Anna

Anna is a horror game that is available on the Desura platform (and others, but that's the way I got it). One gimmick it is supposed to have is that it reacts to what you look at and adjusts what it shows you. (The trailer has you looking at eyes and then, bam! lots of eyes! I didn't look at eyes deliberately, but still got eyes, so I'm not quite believing in that.)

Anyway, in Anna, you are trying to remember something that happened at a house, and to find Anna herself, or at least what happened to her. It does indeed has scary moments, approaching jump scares, although some of them can be more subtle than that.

However, the basic game play is solving puzzles. Which very quickly becomes 'rub every item you have against everything else in the hope something happens'. This isn't to say that all the puzzles are illogical, just that some times you need specific items the game has in mind that you wouldn't necessarily think is what required. (Eg. one time I had to find something combustible... in this desolate house... with bits of wood everywhere... that I couldn't touch...) Which reminds me, the hit boxes are pretty random, often extending far beyond the item itself, and sometimes making other hit boxes very precise targets.

I did, however, manage to get through without using more than the in-game help (see above 'item rubbing' for why I went there). But, ultimately, I felt too stupid for this game.

This is a horror game let down by the puzzle mechanics of the actual game play.

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