Genre: Adventure / Puzzle / Hidden Object
Developer:
Publisher: Nevosoft
Download a 60-minute trial of Annabel
December M: 
Annabel. Annabel. Annabel. Tsk, tsk, tsk. There are some heroines you love, some you want to emulate and some you just want to strangle. Annabel is one you just want to drop-kick from here back to ancient Egypt.
Because. She. Talks. Like. This.
With perfectly sharp short clipped yet well-enunciated vowels. And capitalised words. If you met her in person you would probably imagine the speech bubble above her head. And it’s really, really annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not just picking on Annabel. All of the characters in this game are worth drop-kicking if only because of their speech patterns. But despite this intensely aggravating flaw, the game-play of Annabel absolutely rocks. There are loads and loads of innovative, unusual mini-puzzles and although there’s a little bit of searching, it’s far more adventure than it is hidden object.
And the 3D rendering of the scenes is wonderful: highly detailed and immersive. You feel like you could actually really be in the middle of Egypt in 4000BC. Of course the 3D images do tend to give you vertigo, but I think that’s the nature of this style of imagery. The rendering on the actual human characters isn’t as good, but all in all, Annabel is a very re-playable game. There are twelve different types of mini puzzles and you can play these separately apart from the storyline any time you want. (Which is probably a good thing when you need a break from Listening. To. Them. Speak.)
Another innovative and clever creation in Annabel is the Hint button. Well okay, the button itself is pretty average. It’s round, has a question mark and doesn’t Speak In Capitals so all in all, it’s just another button. But the cleverness happens when you click it. It shows you a fuzzy, muted image of a place you’ve been before and red firefly-like light trails point you to where you need to look. And this is clever because it’s as if Annabel is looking in her mind, trying to remember where she saw it. It reminds me of those wonderful flashbacks in the movies where it all goes grey and dreamy – and I like this hint system. Which is what I have to say about the game Annabel in general.
I. Like. It. A. Lot.
