Entering The Fantastical Realm Of Forgotton Anne

In the hands of ThroughLine Games, the Toy Story trilogy would have turned out very differently. Inanimate objects might have life and being in the fantasy of Forgotton Anne, but they only spark to life once they’re lost and have slipped through the cracks down into the Forgotton Realm. But Anne and Master Bonku aren’t objects, they’re humans, and they’re desperately trying to get back to our world.

There’s a gradual build over the first few minutes as you’re introduced gradually into how weird and wonderful this world is. The hand drawn art style is truly gorgeous, reminiscent of classic animated films, and the cutscenes are rendered in exactly the same way, opening with a close shot of Anne being woken from her sleep as the power cuts out and an explosion booms in the distance.

The actual gameplay is that of a side-scrolling adventure, and so you navigate through to put fresh Anima fuel into the generator, so that Anne can get in touch with Master Bonku. The rebels are attacking, rising up against Bonku and the industry he’s built to try and get back home. Then you meet a talking scarf, a Forgotling wearing a pair of glasses.

Over the course of ten minutes, you’re given a lot of new things to deal with. “It’s very important [to get that right],” said Alfred Nguyen, Creative Director at ThroughLine. “We’re not showing the whole introduction which actually shows the relation between the two worlds and how the Forgotlings appeared down here. It’s a balance in our game to have a few things that are quite serious, but to also contain this quirkiness. You can meet a scarf and all other kinds of objects that we know from our world and talk with them.”

Behind that quirkiness, there’s definitely a dark tone to the game. Anne has the ability to manipulate Anima within the world. It’s through this that security doors can be opened, machinery can be powered, and so on. But Dilly the scarf… he’s alive because of the Anima within him, and it’s the Forgotlings that are the source of the energy that Anne can use with her Arca stone.

“If something has a symbolic value to a person,” Alfred explained, “when you have an attachment to it, you imbue with this life energy, Anima. That Anima energy, you could say it’s memory energy that builds up over time, and that’s what’s making them alive in the Forgotton Realm.”

As Dilly blusters his way into Anne’s house, she challenges him. Where’s your validation sticker? Why doesn’t your story quite add up? Are you a rebel? Answer me! As you wend your way through the conversation, you’re presented with different dialogue options that gradually lead towards a certain conclusion. Dilly was, to my mind, a rebel, but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed draining the Anima from him or seeing the way he unravelled as I did so.

If Anima is what’s powering this world and it comes from Forgotlings like this, I can understand why they’re rebelling. Are Master Bonku and Anne the bad guys here? At the very least it feels that way.

“What you can’t see in the demo is that they’re actually residing in this huge tall tower that Bonku has built to try and reach the Ether, which is where they’ll try to get back to the human world. This industrialised zone that Bonku has built is to keep order, so that he can get this thing working. You [Anne] are his enforcer. You’re not a princess, you’re his enforcer and right hand, keeping order in the realm, but a group of Forgotlings have formed a rebellion.

“It’s going to develop, but it’s very much Anne’s story. As she sets out on this journey and learns more about the world, she will grow as a character, and you have a chance to actually influence it.”

It turns out that I didn’t necessarily need to drain the Anima from Dilly, and making different decisions will affect how some parts of the story unfold. Yet I like that you start from a quite morally compromised position. Particularly as a child, the human brain is wired to imbue inanimate objects with the fantasy of life, and so when these things come to life in a game or a cartoon, it’s easy to empathise with them and believe that they’re real.

“It’s a funny mix between East and West,” Alfred said, “both in terms of the aesthetic, but also in terms of the design of the storytelling. It contains some of the fantasy of Studio Ghibli but also the slightly more grounded, darker and grittier Western fairytales – stories like Pan’s Labyrinth, the old Labyrinth as well, which is quirky but also kind of aterrifying as a kid.

“It’s fusing together these worlds in way that hopefully feels seamless and flowing in the end.”

The last few years have seen games dealing with morality in increasingly complex ways, trying to stray away from the overtly good and bad divide we so often see. There might only be two sides to the story in Forgotton Anne, but I look forward to grappling with those decisions and situations when the game’s released next year.