Forgotton Anne tells a deeply emotional story set in a stunning Studio Ghibli-inspired world. The narrative about forgotten objects and the choices you make feels meaningful and personal, giving real weight to every moment. Combined with its beautiful art and touching atmosphere, it becomes a truly memorable experience that stays with you long after you finish it. 100/10 worth buying cant wait to play the sequel

A wonderful story focused cinematic and puzzle platformer, that hits way harder than I thought it would.

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I'm going to start with the art direction, because it is the strongest part of the game.

You're probably coming to this game for the Ghibli adjacent art style, and you'd be right. It is Ghibli adjacent, and it's not half bad, at all. Although pure cutscenes can lack a little bit of the mythical studio's mastery, they are obviously polished to high standards, on a tenth of the budget at best. Talented artists worked on the animations, composition and backgrounds and it shows!

Thought it is Ghibli adjacent, pretty much as soon as the plot gets in motion (in the first few seconds) the game shows a very unique world and premise and executes on it pretty much flawlessly: when an object of our normal world is lost, or abandoned, it is sometimes transported in a magical realm where it is given life through the power of the anima. It becomes a "forgotling", a sentient version of itself, with personality and all.

And it is pretty great how much personality the devs managed to put into every mop, shoe, or lamp you will interact with. Thanks to good voice acting, and good dialogue writing, it is a constant pleasure to talk to NPCs in Forgotton Anne.

The exposition is also delivered with expertise. Not only through concise and well directed cutscenes, but also through the amazing world design, that convey atmosphere, plot and a real sense of depth and perspective, while always being in 2D. I cannot stress enough how dense these backgrounds are.

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The story itself, as well told as it is, is fine, it's good. It is clearly a case of seeing story bits before they happen. But that never really impacted my willingness to progress through the story, or my enjoyment of said story bits, thanks to the excellent characters. The game can get very emotional, and earns these moments with good build up. Predictible but well crafted nonetheless. But a lot of the minute to minute gameplay is punctuated by funny lines or situations.

Overall, though I wouldn't say the story rocked me to my core, it hit where it wanted to hit, thanks to great story-telling.

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Now for the actual gameplay, this is mostly a puzzle game, with a couple of platforming sections, that, thank God, don't overstay their welcome.

Let's start with that: the controls are rigid. They are not awful, but they are less than fluid, for sure. The devs obviously priviledged the details of the running, jumping and gliding animations, rather that the responsiveness. The result is a game where jumping is delayed, and using the glide/long jump mechanic can sometimes not work when you're trying to do it too fast. And though in other games that might be an issue, Forgotton Anne isn't exactly Super Meat Boy (or Celeste for the youngsters...what Celeste released 8 years ago???)

There is one gameplay section, in the entire game, that I would say starts pushing a little too much for jumping accuracy and somewhat precise timings. But even that section never pressures you with death or any fail state. You just have to repeat a section a couple of times if you fall back down.

The rest of the game is made of puzzles, using the "arca", a power glove of sorts, that can manipulate Anima, the source of energy AND life in the world of the forgotlings. The puzzles are solid enough to pose a challenge without being pace breakers.

Puzzles also contain some moral choices at times: you might have the choice to extract anima from a forgotling, instead of battery. These choices are well made, as in not often shoved into your face, and more woven into the fabric of the progression.

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TL;DR

Good art, good plot, fun characters, a surprisingly effective storytelling, and simple but enjoyable puzzles make Forgotton Anne an easy recommendation for me.

I love the, story, ambiance and even the gameplay, I just cannot deal with the timed puzzles. Sometimes I am not sure if I am doing things right but the timing is wrong or I get stuck in a very simple puzzle because the timing is very specific, or I just think its too simple an it turns out to be complicated. I wasted my time on a bug/ error because the whole playthrough has been me thinking I'm doing something slightly wrong. This time it was a bug though and it wasn't obvious that that's what was happening. It's too bad because the game is beautiful and the story is unique. I won't be finishing it. :(