by Amr (@siegarettes)

If Shape of the World was an, open chill out session, then Anamorphine is its tonal complement. Taking place in a series of intimate, even claustrophobic spaces, it explores the emotional world of Tyler and Elena, a couple dealing with trauma and depression.

Anamorphine makes clear from the go it takes its subject matter very seriously. It opens with a content warning, giving players not only the option to skip the most upsetting scene, but also the option for a more detailed content warning containing spoilers for it. It’s an admirable approach that seems almost obvious in hindsight, and allows people to engage with the game on their own terms.

Which is good, since Anamorphine is a confident study in using space to communicate emotional states. There’s not a single spoken word in its entire run time. Instead it mixes the familiar with abstract, distorting otherwise everyday spaces into reflections of the characters’ mental worlds.

A great example takes place in the opening moments, where you get insight into the couple’s history through the contents of a moving van. Their possessions communicate where they lived, their destination, and establishes the Elena’s career as a cello player. As you reach the end of the van, it turns a corner and continues, forming an endless, snaking corridor of personal history, surrounding by the noise of the can traveling. It finally comes to a stop at a doorway, which opens into their new home in Montreal, where Elena starts her new career as cellist for a major music group.

This transitional technique is effective and affecting, and one of Anamorphine’s primary devices. The whole game is contained in a single stream of consciousness, and connections between areas serve as both scene changes and denotations of time passing. Objects appear when you turn away, or have your vision obscured. Scenes in the couple’s apartment will often transition into the same space, showing progress as they settle in, or degradation as things become rough. Anamorphine makes strong use of repetition here. Seeing everyday settings slowly warp through repeated visits helps reinforce the sense of an emotional journey.

Each of these scenes is broken up by a return to the hub, a pristine gallery of important objects and memories. Transitions to the gallery are abrupt. Often a moment will freeze in time, becoming a photograph in the gallery you back away from. Each of these photos is accompanied by a set of related objects, collected in a chamber of the hub in an almost museum-like fashion.

From this setup I began to get the sense of Tyler’s growing distance from Elena. Anamorphine takes place entirely through Tyler’s perspective, reflected in details like how everybody but Elena is represented as a mannequin, entirely motionless. Despite that, Tyler is cast entirely as an observer. Interaction takes place entirely through movement and observation, with certain highlighted objects responding to your gaze. The lack of direct interaction reinforces Tyler’s passive role and inability to control situations.

This is where the game’s use of time and space does the heavy lifting. Grand stages capture his affection for Elena, but cut him off from her, forcing the player through the auditorium where they become yet another one of the hundreds of faceless observers watching her cello performance. During a later scene Elena begins to quickly become physically distant, until she goes completely out of sight. It created a real sense of anxiety and loneliness for me, and from there things only got worse.

An accident occurs, and from there Elena only becomes more and more distant. Tyler begins drinking, escaping inward into his memories of Elena. The imagery grows more intense and surreal from here. The flowering desert that serves as Tyler’s retreat begins to be invaded by looming symbols of his guilt, and the apartment they share begins to bend out of shape. This is where Anamoprhine is at its most intense and beautiful. There’s a horrific vibe that crawls into each location, and simply walking down a corridor becomes frightening as you wonder when a hallway will end, or what a sequence might culminate in. Straightforward spaces feel labyrinthine, and glimpses of the current situation only reinforce the ever present feeling of helpless observation. Everything is falling apart and all you can do is watch.

This is where the PS4 version also begins to fall apart. Severe framerate issues occur as the game tries to stream in each area. By the end it had become so bad that the game would freeze for several seconds, and stutter frequently, to the point where basic movement became difficult. It didn’t go so far as to ruin my personal experience of the game, but it deeply undercut the scene transitions, one of Anamorphine’s biggest narrative devices. Even as someone who is willing to accept a lot of technical compromise, I find it hard to recommend the PS4 version. There’s supposedly a PSVR mode in the works, which I was looking forward to, but unless this somehow gets sorted I can’t imagine that being worthwhile. Unless you’re someone who thinks getting physically sick will help you relate to the characters.

The ending also feels a bit abrupt and unsatisfactory. The moments before build to an intense peak, but there’s not really any real resolution after, just a hint of the emotional aftermath. It’s appropriate enough given the themes and subject matter, but it left a lot of unanswered questions. I was particularly disappointed in how little I learned about Elena. Having the game take place through Tyler’s perspective felt limiting, and never gave me real time to properly empathize with Elena, or learn anything but basic facts about her. At times it felt more concerned with the emotions of someone witnessing their partner deal with trauma, rather than the suffering themselves.

It leaves me conflicted on my final thoughts. Anamorphine is without a doubt a beautiful and considered personal story. Its deft use of space communicates emotion through intimate worlds and surreal imagery. But while I can put aside my personal dissatisfaction with the end, the Playstation 4 version is deeply compromised, and intrudes on the qualities that make Anamorphine effective. (Hopefully the PC version plays a bit better in that regard.) 

There’s definitely something worth experiencing here, and despite those technical issues I did find Artifact 5’s story resonating with me. If nothing else, it’s worth taking the trip to see Anamorphine’s beautiful little spaces.