You play as Lily, a nine year old raised
in the woods by her father, who
disappears just as she hears a voice
calling desperately for help. The
voice is emanating from the well, and
Lily’s determined to get to the bottom
of it. Unfortunately, there’s no ladder,
and no handy massive
coil of rope, so she’ll
have to cobble one
together out of
common items such as
bedsheets, clothes, and
lengths of vine.
Luckily, there are
plenty of rope-like
items. That old, frayed
cable, perhaps. Or you could use a
roll of toilet paper. And if you’re
thinking, ‘That would never work,’
you have a point. The components
you choose to use absolutely matter,
when the time comes to interact with
the well. If you’ve collected a dodgy
rope section – even one weak link in
the whole – the rope will snap and
Lily will plummet to her death.
That’s your first challenge, then:
figuring out which of the many items
would make good lengths of rope, as
you can’t discard any of the objects
that you pick up.ROPED IN
A few things change as
you replay the game –
mainly creepy little
visual flourishes – but
while it resembles a
modern, fourth-wall-
breaking horror story,
in practice this feels
more like an early ’90s adventure
game. It isn’t just the VGA pixel art,
which will ensnare fans of Sierra
games. No, it’s the sense of humour,
the frequent gory deaths, and the
inevitable restarts as you try to bypass
every obstacle, every punchline,
thrown at you.There’s no manual saving, which
is a bit shit, as always. Every death
returns you to the start of the game,
albeit with knowledge that will let
you speedrun the opening puzzles.
There are around a dozen endings to
collect here, most consisting of
violent ends for Lily. Finding them all
will take persistence, trial and error,
and lots of running around repeating
things you’ve already done. How
deep you explore the well will
depend on your tolerance for such
repetition, and upon how you’ve been
hooked by the intriguing mystery.
There are scarier, more inventive
horror games out there, though most
require a greater investment of your
time, not to mention your money.
Lily’s Well offers the essence of a
positive indie horror darling, while
leaning more into the adventure side
of things. If you’re intrigued enough
to get to the bottom of it, you’ve
nothing to lose by diving in.75
While it becomes a little
fiddly and repetitive,
Lily’s Well is an intriguing
mystery with a nostalgic
visual style.VERDICTY
ou can see why wells are scary: they’re big, dark holes in the
ground, perfect for ghosts to crawl out of, or people to fall
into in horror stories, or any old TV show starring an animal.
So it goes in Lily’s Well, which is one of those cryptic horror
games that only reveals its secrets after much repetition, and
where nothing (obviously) is what it seems.
WELL, WELL, WELL
We’re sending our love down the well in LILY’S WELL
In practice this
feels more like
an early ’90s
adventure
gameNEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A horror adventure
game with multiple
endings and one
mysterious well
EXPECT TO PAY
Free
DEVELOPER
PureIceBlue
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
Intel Core i7-10750H,
16GB RAM, GeForce
RTX 2060
MULTIPLAYER
No
LINK
bit.ly/LilysWellCOOL TITLES FOR NO CASH by Tom Sykes
FREE GAMES REVIEWS
The VGA-style artwork
is wonderfully
nostalgic.