Anna is a horror adventure game for Microsoft Windows, published in 2012 by the independent Italian studio Dreampainters.
Allegedly based on an ancient Italian legend, the game features a nameless and faceless protagonist, who is haunted by nightmares about a house he has never been to. It seems, though, that those dreams have something to do with some woman from his past named Anna. As if she's calling out to him.
Finally he finds an abandoned, dilapidated house from his nightmares, breaks in... and that's where things take a turn to really, really creepy and really, really weird.
It was released again in 2013 as an 'extended edition' that features completely retooled puzzles, a new inventory system, 5 new endings, some changes to the scare system, and some redone translation work. It was given for free to original customers. This version of the game is available on Steam and other places.
No relation to the 2019 Luc Besson film.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
Anna includes examples of:
- And I Must Scream: The protagonist, in the "best" ending. He takes it pretty well, though.
- Ax-Crazy: The protagonist is this... quite literally.
- Beat Still, My Heart: Even the protagonist has a freak out at this part.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday:The protagonist: Back then, I think, I was engaged already. I can't even remember to whom.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Much less of it than other examples out there, but the contrast between a peaceful landscape outside of the house and the absolutely terrifying interior is rather off-putting.
- Cosmic Horror Story: Could be if the man isn't hallucinating it all. It's ambiguous either he's just insane or something bigger is going on.
- Creepy Doll: Subverted with Anna, if the protagonist is just insane. The statue is pretty, but it is ambiguous if it is possessed or not. The other dolls and statue are just freaky besides maybe the fertility dolls.
- Demonic Possession: Or should it be Divine Possession?The protagonist: I'm hers. Corrupted in body and mind.
- Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: The protagonist and the girl in the forest, if you stick to the theory that the girl is an incarnation of Anna.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: On walls, on a child's stomach, floating in the sky in pictures, embedded in stone. Basically anywhere there can be eyes, there will be eyes.
- Featureless Protagonist: The only thing that we know about him is that he's male, and even that is established in his "flashbacks".
- In the extended version, he carries a journal that has more information about what his life was like before coming to the sawmill. One of the documents received in the "truth" ending even reveals his name.
- Freud Was Right: The protagonist calls Anna his beloved and his mother.
- Golden Ending: A Double Subversion of this trope. The ending which requires you to do the most work is both the most horrifying and the most sensible out of three.
- Guide Dang It!: The most common criticism is that the game's puzzles are difficult to figure out.
- Haunted House: You have no idea…
- Hearing Voices: The narrative of the game.
- Human Sacrifice: Children sacrifice, too.
- Jump Scare: In a few instances, yes. One of the main ones is if you spend too much time wandering around, the game will start throwing cans at you.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Apparently, happened to the protagonist before the beginning of the game.
- Love Makes You Crazy/Love Makes You Evil: Guess, this is what you get for falling in love with Mother Nature herself.
- Louis Cypher: "The Whole Truth" ending seems to imply that 'Anna' is a Louis Cypher-version of 'Angra Mainyu,' the destructive spirit in Zoroastrianism. Which opens a whole new can of theological and linguistic worms…
- Mother Nature: Apparently, Anna.
- Meaningful Echo: "Forever and ever".
- Mind Screw: Very intentionally so. Among other things, one wall has the words "What if none of this is real?" written on it.
- Multiple Endings: Three of them in the original, eight in the extended version.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: "Miserere mei... Miserere mei..." "Have mercy on me" or "Have mercy upon me."
- Randomly Generated Levels: To an extent; the scary elements are randomly placed.
- Refusal of the Call: One of the endings has you walking out of the house, horrified by what you've learned, never to return again.
- Sanity Slippage
- Scenery Gorn/Scenery Porn: Once you go inside the house. The outside of the house is very nice.
- Shout-Out: The statue (which was originally intended to portray the penitent Mary Magdalene for display in a church, but stuff happened) looks very similar to an actual sculpture of the same saint by Antonio Canova.
◊ - Soundtrack Dissonance: Most of the soundtrack is rather serene and peaceful.
- Story Breadcrumbs: I guess, you could put it that way…
- Summoning Ritual: The protagonist is so in love with Anna that he performs a horrifying version of this involving child sacrifice.
- Surreal Horror
- Through the Eyes of Madness
- Villain Protagonist: It's up to interpretation whether the protagonist is a despicable Yandere who was always an unsympathetic monster, or a Tragic Villain who was seduced by a fickle goddess and tricked/driven into doing terrible things because of his love for her.
- Would Hurt a Child: The protagonist.
- Yandere: The protagonist, and, if two out of three endings are anything to go by, even Nature Goddess herself is not immune to this trope.
- You Are Worth Hell: One ending involves the player being trapped in a dark room for eternity, which he's fine with because he'll have "Anna" with him.
