I FINALLY GOT TO PLAY ANAMNESIS! It is no one’s fault but my own that it took me this long. According to itch.io, I downloaded the game over a year ago when it was first released. But something about setting aside the time for a solo game…I was not making that time. But last weekend I finally decided I would do it and I am so glad I did.

Anamnesis is a solo journaling game, a role-playing game you play by yourself. The game itself is a book of prompts, all centered around the idea that you lost your memory and you wake up alone and lost. The player sorts and shuffles a tarot deck and randomly draws card, which guide them to prompts in the book and also provide a theme for that prompt.

Of course, this is a solo game, so you can always bend and stretch the rules and format to fit your needs, you are the player and the game master – do whatever makes the game most enjoyable to you! Don’t like the prompt you ended up with? See a prompt that you’re more interested in – this is your story to tell and weave, you can decide how closely you want to follow the rules of play or if you would prefer to think of them more as guidelines.

Game Designer Sam Leigh went the extra mile and even set up a playlist on Spotify, which you can find linked in the games description on itch.io or just be searching on Spotify.

I decided I wanted the full experience, so I put on my noise cancelling headphones, grabbed a blank journal (if you have a habit of buying journals but never knowing what to write in them, this hobby is perfect for you), shuffled the Tarot deck and got a brand new pen.

The joy of these kinds of games is that you can play it all in a single session or space it out to give yourself more time to think. I prefer the latter. Writing stories is a thing I’ve always been drawn too but I rarely can find the time or focus to get from start to finish (see: every NaNoWriMo post from my livejournal – pretty sure it’s a week of posting and then silence until December rolls around where I admit defeat).

This guided writing works for me and I just let the thoughts and ideas flow, writing down whatever the first thing that was that came into my mind. Don’t think — write! That’s my approach and for a solid hour my pen was just scribbling away, and I could feel a story that started out wide open begin to slide into a certain direction. It’s amazing to feel those threads come together organically.

And, of course, infinite replayability. For this first game, my character was in an almost medieval village setting (I blame binging God of War the week before) and they awoke in the middle of a forest. But next time, I think I might go for a more modern setting, like waking up in a hospital and wandering down a city street. The possibilities are literally endless!

I actually have not gone back to read what I wrote. It was an amazing rush of just writing and when I finished the final prompt, which is setup to be a release from the story and the world, I felt like it was only right to close the book in that moment.

Would you be curious to read the story I created in that time? Let me now in the comments!