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I’ve always found horror and comedy to be two sides of the same coin. Both seek to probe the emotional core of the mind, with links back to past experiences. They’re also both incredibly hard to pull off. Ever tell a joke and have it fall completely flat? It takes a proper set of ingredients to make people laugh or, as Anthology of Fear is trying to do, scare them. Fear is a primal, near-inexplicable emotion that’s hard to pin down.
Both horror and comedy tend to fall back on stock tropes, too. Look at how many zombies are in popular culture these days. In both genres, actually. Still, the rules of comedy tend to be easier to lay out, so let’s flip those rules to horror and run Anthology of Fear through the gauntlet.
Ghosts of Redundant Media
First rule, a good scare requires a good setup. Anthology of Fear does alright on this one. The story starts off fairly routine, but gets more interesting as time goes on. We play as a chap looking for his missing brother, which leads us to (what else) a creepy hospital. From there, the plot takes a sharp left turn as we discover that the hospital staff have been experimenting with dream therapy, which has led to some disastrous results. To uncover the truth, we begin to watch some mysterious VHS tapes that relate to these incidents and, ultimately, the whereabouts of our brother. As setups for horror goes, it’s not too bad.
Anthology of Fear isn’t too shabby at setting up atmosphere either. It’s well paced in the beginning, with a lot of walking through creaking corridors and flickering lights. I found myself looking over my shoulder quite a bit for the first half hour, which was a positive sign. Unfortunately, it couldn’t quite keep it up. A suspensful atmosphere isn’t worth much if there’s no payoff, which is distinctly lacking. Anthology of Fear is like a rollercoaster where the big climb just ends with the photo kiosk and a long walk down a staircase. Well, alright, there is some pay off but that leads us to the second rule…
Second rule, the audience shouldn’t be able to guess what scare is coming. Let me conduct an experiment. If you’re playing a horror game and you turn a corner to see a mannequin, do you think it’s going to A) model fashionable clothing or B) appear behind you when you do something important? It dropped the bottom out of the atmosphere for me, because I guessed (correctly) exactly what was going to happen. So when they did inevitably move, I just nodded slightly and carried on. A whole half of the game is built around these things, turning a harrowing experience into a humdrum one.
Threat Not Found
It’s particularly frustrating because Anthology of Fear‘s story is hitting interesting beats. The second chapter seemed to be building up around the idea of survivor’s guilt, paired with themes of suicide. Its a brutal story that doesn’t pull any punches. It even competently links together the different chapters. It’s an absolute gold mine for horror, but Anthology of Fear only starts to dig in right towards the end. There’s a giant eye that’s saying mean things, I keep getting locked in rooms and someone’s crying over my shoulder. Spooky stuff. It’s trying its best to get under my skin, but the entire thing is completely undermined by the next rule..
Rule three, the best scares are the risky ones. Anthology of Fear is desperately lacking in any sort of threat. It’s one of those games where ninety percent of game time is spent walking down a corridor and the other ten percent is on easy little puzzles. Even when a monster did appear, all he did was make my screen wobble for a bit and then disappear. I did get a gun at one point, which gave me hope that we were about to throw some tension in the mix. It even had a unique mechanic where you could only fire it when a phone was ringing. But then it disappeared after about five minutes and it was back to holding up the left stick. Knowing that nothing bad could happen to me rather killed what tension was left.
It’s not helped by the slightly wonky execution. For one thing, Anthology of Fear makes you hold the right shoulder button and then press A to examine things. A small problem, granted, but given that I ended up holding down RB almost constantly, I can’t see any reason why you wouldn’t set examine to just the A button. It’s also not great at explaining its mechanics. At one point it wanted me to yank out some of my teeth (don’t ask), but was weirdly reticient about telling me to how to do it. Add in some wonky writing and voice acting and you’re left with a slight unfinished feel. That said, let me give some credit: it does look rather nice. The lighting and general graphics hold up Anthology of Fear a great deal, even if it is weirdly insistent on smearing Vaseline over the camera.
Post-It Note of Fear
The last rule is an important one – don’t charge a premium price if you’re only going to be on stage for five minutes. Anthology of Fear‘s full playtime clocked in at just over two hours. For £13, that’s pretty painful. Layers of Fear, a comparable game, is two quid more and about twice as long. I wouldn’t mind as much if the story wrapped up well, but it just meanders about. The missing brother plot is concluded about an hour in. We’re left exploring the brain of a tangentially related woman and then it just ends. There’s no interesting climax or even any characterisation to speak of. Two stories does not an anthology make.
I do feel a little bad for bashing it because there is some grain of potential buried here. But it’s buried in handfuls of dirt from other, stronger titles. Mannequins, looping buildings and impossible architecture. It’s all been done before. I’m glad we all agree that PT was an interesting experiment but it’s time to move on. Dig deeper into that interesting plot, perhaps explore those gun mechanics a bit and then you’ll have something a lot more interesting. As it stands, Anthology of Fear is trying its best but the curtain hook is already extending to yank it off.
