🌱 Beginner Guide - First Steps & Core Mechanics

ANOMAL is a time-travel puzzle game by French indie developer Alexis Roumier. You investigate four impossible deaths across four different eras — a mountaineer burnt in untouched snow, a conquistador dead with no wound, an astronaut erased in a sealed station, and a figure petrified on an ancient throne. There is no combat, no timer, no fail state. The core loop is: observe the frozen 3D diorama → collect physical and temporal clues → cross-reference evidence across eras → reconstruct the timeline. Each case is self-contained, but all four connect through a single anomaly. The game was first revealed in a developer post on January 20, 2025, with the CRT terminal aesthetic announced as the core visual identity.

ANOMAL presents four self-contained eras, each with one impossible death to solve:

Each case has three clues to discover. Clues fall into three types: physical (tangible objects you can examine), temporal (anomalies in the timeline itself), and supernatural (elements that defy known physics). Examine every clue carefully — the solution always emerges from contradictions between what you observe and what should be physically possible. Cross-reference clues from one case against evidence from other eras; the anomaly connecting all four cases becomes visible only when you look across time.

ANOMAL uses point-and-click interaction with full mouse control. Click to move, click on objects to examine them, and use the clue panel to organize your findings. The interface is designed around the retro-futuristic CRT terminal aesthetic — phosphor green scan lines, glitch effects, and 1980s terminal UI. The timeline reconstruction board is your main tool: drag events into chronological order to test your theory before presenting your solution.

• Left-click to interact with objects and examine clues
• Use the clue panel (default: Tab) to review collected evidence
• The timeline board lets you drag and drop events to reconstruct chronology
• Cross-reference mode highlights connections between clues from different eras
• No fail states — take your time to observe every detail in the diorama

Start with any case that interests you — the four cases can be solved in any order, though the anomaly connecting them becomes clearer as you complete more. Examine every object in the 3D diorama before moving on; the frozen scenes contain more detail than a first glance reveals. When stuck, try cross-referencing a clue from one era against the timeline of another. The solution is always logical — if something seems supernatural, look for the temporal explanation.