Game unusable and Refund Refused, stay away from this developer! After Three Years I have finally had enough of the intrusive (and highly glitchy) Registration Process every time I want to play this game. I really liked this game but I have never before come across a publisher who deliberately shoots themselves in the foot to this degree by barring the customers from playing a game they paid good money for. STEAM should do something about this highly suspicious (and creepy) company who are harvesting personal information and ripping people off in this way.

EDIT......

I had an important question about my review that I should share with the steam community. There is no doubt that Kalypso are selling our personal information to third parties. I got so exhausted from the glitching and inconvinience of the registration system that I created an email for no other reason than to use it for the registration process and nothing else. Sure enough withing days of doing this i started getting spammed from all sorts of buisineses and scams. The only people who ever had this particular email was Kalypso so they must be selling our personal information to third parties. It should also be noted that I left that particular email fallow for a month before registering it with Kalypso to see if It would get spammed if I did nothing, It didn't. That was evidence enough for me so I quickly closed it down. I made my findings known and took exeption at what they were doing, I asked Kalypso for a refund which they refused.

yey

Anna (Extended Version) is a great and magical game in 3D where your skills in not needing your mother to find every single thing, are on the test. You play in 1st person, exploring, pressing and moving different obstacles and objects to reveal the truth behing Anna, this grieving witch that you, the person, is being kept in the house by.

A lot of brainwork and logic, not forgetting reading the books clearly and carefully is expected to move along to the next stages. And of course, horror games are to indeed have creepy soundtracks and LOTS of jumpscares!

In summary with a neutral walk-through when knowing what to do, would approximately take around 6 hours to finish the game. It's an amazing, breathtaking and scary game for scaredy cats like me. :D
It's a well made game I'd rate 69/69.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart … Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” ~ Carl Jung

The first time I tried to play this game, it annoyed me a bit. Most beautiful atmosphere, sure. But the camera movements were lagged and inventory interface was downright annoying. I gave the game an hour or so, declared it as "meh" and quit to complete it for achievements on a later date. That was before I managed to get into the house. After my success, I learned that I couldn't be more wrong.

Anna is a tragedy, adorned with a love story, a murder, a forgotten promise and the cult of the Sacred Feminine. Our protagonist is an esteemed professor of history who gives lectures at a university in Italy. Important to note that he is specialized in mythology and folktales - because this is where social sciences tend to present complications fitting for a horror story. Life goes pretty much ordinary - aside some vaguely disturbing and symbolic dreams that he has been having - until he finds an envelope in his closet which leaves him with a sense of uneasiness. He avoids the envelope like the plague until his assistant conveniently spills tea over it, making opening the thing a priority. Then, he discovers photos of him in places that he has no memory of visiting. And the implication of a woman being there. He takes a pause, and mumbles to himself: "Anna, how could I forget you, my love".

We learn all this information from our professor's notes, meeting him the first time where he stands outside of an abandoned country house in a secluded valley. This is the house that he's been dreaming of, and he intends to discover more about it at any cost. I warn you: this is a "be careful what you wish for" scenario and it includes many disturbing symbolic imagery, knowledge of the occult, and the versions of folktales that Disney wouldn't even touch with a 10 foot pole. So keep reading if you are interested in a kind of dread that Lovecraft would be much proud of.

I wouldn't like to exaggerate anything, but the atmosphere is really marvelous and effective. Every detail is carefully put together to arrange the correct mood, empowered with symbolisms and background noises. Drawings and writings on the wall, lights flickering and beaming on furniture, random events and paranormal occurrences within the house makes you tiptoe, and jump at the tiniest of changes in setting. Yes, there are jump scares, but on contrary to a brutally gory display which we are used to, such events are presented elegantly with the usage of either uncanny symbolisms - concerning many, many weird puppets - or the usage of partial objects that would poke your unconscious with a needle like Silent Hill did back in the day. All of this is accompanied by the most beautiful soundtrack, full with suspense and emotion.

As for story, all events center the cult of the Sacred Feminine, where female force is idolized like a deity, or even a paranormal entity. I was astonished at the amount and authenticity of lore accumulated in this game. Story and atmosphere combined with the theme of survival horror, I think Anna as a more female oriented version of Amnesia: the Dark Descent. We have a flaw in memory, an abandoned settlement with occult on goings, appearances of most strange and disturbing phenomenon and a mystery to solve at all costs, mostly to our own inconvenience.

As for gameplay itself, there are much that lacks, I won't lie. There are books to collect and learn from, intuitions to combine, items to gather and puzzles to solve. Both without a basic background on at least mythology and an understanding of societal belief, the game would feel plain. Puzzles and most items do make complete sense only if you are already familiar with pagan customs. It is a feast to the ones who are interested in the lore, but I'd advice to skip this game for the casual horror game player.

If we are to be straight with the negative, controls do suck. Okay, you cannot go wrong with the tradition of WASD, but camera controls lag horribly, and mouse sensitivity is abhorrent. You basically go pixel hunting to grab something you are interested in, and I have been stuck with inventory bugs that makes it impossible to go through your documents for more than once. You save. You quit the game. You restart, reload. This is a thing now. Sorry.

Still, if you are persistent enough to endure controls - you get used to it as a nagging spouse after a while - and set aside the 3rd Party DRM that belongs to Kalypso, it is a good game. As a market strategy, a 3rd Party DRM is a really bad call and I've read there are issues of lost CD Keys about this game too. If you are interested, I advise to play the game in a 3-4 days period, complete everything and get done with it, for being on the safe side.

Is it worth all this trouble? Most would say definitely not, but I'm still glad that I was stubborn enough to go through with it. The true ending - it has 8 different endings depending on different courses of action you may take - baffled me and made complete sense for me. I gulped down the rest of my coffee and shed a tear, knowing what this whole ordeal was about. A tragedy, a warning, a mistake to be corrected, a demon to be faced... Call it whatever you may. On a last word, I loved it. I loved Anna, the Sabot Maker and our poor professor. I hope you'd give them a chance to haunt your subconscious too.

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Finn items. Sett dem sammen. Bruk dem på ting.

MYSTISK

Also; Mye weird ♥♥♥♥

Anna was once considered one of those lost games from the mod db that was just waiting to be recognized. It's a game surrounded by choices and puzzles in an ancient story between love and the revenge of loving at the roots of the natural feminine being.

Basically you have this adventure game with a pretty intriguing story and a very cool atmosphere. Sounds like it has a lot of potential right?

But let's talk about the controls. There's idiotic things like not letting you escape out of your inventory by hitting ESC. You have to hit "I" again. And then there's the inventory itself. It's very awkward where you have to scroll through a bunch of stuff you have. The interface could use a lot of work.

And now let's talk about "pixel hunting". You know what's frustrating? Going into a dark room with a bunch of items scattered about the room. The thing you want isn't an more noticeable and hidden a certain area and it looks just like all the other stuff you can't click on. So the only way to find it is to move your mouse over every possible item on the screen. Ugh. I combed rooms and missed things before and I had to use a walk through a few times to find things.

And now let's talk about the worst part of the game. The puzzles. Some make sense, many do not. There's a very thin section of wall you need to break through. Maybe use a stone or something? Nope. You have this metal gear piece. Maybe you can use that to break through? It's metal and looks fairly heavy, should bust through. Nope. I have a full canteen, that should be kinda heavy... Nope. Solution? You gotta use a tree branch to break through. A tree branch! To break through a wall.

Yes, that makes sense, right? The whole game is full of puzzles that barely make sense. The other use for a tree branch? There's a knife lodged in a wooden table. You want that knife. Your possible tools to get this knife blade out? Your hands. Nope, you''ll cut yourself, that makes sense. An axe! Let's just chop it out. Nope. A shovel? Maybe you can whack it out or pry it? Nope. Ah ha! I found a woodworking tool! That's gotta be it. I mean how else do you get a knife out of a WOODEN table! HAHA YEAH RIGHT. Obviously you would use a tree branch to get a knife out of a wooden table.

Good puzzle games, when you figure them out, you go "AHHHHH! That makes sense! Why didn't I think of that?" Anna, you can actually play with a walk through and be like "uhhhh, ok, I don't get it but sure whatever. I guess it might make sense maybe?" That's what made the Lucas Arts games so much fun. You might have NO idea how to pass a certain part of the game but if someone tells you the answer or you brute force the answer you think "Oh my god, that makes sense!" I remember in Monkey Island where I couldn't figure out what to trade the head hunter. So I offered him everything in my inventory until it worked. And when the item that worked was offered I had to laugh because it made complete sense once I thought about it. Anna, I used a walk through heavily after figuring out how terrible the puzzles were.

So basically, do not recommend this game in the form it is in now. Now, if they went through and fixed a bunch of things and redid a lot of the puzzles, I think this could be a very good game. It's just fairly minor things that need fixing, but a lot of things. Inventory fix would be very easy and then it's just fixing the puzzles. It almost feels like it would only take a week or two of work to fix the game completely.

It's a shame too because I think the story and atmosphere is great. If you are a HUGE paranormal / occult story fan, the game is worth playing for the story. Just make sure to have the walk through available for you so you can just play through the story without any of the frustration.

be weary, game uses DRM which requires you to register your email account before you can play this single player game....
That wouldn't be so bad if the log in launcher didn't tell you your product key was already in use if you don't play the game for a few months...

Anna is an amazing, yet disturbing experience with a unique and engaging story. The game seems relatively tame when starting in the lush green yard of an abandoned house that doesn't look all that sinister from the outside. However, once gaining access to the inside, things start to unfold that maybe you really didn't want to see in the first place. There a many different puzzles to be solved, some requiring a fair amount of reading various notes and books for the necessary clues and information. The music is fabulous and definitely one of the brightest spots in the game and the supernatural events will test your sanity. There are even several different possible endings adding some replayability.

I did find Anna to be a little on the difficult side as far as figuring out what items were used for what purpose mostly because there are a lot of different items and sometimes the solutions were far from obvious. Then there are the intuitions which I didn't understand at all without finally reading a guide. It also has an intrusive Kalypso DRM installed requiring an e-mail account and password.

Everything told, Anna is definitely a worthwhile chilling adventure that is sure to have you second guessing yourself.

Anna-

It has an eerie story, a few "jump scares" that we're tastfully done, but overall the game wasn't fantastic. I spent a few hours banging my head against some of the puzzles, as even though you're given a LITTLE direction, it's not enough half the time. If you're looking for a pretty game, this is it. Anna has it's own DRM, along with Steam, which some might find obnoxious. I forced myself to 100% it, alot of it in offline mode.

I would have to give it a 4/10, it did spook me a few times and give me the "WTF is that?! OH ♥♥♥♥" moments. The story could of been a bit more fluffed, and the puzzles given a little more direction. I spent most of my time, wandering back and forth in areas for a bit trying to find that TINY clue I needed to move on.

I recommend googling a "Walkthrough/How-To" for this game when you get stuck, or go slowly your first playthrough. Pay attention to every tiny detail.

My opinion on the matter, this game could have been more.