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AG Community Playthrough #61: Anna’s Quest

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A little girl with strange powers….. a wicked witch in the woods….a troubled kingdom…and a…big teddy bear??

Oh God, it’s been so long since the last time I did this…. I missed it.

Welcome everyone to Anna’s Quest AGCP!!!


This game is one of my personal favorites. Probably the most charming game I have ever played, with medium difficulty, traditional point’n click style of play, both excellent humorous tones AND some rarer darker moments, and great, great chatacters. It is like a children’s book coming into life. I am ecstatic to return to the AGCPs in leading a walkthrough for this amazing game! Smile

The fact that the game’s creator Dane Krams will join us makes it all the more special!!! Yay!!!


First, let’s have some small info about the game’s background history. The first chapter of Anna’s Quest, called “Anna’s Quest: Winfriede’s Tower” was released a standalone, self-published game, by Dane Krams in 2012. The game was extremely well received by critics and players alike, praising almost everything on it. Time passed by and for a while seemed that this was the end of it. I seem to remember that I was anxious at the time that the game would remain like another Toonstruck or A Vampyre Story (aka a great title that stops in a cliffhanger with an obvious “... to be continued” and a sequel that will never come). Fortunately, that was not the case. It took some time, but finally the game was taken by the all-powerfull Daedelic to collaborate with Krams and publish the game as a whole in 2015.


The graphics: The game uses hand-drawn cartoon graphics, that are simply great. Sometimes simplistic enough, the colour palletes are what you would expect from a children’s storybook. Both the backgrounds, from medieval villages and churches to spooky lakeshides and little girls bedrooms with advanced tech pieces and the characters in them, are drawn in the best way possible. Animation is pretty smooth whenever it appears. 

The sound: The voice acting in the game is top notch. Both the protagonist and the secondary characters feel like real people (or talking animals, or whatever….) and it helps in really sympathizing, or antagonizing them and generally feel for them. The soundtrack is also spot on. Relaxing or intense when it needs to be, you will never feel that it takes you off the game, but in the contrary, in takes you deeper into the story…

The story: While the story starts with a very simplistic premise, as chapters go by, we will realize that is far richer and deeper than we might have first thought. Secondary characters or antagonists may have a big background behind them that it is for us to unfold and take a full grasp on the their actions and the story in general.

The controls: Anna’s Quest is a traditional 3rd person point ‘n click adventure. The controls are pretty simplistic. Right-clicking the mouse lets you inspect an item, while left-clicking does the single default action, such as to take or use it. There are of course interactions with inventory items as well. And do not be afraid to use the spacebar for indicating the hotspots! It’s all good! Try to interact with everything. Anna has unique dialog for everything most of the time!

The riddles: Anna’s Quest’s puzzles and riddles are on the medium side of the spectrum. The grand majority are inventory puzzles but they are mostly used within logic and all of them are really well-integrated within the storyline.


The game itself consists of 5 chapters, all of them pretty big, in different locations. I think that 1 week (or 10 days if we see people getting behind) per chapter is a pretty good pace for experienced and new players alike Smile. Of course that may change depending on the pace the majority can follow.

As usual, these first days will be spent in solving any technical difficulties, or simply give you enough time to obtain the game if you don’t have it already. It is on Steam and a recent game so I don’t expect much inconvenience. Whoever has the game installed and ready to go, please confirm it below. Also, please inform if this is your first time of the game or not.

If everything goes according to plan, we will all start the game in one week from now, on the 29th of July on the 25th of July.

Finally, the usual and necessary request to all participants to stay on-topic, use spoiler tags whenever needed and generally join in a good-heart spirit.

     
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/me checks GOG, sees it’s 21.85$.
/me checks Steam, sees it’s 1.99€.

/me screams “Holy crap! That’s a bargain!” and opens his Steam client
/me sees Anna’s Quest already sitting in my library

/me spends half an hour trying to figure out when and where exactly I bought this, as I have no memory of doing so.

Apparently, I got this in a Daedalic Megabundle on Indiegala back in 2016… Tongue




I’ve never played the game before, but obviously it’s been on my radar ever since Vol. 1 was so well-liked and -reviewed here.

I’m up and running, I’ve watched a Dane Krams interview from around the time of the game’s release, I’ve played the prologue minigame, I’ve watched the intro, and I’ve played part of the tutorial before quitting without saving.

It’s safe to say I’m ready for the 29th. Grin



Side note, it’s probably only me, but every time I see Anna’s grandfather, I think of Milhouse… Tongue

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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^You funny, Timo!

I bought the game from GOG recently, so this will be my first time playing it.  It’s installed and ready to go.

     

Carpe chocolate.

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TimovieMan - 22 July 2020 09:13 AM

/me checks GOG, sees it’s 21.85$.
/me checks Steam, sees it’s 1.99€.

/me screams “Holy crap! That’s a bargain!” and opens his Steam client
/me sees Anna’s Quest already sitting in my library

/me spends half an hour trying to figure out when and where exactly I bought this, as I have no memory of doing so.

Apparently, I got this in a Daedalic Megabundle on Indiegala back in 2016… Tongue

I actually also didn’t realize I had it until the voting began and I checked for games I already own.  Laughing

It’s one of those games that goes onto 1.99$ sale on Steam very frequently, so I’m sure I got it when the notification popped up and the visuals drew me in.

The game is installed and ready to go. It will be my first time playing it. Great to hear the developer will be joining in!

     

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oHHhh I might have to join this later. It’s been a long while since I played the game and it was definitely a very positive experience.

     
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Hi all, and thanks for the great intro! Learning about this playthrough has put a permanent smile on my face since yesterday, so excited for this! Thanks everyone for voting and joining in, and feel free to ask my anything at any time.

TimovieMan - 22 July 2020 09:13 AM

Side note, it’s probably only me, but every time I see Anna’s grandfather, I think of Milhouse… Tongue

Well, good place to start on some game insight - I was completely oblivious to this admittedly clear inspiration until I was skyping with the Daedalic team (I did most of the development from my home in Brisbane, only joining the team in Hamburg for the final 5/6 weeks) and they brought it up. Apparently it was a bit of an ongoing joke with the team there that it was alternative future Milhouse Grin I was mortified, but by then we’d already developed a number of assets with him and it was a little too much work to change him.

So, Milhouse Grandpa he remained! I just learnt to embrace it Cool

Sefir - 22 July 2020 06:03 AM

Time passed by and for a while seemed that this was the end of it. I seem to remember that I was anxious at the time that the game would remain like another Toonstruck or A Vampyre Story (aka a great title that stops in a cliffhanger with an obvious “... to be continued” and a sequel that will never come). Fortunately, that was not the case. It took some time, but finally the game was taken by the all-powerfull Daedelic to collaborate with Krams and publish the game as a whole in 2015.

Oh, me too!! I was veeeery naive going into Volume 1 - inexperienced me figured I could throw a game up online and it would gather attraction and sales based on word of mouth, and enough sales could help me keep going with the rest. Of course this didn’t happen, sales were pretty minimal and nowhere near enough to keep me going in development. The project was my Masters project at university, so I didn’t have the finance as a recent uni graduate to get any proper advertising behind it, nor did I spend the time building a fanbase at all beforehand. Daedalic quite literally saved the project! As fans of adventures, you would all surely understand how excited I was to go from potentially letting the game go, to being a Daedalic title! To attach programmers and animators from in house was just too good to be true for a young, relatively inexperienced developer. Their belief in the title will always be something special for me.

     
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Sughly - 22 July 2020 06:08 PM

Well, good place to start on some game insight - I was completely oblivious to this admittedly clear inspiration until I was skyping with the Daedalic team (I did most of the development from my home in Brisbane, only joining the team in Hamburg for the final 5/6 weeks) and they brought it up. Apparently it was a bit of an ongoing joke with the team there that it was alternative future Milhouse Grin I was mortified, but by then we’d already developed a number of assets with him and it was a little too much work to change him.

So, Milhouse Grandpa he remained! I just learnt to embrace it Cool

Right out the gate… Grin

This is precisely the stuff that makes these playthroughs so great when the designer himself gives us anecdotes like this.

Thanks for joining us! Thumbs Up

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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I’ve installed the game and am eagerly waiting to start playing after the excellent introduction.

I bought the game on GOG in 2016 but haven’t gotten around to play it until now.

     
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I already started the game before the latest voting. But I didn’t get very far, so I decided to wait around and see if it won the vote. Good timing!

I have the game on Steam and had no troubles getting it to work. Also “played” the storybook prologue chapter before starting the actual game.

I got the game as a Christmas present in… 2015.  Yes, 2015. My backlog is huge, sigh.

     

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my first question to Dane Karms, before we start, which has been in my mind for a long time; when and how was the decision made to give up the verb coin for the smart cursor?

     

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I will be watching this thread. I can’t participate but, I have played the game two times and loved it. so, maybe I will play with you guys just by myself. It is really fun.

     
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Advie - 23 July 2020 03:23 PM

my first question to Dane Karms, before we start, which has been in my mind for a long time; when and how was the decision made to give up the verb coin for the smart cursor?

Ah, yes good question! Originally I was heavily inspired by Curse of Monkey Island (probably my all time favourite point and click), and the use of ‘telekinesis’ all started when I was considering equivalents of Full Throttle’s ‘kick’ and ‘taste’, adding these unusual elements to the standard verb coin (of course the Ron Gilbert foray of verbs pushes this even more, but that was always a little too much for me as a player and the verb coin makes for a nice happy middle ground, in my opinion).

Ultimately this was a decision once I joined Daedalic. They didn’t interfere really at all with any of my decisions, but this was one of the few things they wanted to adjust in order to give some consistency across their games. At the time I was a little resistant, but looking back now I actually think they are right - despite some old school fans like us liking these throwbacks, I think in general the streamlined approach Daedalic used was much more efficient!

On that note, the only other thing they wanted to change was the voice of Ben - at the time ‘Ted’, who was originally voiced by my son! It was an interesting turn of events, giving my son a voice acting job at the age of 6 (I believe at the time?), and then firing him a little later!! He didn’t mind - I was bribing him with Skylander toys to do the lines, but he was painful to work with, terrible work ethic and wanted out within 10 minutes of recording Tongue To get through all of his lines for Volume 1, I think we did around 20 lines a day across a week or so! We also had the name ‘Ted’ for the vast majority of production, but sadly the film ‘Ted’ was released during development which was quite unfortunate… eventually me and the producer took the decision to distance ourselves from that character and rename him (but he is still Ted in my mind!).

     
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Since everyone is here and no technical issues are mentioned, I think it is fine if we start a bit earlier than I originall mentioned. No need to wait for nothing. Smile

The new starting date of the playthrough will be tomorrow, 25th of July.

Sughly - 23 July 2020 07:55 PM

I was heavily inspired by Curse of Monkey Island

I can see the influence in other aspects as well. When I was trying to describe the game’s graphics style, the closest game that came into my mind was not some other Daedelic title, but Curse of Monkey Island.

     
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Ok brave adventurers! Let our quest begin!!

You have 1 week (until the 1st of August) to finish the first two chapters of the game! Basically, the contents of the original “Anna’s Quest Vol. 1: Winfriede’s Tower”.

The first chapter a really small one. The second one… quite a bit bigger.

May the powers of good be with you. Smile

     
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I’m in Chapter 2 at the moment, having just opened the basement and talked to the mirror.

I’m liking the game very much at the moment. Voice acting is really good, the art style is beautiful and very fitting for a darker children’s fairy tale, and the puzzles so far have been well clued in and logical. VERY promising start!

Oh, and I just loved the animation in the intro movie, with the drawings gradually forming and getting coloured in, and then flawlessly transitioning to the in-game graphics. Nice work! Thumbs Up


Apart from the “progress” achievement, I’ve gotten Makeover, Fussy eater and Singstar so far. Trying out things yields benefits. Grin

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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TimovieMan - 26 July 2020 09:33 AM

Trying out things yields benefits. Grin

As I said, Anna has a comment for everything. And don’t be afraid to use spacebar for indicating the hotspots! Smile

     

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