I’ll preface this review with a confession: I knew very little about the SCP before playing this game, other than a few minor snippets Mick had mentioned previously. That said, I’m a fan of the weird and wacky, with The Twilight Zone being one of my favourite shows growing up, so I dove headfirst into Go Home Annie anticipating a story full of mysterious entities and bizarre creatures. While the game delivered that atmosphere perfectly, it was unfortunately let down by some convoluted writing and downright poor mechanical execution.
For those that don’t know, SCP stands for Secure, Contain and Protect, which is the creed of this agency that works in the shadows and defends reality from entities that defy it. There’s all sorts of weirdness in this game, with the entities themselves designated as “SCP” followed by an ID number, and fans of the SCP Wiki or any of the many podcasts that cover this stuff will undoubtedly find lots of fun nods and Easter eggs. From talking bathtubs with split personalities to unsettling, self-replicating flamingo garden ornaments, the otherworldly entities you’ll encounter aren’t necessarily scary, or even malevolent. Some of them are though, and you’ll meet those ones too, don’t worry.
You play as the titular Annie, a D-class tester for the SCP Replication Division, which I gather is almost like an off-the-books sub-division of the already secretive SCP. She’s the lowest class of clearance in the building, essentially being disposable, and her job is to test the same SCP over and over. Each time she’s given amnesiac medication to wipe her memory before she does it all over again. You immediately feel sorry for her, she’s clearly very low in the pecking order and I found myself caring about her and the impact her job might have on her.
You’re also introduced to a skeleton crew working in the building overnight, with just John and Rae being there in person. They provide security and armoury support to the SCP respectively, while the dickhead of a Site Coordinator is often present via the intercom system, berating you for reasons unknown.
The first half of the game reminded me of some of Bloober Team’s best games: it’s a relatively linear walking sim style horror game, where there’s no real danger but you’re free to soak in the atmosphere and solve a few small puzzles. Eventually you move from your test SCP into the main building itself, where you can explore, speak to John and Rae, and start testing some of the other SCP’s. It’s slow but interesting, with each SCP accompanied by a small description outside its enclosure for you to learn more about it, similar to reading the SCP Wiki itself. The atmosphere here is excellent, with the lack of colleagues in the building adding to a sense of isolation, amplified by the knowledge of some of the entities housed nearby.
Unfortunately, the second half of the game also reminded me of some of Bloober Team’s games, in that it goes heavy on some particularly poor stealth sequences. All hell breaks loose at one point, and you’ll find yourself thrown into several sections where you’ll need to sneak around to avoid drawing the attention of a truly grotesque creature. For someone as jumpy as me to find these sequences frustrating rather than spooky speaks volumes about how irritating they were, as you struggle to see where the creature is in the dark offices or have to crouch for extended periods behind cover to avoid being hit by random attacks.
Eventually you’ll leave the SCP building entirely, which is where things get even weirder. What started as an atmospheric walking sim horror game suddenly veers into an extended driving sequence with its own challenges that have you wrestling with the car handling to try and stay on the road. This is then followed by a series of puzzles, some of which are so obtuse and convoluted to solve that I’d have probably put the game down if I hadn’t known I was nearly at the end of its 4-hour runtime. They’re not necessarily complex, just a faff to solve and not what I was wanting from my time with the game.
This wild swing in the second half of Go Home Annie unfortunately put a dampener on the story for me too. I was really enjoying getting stuck into the SCP elements and learning more about the containment protocols but once you leave the building that stuff is largely forgotten and you’re fully locked in on Annie’s story. I found this quite difficult to care about though, and after being left frustrated by the stealth, driving and puzzles I quickly found myself losing all interest in Annie’s story entirely. Had we stayed in the SCP facility and continued testing then this may have been a different matter, and I’m curious to know what SCP fans think as we essentially leave all this stuff behind after about 90 minutes.
Go Home Annie is definitely a creepy game when it wants to be, and your time in the SCP facility does a great job at unsettling you. Every room feels like a liminal space; like you’re seeing the seams between our reality and that from which these SCP’s came from. There’s nothing “wrong” with the rooms you’ll wander through, but equally they don’t feel quite right and they leave you feeling like something is off. The audio isn’t anything to write home about, but I did enjoy some of the music, which somehow managed to turn the triangle into something surprisingly creepy.
Go Home Annie: An SCP Game is very much a game of two halves. Your first 90 minutes set the game up for success, as you learn about Annie and the SCP’s housed within the replication facility. A poor second act sadly replaces that mystery and intrigue with frustrating stealth, driving and puzzle elements that will leave you scratching your head and wondering why we ever left the facility in the first place.