Created by OhDeer Studio and published by 100 GAMES, Anthology of Fear puts the player in the role of Ethan as he searches for his missing brother, Nathan. Starting at the last location Nathan was seen, Ethan finds himself breaking into a medical facility that specialises in dream therapy.

As you find and watch VHS tapes about Nathan, you’ll take control of him, and this is where the game gets dark and eerie. Are these dreams, or has something bad happened? You will have to uncover the truth.

While the story was leading me in a great direction, especially when things got darker and came together as a whole, the ending felt underwhelming. Granted, the overall story was great when compared to other horror games like this. There were just a few plot points and background that I hoped would have been more detailed and contained more context, like with the dream therapy sequences, I wanted to know more about the studies.

The gameplay features some puzzles, although they are not overly hard to solve, but it is mainly a walking simulator. Other than the puzzles, there are some good jump scares in the early stages of the game, such as mannequins, and yes, they move around when they’re not on the screen. I don’t mess with mannequins in horror games.

While the puzzles offer a slight challenge, and the jump scares are OK, it does get a bit easy to predict, and the environments can be quite repetitive as you loop through what feels like the same hallways and rooms, slowly uncovering the story. There are some small changes as you move around, but it does get old, and fast.

The graphics are fairly decent, but the lighting effects are great. Jump scares hide around dark corners, and players will quickly find a flashlight to help kill the darkness of hallways and rooms. As you explore, you will come across some horrific sights, like remains or weird drawings and writing on the walls that seem to appear out of nowhere.

The audio is another great feature that draws you into the game. Both Ethan and Nathan are fully voiced, talking during key moments to help guide the player, but the sounds of a creaking door or a loud crash behind you as you walk down a dark and empty hallway will always add to the tension, and anything can happen.

Anthology of Fear is a great concept, and it’s a solidly performing game with the story it has. The repetitive early game is a bit of a hurdle to get over, but it picks up when you get about halfway into the game, and that is when I started to feel more invested, wanting to dive deeper into the world and the events surrounding Nathan’s disappearance.

The overall experience was not full-on horror, but it delivered enough scares to keep me checking everything in the rooms I entered. Anthology of Fear is an experience that I would recommend to horror fans.

Written by: Shane Walsh