Let’s talk about the horror genre for a moment.

If I search Steam for “horror” just now, I get 6561 results. These are games ranging from Detention and Among the Sleep (definitely horror) to Binding of Isaac (borderline horror) to Fallout 76 (probably not horror). “Horror” as a tag is not a useful marker of what a game fundamentally is or how it plays, but it’s a definition that must be discussed when we talk about Ann. It bills itself first and foremost as horror, but what does that mean?

Horror in video games can be divided into horror as a theme and horror as a mechanic. I confidently classify Detention and Among the Sleep as horror because they have both; thematically, they are about spooky, scary things, and mechanically, the focus of the game is on engaging with the big scary. The atmosphere they present is one where the primary goal is to be immersed in the atmosphere so when the terrors hit, they hit as hard as they can. Thematically, a horror game is any scary game, but mechanically, a horror game is at its best when the mechanics are minimal, and serve only to propel the player closer to whatever doom lies ahead. Citing Among the Sleep again, its mechanics are light platforming and puzzle solving, and that works just enough to keep the player active and engaged without causing frustration or getting lost in the reality that you are playing a game. Ideally, the player forgets they’re playing a game, and instead, believes in the world. The fear, the tension, the suspense all get accentuated and highlighted, because all of it could be real.

Which brings me to Ann.

Me throughout the game

Ann is a 2D JRPG game about a girl who falls asleep in her school and wakes up at midnight to find that it is, in fact, haunted. She must then dodge spooky obstacles, navigate hazards, and solve the mystery of why the school is haunted.

Ann also bills itself as horror, and the screenshot I’ve included above is a good example of the flavour of horror it has. Ann will walk into an area, a dialogue with something spooky occurs, and then there is a chase scene of running away from the spooky.

And sometimes you get crushed randomly, as you do

Ann’s mechanics are clunky. You have to run to get away from the spooky, but when running, it’s difficult to make the tiny turns that are needed to follow the path. Monsters follow simple, predictable paths, and so failing to escape them is just a chance to redo the same twitch challenge over and over. More often than not, I understood what was needed, but found myself fighting the game’s actual mechanics to get there.

And this is where Ann’s failure as a horror game really finds its roots.

Indeed, Ann. Indeed.

Throughout the game, I found myself thinking more about the mechanics and pathing of running away than I did what I was actually running from. A piano, a mannequin, a statue come to life, those didn’t really matter, because I was thinking too much about how to make a turn that I’d failed to make four times already. A game shouldn’t be without challenge, but the challenge shouldn’t come from fighting with the game’s actual controls. Challenge should supplement what the game is trying to do, not overwhelm and distract from it.

Ann fails as a horror game because the audience is at no point scared. The elements of a scary story are potentially there (who doesn’t love a good ghost story, after all), but never come together in a cohesive whole. The game’s very design distracts from its story and atmosphere, both of which also distract further from something actually scary.

Maybe I’m in a minority on this, but getting chased by a piano just isn’t scary. Honestly, it just made me laugh.

The fundamental premise of Ann can work. One of the best horror games I have ever played - Detention - follows a similar initial premise of a student trapped in a haunted school. The stories are radically different, but where Ann fails and Detention succeeds is not their stories - it’s how the game and its mechanics build up the story. Detention’s mechanics, sound design, art, and pacing all build the narrative and the tension as the player realises with dawning horror what’s going on. Ann’s mechanics distract from the atmosphere. Its sound design and music are, at points, weirdly surreal and upbeat. Its pacing doesn’t build tension, instead just dropping the plot twist on the player like a pawn on an unsuspecting Ann. There is no atmosphere. There is only running from one set piece to the next.

While I see the love and care that went into this game, fundamentally, Ann does not succeed as a horror game, nor really as a game at all. More than anything, it’s a walking simulator, placing a narrative on simple mechanics, but even there, it does not understand why that genre works. Without an atmosphere and attention to what pulls a player in - and what throws them out - Ann can’t succeed at anything it’s trying to be.

Developer: Rong Rong

Genre: Horror, Jrpg

Year: 2021

Country: Indonesia

Language: English

Play Time: 1.5 Hours

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