Before I begin... It's been awhile, this is the first review since my break, I hope to do more the upcoming weeks, but no promises. I have a lot on my plate at the moment, but I also need some distraction from that to prevent myself from going crazy, and perhaps some more reviews will do.

Well, Anna's Quest is a game a friend of mine gave me as a present through Steam, and I must say, although the game is flawed at a few vital points, it was very enjoyable, and certainly not a waste of my time. It is however a game that you may judge negatively too soon, due to a few clichés turning up in the beginning, or at least, so it seems, however when you get into the deep of a few things, most of all about the game's main antagonist, then things suddenly appear very different then you initially thought.

At the start of the game Anna finds herself kidnapped and locked up in a tower guarded by an evil witch, and as such I was immediately reminded of the fairy tale of Rapunzel. The witch awakens Anna's ability to use telekinesis, and since this is a point-and-click-adventure, you can already guess Anna will need to use this ability a lot during the course of her quest. Your first task will as such be to escape from the tower, and while you are at it the first hints will be given that the witch, whose name appears to be Winfriede, may not be as evil as everybody describes here, but that she may merely be a woman who has gone a bit out of her senses for some reason, and came to walk the path of evil as a result. The question is, what happened in Winfriede's past making her come to these errors.

The interface of the game has become pretty classic for many games in this genre. By left clicking an object, Anna will either pick it up and add it to her inventory, or she will try to use the object somehow. Clicking on people will cause Anna to talk to them. If you right click and person on object Anna will describe the object or person.

The icon in the leftcorner of the screen will allow Anna to use her telekinesis ability. Using the scroll wheel will bring down the inventory screen. So far nothing new under the sun, except for the telekinesis...

The game is set up in multiple chapters. Except for the first two chapters, which both take place in the tower, all other chapters have their own environment, and won't allow you go back to the areas of the chapters before. However the game is written with the LucasArts Adventure Game philosophy stating that the player should never die, nor get themselves into a situation in which the game is no longer winnable in any way, so you cannot miss any stuff that gets you permanently stuck either, so don't worry about that. It is however possible you miss some achievements along the way that you can only achieve by starting a new game.

The puzzles are overall logical, except for a few, but what is very annoying at times is that some puzzle solutions are very obvious, yet Anna refuses to follow your request even though it is what has to be done to finish game game, unless a certain person hinted her to this, or when an other event hints her to this, and where to find those hints is quite often very extremely obscure. All chapters suffer a bit from that. I can also spoil a little that Anna will always refuse to use her telekinesis powers of people, as she won't want to hurt people, yet in second last chapter there are two times she has to do this, at one it is given away, but with the other it's not, and although it was an obvious choice there, her refusal before makes that you easily don't try that anymore. These issues can lead to some frustration at times. Overall the game shouldn't be too hard to solve for an experience adventure fan.

Anna's voice is something I heard a lot of people complain about, and I am also not too sure about that. She speaks in a rather monotone manner, and I needed time myself to get used to that.

Lastly the game is bugged at a few crucial points, and the bug caused some very funny effects I cannot write down in this review without spoiling the storyline. They didn't crash the game, but they were a bit annoying nonetheless.

Still most of the puzzles are not too illogical yet require a bit of thinking (which is how adventure should be), and the game does also contain a bit of humor. The game makes some statement about unions (in labor sense) in a humoristic way, makes some references to some fairy tales and is not above some dark humor either. And one puzzle is even downright disgusting, I warn ya!

Some people noted that loads of names are German, but I've been told the game developers were German, so that is probably why. Maybe that's also the reason why they spoke of the "Weiβe Frauen" in stead of "Witte Wieven" which would have been more correct, since Witte Wieven are a myth from Dutch origin and not German (no I did my homework on that one, as I wanted to make sure I wasn't prejudiced being Dutch myself).... Details, details.
(Although I must confess my sources are not 100% clear)

The ending of the game appears a bit of an anti-climax at first to me, but when as the last chapter revolves all about how Winfriede ended up on the path of evil, and when you get to play the game again, and see all the hints towards the revelations in that chapter, you may get to think about a few things. I can relate to Winfriede, and understand her motivations, however I cannot go into the deep of them as those would be mega-spoilers. But why I still mention this is because a good villain can sometimes be more important than a good hero. When you get to understand the villain and why they became a villain, because the villain has a good backstory, you are very well on the way to be a good writer. In some stories, villains only serve to give the hero a goal (Lord of the Rings is a good example of that) to strive for, but the villain himself is lesser important. Anna on the other hand gets so many hints about Winfriede, that it became more and more important Winfriede should have a good backstory, and fortunately, she has.

All in all I had a very good time playing Anna's quest. Even though the game is flawed on some vital points, the game is still enjoyable, and still a recommendation to fans of point-and-click adventures.

Anna's Quest is available on Steam, and not on Game Jolt (I already noted when I started this up I would not limit myself to Game Jolt titles only).

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/327220/Annas_Quest/
Brought to you by: Daedalic Entertainment