Anna

The games' protagonist visits an abandoned woodcutter's cottage after finding photos he doesn't remember taking. He hopes to piece together his memories, and uncover the identity of a mysterious woman named Anna.

The game plays like a point-and-click adventure, you explore the 3D environment, looking for objects to pick up and combine in order to progress the story. The bad thing is, the story is based around the paranormal, so the puzzles don't make too much sense. I didn't understand how you are supposed to find solutions to the puzzles. There are books you can find around the house, some of them make reference to rituals but they don't seem detailed enough to be answers themselves. Using a walk-though helped me complete the game in around 3 hours, but most of the time, the actions I was doing seemed to have no purpose.

The interface feels a bit clunky since you have many items in your inventory but they are shown in one scrolling bar across the bottom of the screen. It would have been better to have them in a multi-line grid so all items are visible at once.

The graphics are surprisingly good, and the ambient sound and music adds to the creepy atmosphere. Even though there is speech in the game, your character's thoughts are just displayed as text.

In terms of horror, there are no jump-scares in the game, but the game is very freaky. The house changes as you progress through the game, so objects that weren't there before will appear when you revisit rooms. Markings will appear on walls, the atmosphere can become darker/lighter/foggier, plus ambient noise like creaking floorboards and footsteps will be unsettling. After you see the mannequin woman, she can appear randomly as you move through the house, and being in her presence seems to drain your sanity bar and cause strange events.

There are eight possible endings to the game, most will bring it to a premature end. Although Anna is a bit of a creepy experience, I didn't enjoy it as a game due to the occult puzzles.