Lovecraft-inspired gothic horror at its best: a small town full of secrets, a gruesomely deformed monstrosity, a vast uncaring force awaiting its day. Despite the overblown style typical of the genre, this game generally works, and can get quite unnerving at times (especially in some of the NPC interactions). Highly open and explorable environment (aside from an abundance of locked doors), puzzles well-integrated into the storyline (including many optional puzzles and alternate solutions), lots of backstory revealed in an impressive variety of ways. Gets a bit sticky towards the end, with many tight time limits. Has a Sierra-style time system: the day ends when a certain point in the plot is reached. Features a female protagonist, two small mazes (one optional), references to incest, and a certain amount of strong language, gore, and really bad things happening to people.

Rating: *****

Reviewed by Carl Muckenhoupt (30 Jun 2000)

AnchorheadDemo.gblorb (621.07 KB)

Glulx executable (version: 2, incomplete, "Special Edition")

anchor.z8 (508.00 KB)

Z-code 8 executable (version: 5)

anchmap.zip (4.77 KB)

map in GUEmap format

anchor.sol (28.37 KB)

solution

AnchorSolve.txt (8.61 KB)

solution