Horror games have a way of being scary just because you know they are a horror game. Putting yourself in a location and situation that you would rather not be in is an easy way for them to build an atmosphere, but you need more than that to actually be a scary game. Rocwise Entertainment put together some of the elements you need for a truly scary game with Curse of Anabelle, but the further into the game you get the messier the entire set up appears until you eventually see the dropped potential.
Story
After getting a weird letter from his ex-girlfriend, Nathan goes to find out what is going on. After a quick search at her home he finds a note Emily wrote stating she was going to the house that haunts her dreams; Anabelle’s house. In hopes of stopping her from getting lost or hurt by the curse, he quickly makes his way there to help in any way he can.
Gameplay
Starting off the game does well to give you a sense of the environment and play style you will be faced with throughout the game. You start off by searching Emily’s home with no dangers inside where you end up finding a series of necessary items to progress the story as well as use later in the game; namely the Book of Soloman. This gives you time to get a feel for the movement and interaction controls, which are all pretty standard.
From the home, you go to a graveyard area where you have to find a tiny symbol and interact with that specific headstone. This is another form of a tutorial as you will need to find tiny symbols later on to indicate which doors need demon seals and which get unlocked as the game progresses.
Once you are inside of the Anabelle home is around the time things get a little off-putting. You will once again be searching around this house and mostly be scaring yourself thinking about how it is cursed so you are expecting something to happen at any moment. After finding some items and reaching the cutscene hallway you are met by the ghost girl, Anabelle herself, who then kills you. I would say spoiler alert, but this is needed to be known to explain what happens from here.
Now that you are dead, a few things have been changed. Instead of a flashlight, you use David’s Light to light your path. This is the magic you use to light the lamps and fixtures around you and is cast by him speaking English or casting a spell (that he honestly has no business knowing). Also, Emily can now contact you to help guide you and give you story notes, which is good for the lore but doesn’t serve much help to the game progress. Lastly, you can now jump between two timelines which is necessary to be able to gather every item you need.
In the main timeline that you start in, there is plenty of atmosphere and is where you need to be to use the demon seals on the doors and perform rituals, but it is barren of threats. No need to sneak or watch for traps, just run around grabbing what you can and see what doors are open. When you complete rituals and kill the demon it belongs to, random doors will now be unlocked that were locked before and there is no indicator to let you know which, so testing doors will be something you do.
The second timeline that you can go to is the one that has an enemy in it. This enemy is an instant kill when it grabs you and will chase you down. I tried a few different things, but it seems like this enemy will know where you are no matter what you do so just go to the timeline, grab what you can, and get to a ritual room because you can only return to the main timeline when you are in a ritual room.
Now, why are you collecting various items from around this house? Well, demon seals can only be formed by putting together a specific coin, a specific item, and a specific leaf, which are all scattered around the house for you to find. These seals, once made, fit on specific doors that lead to a ritual room where you can summon the next demon for you to fight.
Once you summon the demon and go to the chamber in which you will fight it, this is another one-hit-kill segment. You will need to dodge the attacks that come at you while being able to correctly press the quick time keys. During the quick time events, you will see a bar at the bottom raising which is the bar you need to fill up fully in order to vanquish the demon. Every time you mess up a quick time event, the bar restarts, so be prepared to hit at least six of those in a row to win each fight.
Visuals
Aesthetically, this game is well done. Both timelines of the home look well done and different enough to show a time difference. The creature they have in the game was pretty unique, although it was unfortunate that all the demons were the same generic black smoke with a cloak character even though the Book of Solomon showed various demons.
Sounds
Music was practically nonexistent, which is good for the atmosphere but sometimes left things too quiet for no reason. Sometimes a scary sounding sound effect would play for a moment, but it never leads to anything so it is just a random tension builder which is more annoying than atmospheric. The voice work wasn’t bad all around though.
Replayability
You don’t have to go through all of the demon seals in order to reach the end, so you can actually face them in any order you can manage to find the items to summon. Ultimately, there should be about 2 or 3 routes to take you to the end of the game unless you intend to hang out and kill all the demons on a single playthrough for the cleansing of it.
What Could Be Better
The first thing I have to say is that a cutscene should never make up an entire chapter. Chapter 1 is just a short cutscene to present the idea that the Anabelle house is cursed. There’s another chapter that is just a cutscene, but this shouldn’t be a thing at all anyways. Cutscenes are to lead into something for the player to do or give a sense of the story that immediately affects the player. If they played that cutscene and then jumped over to Nathan reading the note without saying it was a new chapter, that would have been a smoother transition.
Why does the creature in the second timeline know where I am no matter what? I thought that section was going to present some stealth elements to it but instead it was more of a get-in-get-out session when I needed to grab something from that timeline. It lacks a sense of control the player has to their surroundings and instead of giving those moments a sense of struggle they are filled with a sense of dread.
Your demon book shows such well-illustrated drawings of all the vast demons that you are going to have us summon, but then when we get to the ritual room and do the ritual it is always the same cloaked figure facing against us; why? This showed me a side of laziness that I was really hoping would have been avoided. I was ready to see a different demon for each ritual, each one having their own attack style and battle type. Instead, because of the style that was used, the game felt like a giant scavenger hunt with a rinse-and-repeat demon battle.
Tutorial to the main bulk of the game was seriously lacking. Sure, you gave us the build-up to the style with Emily’s home and the graveyard sections, but what about combining pieces to make a seal, applying it to specific doors, how exactly to do a ritual and stuff like that? Your quest guide is unnecessarily vague and I found the compass up top more useful because it at least explains where to go. I understand not holding the players hand the whole time, but you should guide them through the first ritual with a step-by-step quest update guide so they can easily understand the more complicated section of your game.
I don’t want to spoil this, so I’ll keep this last mention vague for just the developers to understand. That ending is the least realistic ending you could have gone with. I was ready to see something completely different, perhaps related to the game name and the general idea of the plot, but instead got something that is worse than the “it was all a dream” type of endings. Even leaving that last part out and letting the first part of the ending be it would have been better than that.
Conclusion
I’m sorry to say that Curse of Anabelle was quite the letdown. After seeing the trailers and understanding the bulk of what the gameplay included, it sounded and looked like an awesome game. I was ready for what their plot and design set up, but it seems they weren’t ready to properly provide what they tried to put down. Overall, just a messy game design that relies on players to figure it out and enjoy the repeated gameplay.
