image, he said at the time, “is likely larger than the game.”)
Playing through Animal Well can last players many hours. Even the Xbox version’s file size isn’t all that big, not for how densely detailed the game is. At 30 MB or 300MB, it can be considered compact in a time when most games sold through consoles are multiple gigabytes.
So let’s hear it for small games, and the developers trying to keep file sizes tiny. Even the big guys like Activision are on board. The mega-studio said this summer the file size for the next Call of Duty, out this week, will be smaller than in years past (and not, as originally feared, 300 GB).
Today’s Game File post is a “Notebook Dump,” wherein I run a bunch of smaller items that have been taking up space in my virtual notebook. Enjoy!
Item 2: A promising game’s phone requirement, clarified
A newly announced multiplayer PC and console game from Secret Door and parent company Dreamhaven—the new gaming outfit from Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime—invites players to control a virtual tabletop game using phones or tablets as controllers.
It’s called Sunderfolk, and it looks charming.
But what about those of us who might want to play this game with our kids but don’t want those kids to all have phones?
I asked the studio about that a couple of weeks ago and they had some relatively good news.
“Playing with a phone or tablet is mandatory,” a Secret Door rep told Game File. “But we've added some features recently where one phone can control multiple characters rather than requiring single phones, meaning players can take turns controlling different characters if the number of devices is limited.”
I have a phone! And I’d be okay passing it around to my kids.
Item 3: Flappy Bird’s crypto-powered comeback
Flappy Bird’s controversial return is in full swing. A month since the announcement of a new Flappy Bird, a modern version of the viral 2013 mobile hit is playable on the messaging app Telegram.
The new version plays like the original. You tap the screen to keep a bird aloft, aiming to fly it through gaps between vertically-aligned piped.
But it’s also very different. The new one has the trappings of many free-to-play mobile games, including multiple in-game currencies, login rewards and an in-game shop (though it’s pretty empty at the moment).
The new Flappy Bird launched on Telegram in late September and was updated on October 2 with a tougher “OG Mode.” Telegram indicates that the game has just over 280,000 monthly users.
The game is unabashedly a Web3 project. It can be played without attaching a crypto wallet, but users are encouraged to join teams to collectively score points, with the winners receiving an airdrop of free crypto tokens. One glance at the team names on the leaderboard makes crystal clear who’s flapping away…
Last month, I covered the decade-long race to claim the Flappy Bird trademark. It pitted original game creator Dong Nguyen against Mobile Media Partners (MMP), a company that had their own Flappy Bird submitted to launch on iOS in early 2014 an hour after Nguyen pulled his. Nguyen had stopped trying to affirm his rights to the Flappy Bird trademark in 2017, leading to MMP getting control of the mark.
One aspect of that story I struggled to resolve at the time was how the trademark got from MMP’s successor company, Gametech, to the Flappy Bird Foundation (FBF), the group behind the new game. On September 18, FBF had tried to “clear the air” about how it obtained the Flappy Bird trademark. In that statement, it saud that Nguyen’s trademark was abandoned after the game’s takedown and that “we… acquired the trademark” from Gametech.
But the records with the US Patent & Trademark Office didn’t match up at the time. On September 24, Gametech even filed images with the USPTO to support its declaration of use for the mark. The images show an unlisted page on the gaming store Itch.io. It offered an Android version of FBF’s new Flappy Bird.
The ownership discrepancy has been resolved. A rep for the Flappy Bird Foundation told me earlier this month that the actual change in trademark rights happened in August. Sure enough, USPTO recently updated its online filings and now lists Cyprus-based Flappy Bird Holdings as the new owner of the game’s trademark, as of August 23.
Item 4: In brief…
💰 U.S. spending on gaming was $4.4 billion, down 6% in September compared to a year ago, according to industry tracker Circana. There was a 3% drop in gaming content and a 44% dive in hardware
EA Sports FC 25 was the top-selling premium game, followed by PlayStation’s Astro Bot, then Madden NFL 25.
Nintendo’s newest Zelda, Echoes of Wisdom, ranked fourth, but Nintendo doesn’t share digital sales (only physical) with Circana, which can impact rankings.
🤔 A lot of current-gen console gamers don’t own a console with a disc-drive (nor a cartridge slot) and can therefore only play games digitally, per the new September U.S. sales report from Circana.
On Xbox, it’s nearly a 50/50 proposition. Circana says 51% of Xbox Series owners in the U.S. since launch bought the Series X model, which has a disc drive. That implies that 49% of current-gen Xbox owners have a Series S, which can’t use discs. (A new Series X model released this month also lacks a disc drive).
Digital is a rising trend for Sony players, too. Circana said 18% of PS5 owners in the U.S. since launch bought the all-digital version of that console. In September, 40% of U.S. PS5 sales were the all-digital model, per Circana.
👀 Roblox is adding new child-safety features, including tighter restrictions on chat functionality for players under 13, and updated content-based age-gating for kids under 9, Bloomberg reports.
Roblox has faced increased media and investor scrutiny this year over the impact of the platform on the millions of kids who use it.
📱 Sega is suing Japanese mobile developer Bank of Innovation over alleged patent infringement in the latter’s Memento Mori game, Automaton reports. Sega is reportedly seeking ¥1 billion ($6.5 million) in damages.
🎮 Ubisoft will not be developing a sequel to January’s acclaimed Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, but is exploring a new Rayman game (and is still making Beyond Good & Evil 2), according to a slew of reports and statements over the last 48 hours.
On Tuesday, French reporter Gautoz reported that the Lost Crown team was disbanded. Ubisoft quickly followed with a statement from the game’s senior producer, Abdelhak Elguess, who said “[m]ost of the team members who worked on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown have shifted to other projects that will benefit from their expertise.”
Insider Gaming reported today that some Lost Crown developers are working on a Rayman remake. Ubisoft swiftly followed that report with a statement that
“we are pleased to confirm Ubisoft Montpellier and Ubisoft Milan have recently started an exploration phase on the Rayman brand. The project is still in its early stages, and we will share more details later. As creator of the Rayman brand, Michel Ancel is being consulted to ensure consistency within the universe.” (Game File and other outlets asked about Ancel’s reported involvement, given reporting in 2020 that Ancel had bullied workers reporting to him. Ancel left Ubisoft that year and later call a report on the matter “fake news.”Kotaku then reported this afternoon that Ancel’s former project, the forever-in-development Beyond Good & Evil 2, which had continued under creative director Emile Morel until Morel’s death last year, is now being overseen by Fawzi Mesmar, Ubisoft’s vice president of global creative.
🌎 Nintendo’s mysterious Nintendo Switch Online test program is…
Not about steaming GameCube games
Not about testing a streamed version of Call of Duty
Apparently, according to accounts of leaks, a multiplayer game world involving user-generated content, developed by the more experimental wing of Nintendo.
🚀 Squadron 42, the single-player component of Star Citizen, an in-development sci-fi game that has reportedly raised more than $732 million in crowdfunding over the past decade, is expected to release in…2026, PC Gamer reports.
🥽 Minecraft is nixing VR support on PC, after already dropping it on PlayStation, Eurogamer reports.
🇺🇸 A recent Gamers for Harris political livestream featured voice actors, game developers and others virtually rallying for the Harris-Walz ticket, New World Notes reports. (The game dev portion starts at 1:04:15)
Game developer Chet Faliszek (Portal, Left 4 Dead, The Anacrusis) hailed Harris’ support for small businesses, including a pledge to offer increased tax credits for small startups. “These are giant, giant impacts that rain down and help all these small businesses and all these small indies,” he said. “And that’s where you’re going to get the next Lethal Company… coming from.” (If you don’t know, Lethal Company is a huge hit from the tiniest of teams.)
👋 Smash Bros. lead creator Masahiro Sakurai closed out his popular series about game development this week, revealing he’d recorded most of the videos two years ago, spent about $600,000 making them and seemingly has been working on a new game for the past two years.
🍎 The 14th annual New York Game Awards, an event I participate in each year, will be held in Manhattan on January 21st.
I for one uninstalled cod on pc even, because of its rediculous size. 1TB is a respectablely large drive, and over 200 gb for a free game is insane. It also just performs terribly.
A pity about the Star Citizen delay. That game's world needs some character, which the fans say the SP campaign will help create. Right now, it's a somewhat dull fetch quest simulator.