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Anchorhead - TV Tropes

  • ️Mon Sep 10 2012

Anchorhead (Video Game)

Not even the "R" key can cure the fear of the unknown...

Anchorhead is a 1998 award-winning work of Interactive Fiction written and programmed independently by Michael S. Gentry, and is heavily inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos. The game is set within the titular town of Anchorhead, which rests firmly within Lovecraft Country. You play the role of a nameless woman who has moved into town with her husband Michael, and quickly becomes enmeshed in the dark, disturbing goings-on — to say more would be to spoil a truly excellent plot.

The game is notable, in addition to its great writing and overall polished feel, for breaking the typical structure and conventions of an Interactive Fiction game; the narrative is broken up into "days", during which you must complete required courses of action in order to proceed to the next day.

Incidentally, you can find it here or here. The list of awards should really speak for itself.

An updated and illustrated version can also be found for sale on Steam.

Caution: spoilers may be found here.

Anchorhead provides examples of the following tropes:

  • Afterlife Express: Discoursed upon in a book of folklore and superstitions. (However, if you stand on the tracks and wait, you'll find the train is plenty real enough to run you over.)
  • Alien Geometries:
    • Secret passages in the mansion lead in directions that have nothing to do with the rooms or walls they are following. The peepholes you find in the walls clearly change floors without rhyme or reason, and one gives you a dizzying view that's only possible looking downward from the ceiling. Exiting dumps you to a crawlspace in the attic, which is described as so wrongly angled you get a headache just looking.
    • The backstreets and alleys north of the river loop and backtrack so confusingly you never find any usable path. You'd be forgiven for thinking, like the heroine, it's only mundane confusion, until the path to The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday vanishes and becomes just another loop that makes no sense.
  • And I Must Scream: One ending involves getting trapped in a dimension filled with nothing but "the necrotic folds of the womb of Nehilim" that apparently violently torture you with unspeakable biological processes until the end of all time..
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Later versions of the game removed puzzles that didn't fit well, or made their hints easier to find. There's also several puzzles that have more than one way through them.
    • You can't open the puzzle box, but the proprietor of The Cauldron can easily. Since he's not always available, you can also set it on the train tracks and let a locomotive break it open.
    • The potentially lethal maze in the paper mill can be bypassed entirely by an attentive player.
  • Arc Words: "He always returns to his blood", "the buzzing of a fly" (or variants thereof), and "red-rimmed eyes" are three very prevalent phrases in this game.
  • Author Avatar: Michael, who shares his name and personality with the writer of the game.
  • Badass Normal: The protagonist, who has to go up against supernatural forces armed with nothing but cleverness and determination.
  • Babies Ever After: A very, very dark subversion. In the "best" ending, the protagonist learns that she is pregnant, to her shock and horror, with the fear that Croesus may still somehow return. The story comes to a close with Michael ominously (though innocently) saying that he hopes the baby will be a girl.
  • Big Bad: Croesus Verlac, the leader of the Cult and the reason behind the disappearance of your husband — he possesses his male descendants to abuse his daughters, bringing forth another victim to possess.
  • Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Verlacs, and it's by design through an insane patriarch: it turns out he has been using Eldritch magic to forcibly possess the many, many Verlac men in a bid for eternal life by forcing them to abuse their daughters and give birth to the next round of Verlac men to be possessed.
  • Body Horror: William Verlac. You find a photo locket of his face early on, and wonder why it's so closely cropped. His face is on his chest, and the rest of him... gets worse.
  • Body Snatcher: What Croesus Verlac has been doing to his male descendants for four centuries, including your husband.
  • Book Ends: Both at the beginning in the deserted office, and at the ending scene which takes place in your bathroom, you note that:

    There's a fly buzzing around here somewhere.

  • Brown Note:
    • Using the telescope properly will give you a sight so disturbing it brands the true name of the approaching Eldritch Abomination into your brain.
    • If you continue reading the book in the church despite the horrible feeling you get from it, it reveals the plan of the Cult... which drives you insane, and you cheerfully decide to rip out your eyeballs as you smile, smile, smile.
    • Looking too closely at William will drive you insane — either you fall unconscious at the horrific sight, or you freeze and cackle as the thing shambles close at tears you apart.
  • Burn the Witch!: After Croesus's death, many of the townspeople of Anchorhead, led by the local Calvinist minister, turned on his daughters, branded them witches, and burned them all at the stake (except for the youngest, who somehow managed to escape).
  • Child by Rape: All of the male Verlacs, who were each conceived by the previous male Verlac's rape of his own daughter.
  • Closed Circle: Your car broke down and has been towed away to the city of Arkham, and your purse and phone are in it. The only phone you can find doesn't work; the road out of town leads into wilderness. In addition, as Croesus's power over him grows, Michael outright refuses to leave, and you're determined not to go without him.
  • Cobweb of Disuse: Between you and an intriguing-looking iron key in the corner of the Verlac mansion basement.
  • Cosmic Horror Story: Arguably — you can win in the short-term and wreck Croesus's centuries long plan, but it's not exactly Lovecraft Lite, either; the "good" ending strongly implies that everything is about to start all over again.
  • Cult: There's a reclusive cult that has something to do with your husband's odd behaviour, centered around the worship of 'Ialdabaoloth', some kind of Eldritch Abomination God. It also turns out the majority of the town is in it.
  • Demonic Possession: Croesus Verlac has possessed several generations of his offspring, and does the same to Michael.
  • Dissonant Serenity: You, in the Non-Standard Game Over where you go mad from reading the book and claw your own eyes out, smile the entire time as the narration describes you doing the deed. It's, after all, "the most natural thing in the world".
  • Dragged Off to Hell: Or to the Womb of Nehilim, to be precise. Can happen three times: you can get trapped there if you mess around in a certain area, it can happen to the whole world in one of the bad endings, and in the good ending, this is how you'll defeat Croesus.
  • Dreaming of Things to Come: Your nightmares.
    • In one dream, you're a little girl, waiting for your father to come and tuck you in to bed... but when your "father" comes in to your room, you realize it is actually your husband Michael, as he starts to remove his belt. In the best ending, you find out that you are pregnant - this dream was a vision of what could have been your unborn daughter's future, had you not stopped Croesus.
    • Your dreams also foreshadow the plot, and drop direct hints about the places you'll need to visit to get through the day.
  • Driven to Suicide: Anna Verlac died young, at only 25, and it is heavily implied that she committed suicide. Her son Edward does the same thing after killing his wife and daughters. All the deaths were desperate attempts to end Croesus's reign of terror over the family.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Ialdabaoloth. The best look we get at it is through a horrific Downer Ending where the protagonist accidentally sucks herself into what is described as the "cystic womb" of it, where insanely disgusting tortures, each one worse than the last, are inflicted on the protagonist until the end of all time.
  • Eye Scream: Two, both by you (in self-defense, although one involves you losing your mind and calmly, cheerfully clawing your own eyes out in a bad ending).
    • In one mob death, your eyes get taken out by a pitchfork before you are torn to pieces.
  • Featureless Protagonist: Details about the protagonists' appearance, identity, and personality are very vague at best. The best you get is that you are definitely female.
  • From Bad to Worse: By the middle of the third day, you are well and truly screwed. Michael wandered off and vanished for much of the previous day, and having gotten him back, it's clear he's not entirely himself anymore. Following your leads puts you in immediate mortal peril by introducing you to William. The cult decides not to tolerate your poking around anymore and starts hunting you down shortly after. You will spend the rest of the game on the run, hiding, or looking over your shoulder.
  • Genius Loci: The Eldritch Abomination the cult worships is a living comet.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: It wouldn't a good ol' Lovecraft Cosmic Horror Story without going cuckoo for cocoa puffs!
    • Looking too closely at a Humanoid Abomination. It's either stated to blast your sanity so hard that you fall unconscious and thankfully renders your death by getting torn apart by said abomination painless, or you freeze and cackle and weep as the monster eventually rears up on you and tears you apart.
    • Deciding to keep reading the Tome of Eldritch Lore, which has you put on a Broken Smile as you're utterly convinced that the horrific Eldritch plan is perfectly fine and safe, before you calmly proceed to pluck out your eyeballs. It's the most natural thing in the world, after all...
    • You meet several player characters who have gone insane from learning the truth, ranging from a drunk hobo (in a direct Shout-Out to The Shadow Over Innsmouth) to a madman you have to avoid in an asylum lest he tear out your throat with his teeth.
    • Finally, if you decide to resort to violence to solve the problem of your possessed husband, a dark version of Dying as Yourself occurs as you realise you just murdered your husband — your love, and the reason why you've put yourself through Eldritch Hell to save. He asks you "why" through the blood pouring from his mouth. You can't answer because you are too busy screaming as you go completely insane.
    • Also neatly subverted by Edward, who opens the story by murdering his wife and children for no apparent reason. It seems like he's fallen prey to this trope, but as it turns out, he had a very sane (if desperate) reason: Croesus would have forced Edward to kill and abuse his wife and kids to spawn more children, thus providing more host bodies for Croesus to possess in his sons and continuing a vicious cycle that afflicted the Verlac family line for four centuries.
  • Guide Dang It!: The game has a large number of very difficult puzzles; at best, the hints you get are vague, and many cannot be solved if you've missed a necessary item or piece of information somewhere.
  • Inventory Management Puzzle: A partial aversion — you can carry almost all the items you'll ever need in the pockets of your trenchcoat, but you can only hold so much in your hands at any one time.
  • It Began with a Twist of Fate: An ordinary woman, with a perfectly ordinary life, learns that her husband of only five months has inherited a vast estate across the country, so they decide to pack up and move... and then it just gets more and more bizarre from there.
  • The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: The Cauldron, a tiny occult shop with a friendly old violin-playing keeper, with just the right blend of touristy knick knacks and mysterious omens. One of the only bright spots in the town, and although you can still hear the violin, you'll never be able to find it the next day. It seems it wasn't there yesterday for Edward as well, possibly to make sure the amulet he was about to throw away would be preserved for you.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Verlac, i.e. "warlock" (it's German). Edward's letter calls Croesus one.
  • No Name Given: The player's character is never addressed by name, even by Michael.
  • Non-Action Guy: The protagonist is an ordinary woman who is utterly helpless in a direct physical confrontation.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: The game has a large number of grisly ways to die, including insanity and suffering a Fate Worse than Death. Actual deaths include getting fatally poisoned by spider bite, killed by monstrous tentacled things, hit by a train, cooked alive by high-pressure steam, mobbed and lynched by the cultists, strangled by your own possessed husband, choked to death by the ghost of Croesus Verlac... Yeah, it's a pleasant game.
  • Old, Dark House: The Verlac mansion, which has hidden passageways, unsettling paintings, windows painted shut, a family crypt out back, a dank cellar, and an Eldritch Abomination in the Attic.
  • Orderlies are Creeps: Chuck, the orderly of Danvers Asylum, enjoys reading pornographic magazines and making crass remarks.
  • Parental Incest: Croesus found a way to prolong his own life after death — he would possess his male family members and descendants, and have them rape his daughters (along with any woman his targets happened to marry). If the resulting child was born a son, Croesus would possess that child and start the cycle anew. He had been doing this for four centuries, and will happen to the female protagonist by way of her husband Michael if he wasn't stopped.
  • Portrait Painting Peephole: You can spy on Michael through the eyes of Croesus Verlac's portrait in the sitting room. Extra paranoia points when the player remembers that, when you're in the sitting room, it sometimes appears to move subtly, "like the eyes are looking directly at you".
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Red-rimmed eyes are seen in all depictions of the Verlacs over the years, and when Michael develops his own, it becomes clear it's a sign of Croesus taking over.
  • Shout-Out: There are references aplenty to Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Among them are the city of Arkham, Whateley Bridge, the Miskaton University library.
    • The magic shop's violin (and the violin music you can hear in the lane nearby) are an extended reference to "The Music of Erich Zann".
    • The paintings in the mansion's gallery are horrifying, fantastical, and detailed to the point of photorealism. Paintings by Richard Pickman in "Pickman's Model" were said to have the same qualities. And, in both cases, they actually depict reality.
    • Several aspects of the town are pretty clear nods to The Shadow Over Innsmouth, particularly the librarian with "fish-eyes" and the local drunk who gives the protagonist key information for the price of a bottle of whiskey.
    • The abduction and sacrifice of children hints at The Dreams in the Witch-House.
    • William is inspired by The Dunwich Horror. And he finally shows up on Whateley Bridge, named after the monstrous brothers in that story.
    • Croesus Verlac's M.O. is taken straight out of The Thing on the Doorstep.
    • A real-world example: the Danvers Asylum is named after the real-world Danvers State Hospital located in Danvers, Massachusetts.
  • Spooky Painting:
    • Croesus Verlac's painting in the sitting room, described as pure madness captured in a portrait.
    • An entire gallery of them toward the back of the house, that like to rearrange themselves or randomly vanish without leaving any trace they were ever there.
  • Take Your Time: In dire situations, the game averts this, sometimes to frustrating effect. Most of the time, however, you do get to take your time, since the first three days don't advance to evening until you've solved all the major puzzles for that day.
  • Teen Pregnancy: Eustacia gave birth to her son when she was only 16. Anna gave birth to her first child when she was 17. Though this was because they were both victims of rape by their own fathers, so they certainly had no choice in the matter.
  • The End... Or Is It?: Heavily implied in the true ending - the protagonist learns that she is pregnant, and evidently fears that the spirit of Croesus may still somehow return through her unborn child.
  • Three-Act Structure: Splitting the game up into days reinforces the feel of acts. The first and second days serve as prologue and exposition as the player explores the town's mysteries. Day three is entirely rising action with many more active threats on the players life, and day four is a full-force climax as the town goes straight to hell.
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: The book in the church. Reading it all the way through causes a Non-Standard Game Over.
  • Unexpected Inheritance: How you got to Anchorhead in the first place. (Actually, Michael only inherited the house because the previous heir killed his entire family. Unfortunately for you, the Call can find a way.)
  • Textgame Cruelty Potential: You are gonna have to do some nasty stuff to escape the horrors of Anchorhead. You have the potential to do much worse than necessary, including murdering your own husband.
  • Video Game Remake: The original version of Anchorhead can still be downloaded for free. Anchorhead - The Illustrated Edition is sold via Steam, and was nearly completely rewritten with changes to the town, the clues you find, and the puzzles to get through.
  • You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Plenty, and frequently includes Go Mad from the Revelation. You'll get a few glimpses of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know throughout, but be careful about digging too deeply.
  • You Can't Get Ye Flask: Averted. The game generally gives you hints about what you should do to progress in doing what you want (such as, should a player want to look in a high window in the game's first area, suggesting they push a garbage can closer to get close enough,) as well as recognizes a variety of valid commands to do it.