1. This is a horror game w/o B movie voice acting or jump scares. I think this should be enough of a review for most people so I am just going to leave it at that. I don't get paid for this shit.
2. Just kidding! This is way too interesting of a game for me not to put my two cents in.
3. The way Anatomy plays out is you are dropped into a very poorly lit and decidedly computer gamey looking house w/o any explanation. Most of the doors are locked. You find a cassette tape and tape player in the kitchen. You play the tape and a door unlocks. You open the door and find another tape in the room that has opened to you. I think you can guess how it goes from here.
4. This whole game hangs on its script, nearly all of which is delivered to you via an audio essay on these cassette tapes you find. It discusses humans' connection to their homes and compares various rooms to various anatomical elements of the human body. This short lecture is well constructed and alluring enough on it's own, that Anatomy could simply be just walking through this oddly empty, dark little computer game house finding tapes and it would lack for nothing.
5. But it's more than that.
6. Developer, Kitty Horrorshow, encourages multiple playthroughs for multiple endings but that is really just a little nudge from her to get you to restart the game after it ends for the first time. I will nudge you in this same direction as well. Go ahead and play again. You know you wanna.
7. Anatomy is w/o gameplay challenge. It relies exclusively on its presentation to draw you in. This is something that I find most game developers fail at. They tend to crawl up their own butts and revel in the beauty of their wondrous game excretion, expecting players to do the same. This is short and streamlined. It's not what I'd call fast paced but it's a tight experience. You never really go more than a minute or two w/o being introduced to something new.
8. This game shows you only what you need. The graphics are simple and blocky but the kitchen looks like a kitchen, the bed looks like a bed, the tapes look like tapes and the tape player looks like a tape player. You don't need a high polygon count to do dark.
9. The audio is done especially well. It is exceedingly sparse aside from the audio-logs, esp. to start. It is just doors opening, the click of a tape. There is no music but as the game progresses a distinct, glitchy cushion of noise builds and serves as a soundtrack to the whole thing . I wrote much of this just while listening to commentary-free playthroughs--so just Anatomy's audio--and it is amazing just how much of the emotional tone of the game is built on its sonic aspects.
10. The result of this general sparseness is a layer of abstraction which really keeps things feeling personal to the player. You are not in your house or someone's house. You are in every house.
11. This was made w/ the free personal addition of Unity and thus displays a splash screen each time you start it which does detract from presentation a minor but noticeable amount. To be fair though, the only reason I noticed is because everything else is so well polished.
12. I think what makes Anatomy engaging is not just the notion that maybe your house wants you dead but what it means that your house wants you dead, that you are never safe and you can never be safe, even that which is most familiar to you is dangerous. To me, this is the feeling of being completely marginalized and vulnerable, of not fitting in to the point where your own community is hostile towards you.
13. I have given up on trying to get normals to appreciate video games as art but if you're still fighting the good fight, this would be a good game to champion.
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