Anchorhead (in English)

I had started, a few weeks ago, and on the insistent advice of Monsieur Bouc, the classic of interactive fiction that is Anchorhead, by Michael S. Gentry, released in 1998 and "Best setting" at the XYZZY awards of the same year. A 100% Lovecraftian story, with its decrepit little port town, its dusty, ancient and ungodly tomes, and its family curse based on incest, murders and suicides of all kinds. Michael Gentry appears in the documentary Get Lamp, where he talks about his creative process, his initial motivations, and the fact that he wrote the story with his relationship with his wife in mind; which I found moving and disturbing in equal measure.

I had started to build the general map of the city, the player-character's house, and noted a number of clues, when I saw on Twitter the announcement of the release of the Inform 7 version, illustrated, augmented and slightly modified (in terms, precisely, of map, and puzzles). You can buy it on Steam or Itch.io :

http://anchorhead-game.com/

I don't have much to compare it with, since I almost immediately switched to the most recent version, but I could see that the map was indeed slightly modified, and the puzzles a bit different (at least the only puzzle I solved so far, which consists in climbing on a barrel to pull a metal ladder to the roof of a building with your umbrella).

The writing is very pleasant, evocative, full of mystery and threat, and uses the Lovecraftian lexical field without ever being ridiculous. The implementation is just about perfect; all objects and scenery can be examined, and the NPCs have something to say about almost everything you can ask them about. The books, administrative documents and so on, which can be consulted, are numerous and talkative. Nothing to complain about, therefore, about the content of the game and the universe that is proposed to us.

The only thing I have a problem with is... the real lack of motivation to act. The first day, we break into the real estate office to find the keys to the house, fine, pick up Michael from college, fine, and go home to bed in our new house. The second day... We certainly make a strange dream, full of clues. But Michael warns us that he is going to work a little, alone, and we find ourselves idle, without clear objective. No mechanic in town to repair the car, no company to call to restore the electricity in the house... You can't even unpack your luggage, which clutters the entrance to the house. And that damn dream is a little light to go out and investigate.

Of course, you can steal Michael's student ID and use it to go to the university to look at old esoteric books. We can get lost in the back streets of Anchorhead and find a souvenir and trinket store, whose owner offers us a strange amulet. We can go to the court archives, or try to visit the patients' wing at the local asylum. But in the end, why? Why would a woman who has just arrived in a new city and a new life, go DIRECTLY to investigate her husband's family's past, and his reading material? Why would she explore the city from top to bottom? Looking for what? The player has, of course, his own motivations, but justifying them in the scenario itself would have been interesting and might have allowed the discoveries one is led to make to be more natural.

This lack of a clear objective for the main character is probably what prevents me, for the moment, from advancing in my adventure. I vaguely consulted the online solutions, which are for the 1998 version and are, I found, largely no longer useful. But the same thought came to me as I went through them: WHY is the player doing what he is doing? It's all the more annoying because time only passes in the game once you've reached the "objectives" that are implicitly given to you.

To be continued, then.