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My thoughts on Anna

Phaymousb Blog

First of all lets get some things out of the way. Anna was my first Indie game and Horror game I ever bought. So congrats to the developers for that. I thought I'll throw this in since,well,this is a blog about me talking about Anna.

Anna was developed by DreamPainters, I talked to one of the developers whose name just happens to be Alex. DreamPainters is made up of 2 people (that's it) so i guess this pretty much answers the question on why the game happened to be short. Well nothing to complain here about the length of the game especially since it only costs $10 (8 bucks if you pre ordered if I'm not mistaken). That's not to much so. The Atmosphere in this game some-what gives players shivers up their spine's. But at the same time it feels relaxing and soothing for osme weird reason. Not sure if it's just me and I'm sure not everyone will agree with me on that one but one thing we can agree on is that we are all different therfore we'll experience things differently and most of all interpret them differently.
So anyways back to the matter at hand. Anna takes place in an abandoned cabin out in the middle of well sort of nowhere surrounded by trees and for some reason healthy green grass is surrounding the house, shouldn't it be dead who the hell cares! The Puzzles are sometimes obvious but most of the time random, the game developers made some of the puzzles easy to figure out since they provided some writing in the walls and let us not forget the feature that they implemented in the game where players can choose to either enable it or keep it disabled. If they hit the "H" key button on their keyboard (duh) the game will give them a hint,in text form. But sometimes the game gives out something like " Nothing comes to mind" which can be frustrating for some players. Either way I liked how the Developers were always there to help and answer questions that players or people in general had.
The scares or supernatural events don't start occurring until after the players enter the abandoned haunted house or cabin. Some of these supernatural events start until players finish solving a puzzle or are working on one. Eventhough this might be true for some of the hauntings that occur some of them feel timed, random scares go off every so often like the cans tossing themselves at you, banging on the ceiling or walls, laughters. But don't let this fool you the game has some good scares overall. The more hauntings that occur the more the character will fall into madness, rooms will turn darker, carved eyes will appear on the walls. This also furthers players deeper towards the final ending which is the real ending,which is the ending that all the players should be aiming for,which,well you get it. Don't chicken out or give up.

The game might be short (as mentioned earlier in this blog), but it adds replayability because the game has 3 different endings. I'm not going to go into specific details about these endings, but if players want to experience all the endings I suggest players to save the game after they enter the house. Because you seriously don't want to keep repeating the same puzzles now do you?

Well on to my final thoughts. In my experience and from all the other horror games I've played (I didn't buy them I borrowed them) or watched on youtube or heard about or read about in interviews etc. I have to say that Anna is unique. Why? you might be asking, because Anna stood out the most that's why and here is why. The game ends up scaring you in a variety of ways, and it does this without having a monster chasing the player around. You can't die in the game but the game makes players feel that something might pop up and kill them. Sometimes players might not feel like that's the case but that's only because they are too distracted in trying to figure out a puzzle, but if they are distracted this makes a good haunting scare them for a bit. The game could give players a few more helpful hints, and I did see people complaining about items not appearing for them, but that's rarely the case. The music in the background is really good and it also fits and makes the Game's atmosphere feel a bit more vivid or creepy, that's all depending on the current situation. Either way DreamPainters is planning on patching the game so no worries for those of you who are experiencing bugs or other issues. So I really enjoyed the game and DreamPainters did a fantastic job on it. especially since it was done by mostly 2 people and the Unity engine.
I hope that someday DreamPainters might want to give this formula another run on a different project because honestly there is no way they can continue this story. Unless, unless, no their is no what ifs or buts. Or maybe another different studio might come out with a game thats similar to Anna. But yeah Anna is a Unique game that players shouldn't or wouldn't want to miss out on. I wish the best of luck to DreamPainters, they have talent and I hope they go out and grow with some more talented people in the future.

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