Anna’s back story that you can piece together has a few overplayed moments, like the chats and emails you can read from her overbearing mom, but other pieces feel surprisingly real and familiar. The writing is a bit cliché, but it works well. There is payoff to all this, but it can be distracting and pull you out of the world and its set up. It’s only weak bits would be the occasional spooky image glitch jump scare or a few hoops it has to jump early on with you being unable to talk with people when they call you directly. It never breaks character and focuses on creating an experience that feels real in the moment, and it generally keeps that illusion up the entire run. It takes a lot from how ARGs function, those being experiences played out in real life where players interact with real websites and even find things in the real outside world to make progress and solve a collective story. The idea is to immerse the player into its world by simulating a method of viewing it, using a smartphone set-up to let you browse and communicate with the necessary parts of the story.
#SIMULACRA 2 THEME SERIES#
The core idea in Simulacra is a strong one, and it’s not surprising to find that the game has become a series with a strong and dedicated fanbase. Things get progressively stranger the longer the mystery goes on, and the stakes become very, very tangible. It’s not long before you start having to interact with some of the people in her life via text, searching through her online accounts, and digging up dirt to figure out where Anna disappeared to and if she can even be saved.
Instead, you find the phone on your doorstep and discover a strange video where the phone’s owner, Anna, is begging you to not find her as she begins to repeat her name and the video and audio heavily distorts. It begins much like Sara is Missing, except there’s no dumb sentient AI super Siri to talk to. It was a base for something amazing, and the development group, Kaigan Games, quickly fulfilled that presented promise a year later with Simulacra, an inventive horror adventure that managed to be more than just a cool gimmick.
It was inventive, immersive, and clever, though ultimately a small experience with a rather dumb endgame that deflates some of the mood it made.
#SIMULACRA 2 THEME FREE#
In 2016, a small group of indie developers released Sara is Missing, a free game where you are presented with a lost phone and explore it, discovering a horrifying mystery and becoming central to its outcome.
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