Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗Anchorhead
Michael Gentry · Published by Michael Gentry · Official site ↗
Positive — 88% positive (49 reviews)
Last updated 27 Sept 2026
You take a deep breath of salty air as the first raindrops begin to spatter the pavement, and the swollen, slate-colored clouds that blanket the sky mutter ominous portents amongst themselves over the little coastal town of Anchorhead.
£7.19
Lowest price we've ever recorded
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£7.19
Price history
3 Sept 2026Lowest: £7.19 · Highest: £7.199 Oct 2026
Adventure, Indie · 2018 · More £5 - £15 games
Explore the mysterious streets of Anchorhead under stormy skies, uncovering secrets as you navigate through atmospheric puzzles and narratives crafted by indie developer Michael Gentry.
About this game
You take a deep breath of salty air as the first raindrops begin to spatter the pavement, and the swollen, slate-colored clouds that blanket the sky mutter ominous portents amongst themselves over the little coastal town of Anchorhead.
Anchorhead is a text adventure game in the style of classic Infocom games from the 1980s. No graphics, no menus, no point-and-click — you navigate a written story using typed commands, and read what happens next.
Travel to the haunted coastal town of Anchorhead, Massachusetts and uncover the roots of a horrific conspiracy inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Search through musty archives and tomes of esoteric lore; dodge hostile townsfolk; combat a generation-spanning evil that threatens your family and the entire world. A sprawling, meticulously detailed setting, brought to life by finely crafted prose and illustrated with dozens of spine-chilling illustrations, ensures that the story will stay with you long after you finish playing the game.
A sullen belch emanates from the clouds, and the rain starts coming down harder — fat, cold drops smacking loudly against the cobblestones. Shouldn't it be snowing in New England at this time of year? With a sigh, you open your umbrella.
Welcome to Anchorhead . . .
Anchorhead is a text adventure game in the style of classic Infocom games from the 1980s. No graphics, no menus, no point-and-click — you navigate a written story using typed commands, and read what happens next.
Travel to the haunted coastal town of Anchorhead, Massachusetts and uncover the roots of a horrific conspiracy inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Search through musty archives and tomes of esoteric lore; dodge hostile townsfolk; combat a generation-spanning evil that threatens your family and the entire world. A sprawling, meticulously detailed setting, brought to life by finely crafted prose and illustrated with dozens of spine-chilling illustrations, ensures that the story will stay with you long after you finish playing the game.
A sullen belch emanates from the clouds, and the rain starts coming down harder — fat, cold drops smacking loudly against the cobblestones. Shouldn't it be snowing in New England at this time of year? With a sigh, you open your umbrella.
Welcome to Anchorhead . . .
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
Minimum:
- OS *: Windows 7
- Processor: 1 GHz
- Memory: 256 MB RAM
- Graphics: Any
- Storage: 150 MB available space
Supported Languages
English
Latest news
Press Coverage
A Panel Shaped Screen Adventure: You see a new article on Rock Paper Shotgun
A Panel Shaped Screen is a monthly column where Giada Zavarise explores how comics and videogames inspire each other. This time, Giada is going on an adventure. It s the newest instalment of A Panel Shaped Screen, a monthly column about the way comics and games influence each other. The article promises to tell you everything about interactive webcomics. What will you do? > Click on read the rest of the post (more…)Read full article on Rock, Paper, ShotgunPress Coverage
What Call Of Cthulhu and The Sinking City could learn from this interactive fiction classic
Picture Cthulhu and his tentacled cohorts, dark and dreaming beneath the waves. H.P. Lovecraft s crooked astral vistas – wrought out of cosmic despair, fear of the unknown, and his racism – have saturated games for better and worse. As hypnotic as his nightmare visions are, the same tropes regurgitated at face value have become dry and tired. It s been done, and it s steeped in its author’s bigotry. Which makes recently re-released text adventure Anchorhead a rare game: one that takes the mantle of Lovecraft and forms it into something more than the sum of its sticky, sprawling parts. (more…)Read full article on Rock, Paper, ShotgunAnnouncementsOfficial
Linux issues remain unsolved
Very disappointing news: the fix that I had hoped would solve the problems with the Linux version did not, in fact, do so. I am still looking for alternative solutions, but I cannot offer any sort of timeline. At the moment I am stumped. I would encourage anyone wanting to play the game on Linux to consider purchasing the game at https://mikegentry5.itch.io/anchorhead instead. It is the exact same build as the version that was to be offered on Steam, except that it works.Read full article on Community Announcements (mikegentry5)AnnouncementsOfficial
Linux issues remain unsolved
Very disappointing news: the fix that I had hoped would solve the problems with the Linux version did not, in fact, do so. I am still looking for alternative solutions, but I cannot offer any sort of timeline. At the moment I am stumped. I would encourage anyone wanting to play the game on Linux to consider purchasing the game at https://mikegentry5.itch.io/anchorhead instead. It is the exact same build as the version that was to be offered on Steam, except that it works.Read full article on Community Announcements (mikegentry5)Press Coverage
1998 text adventure classic Anchorhead is an uncanny addition to 2018's lineup
Anchorhead just arrived on Steam and Itch, 20 years after its original 1998 release. Michael Gentry's classic work of interactive fiction has received a visual update and additional content for its re-release, but it's not trying to hide its origins: it's still a text adventure in the Infocom mold, an interlocking story built around puzzle-solving, inventory management, and exploring a large map of interconnected locations. It bears reexamining, both because it's a pivotal game in the history of interactive fiction, and because of the place it might occupy in games culture in 2018. A Lovecraftian gothic story, Anchorhead puts the player in the shoes of a woman whose husband recently inherited a mansion left behind by distant relatives—and, of course, he also inherited their family curse. Anchorhead revels in Lovecraftiana, and at times it feels like a tour of the highlights: there's a monstrous child like in The Dunwich Horror; there's shades of the hereditary possession of The Thing On the Doorstep; there's the cult-gripped New England town straight out of The Shadow Over Innsmouth complete with a homeless man who'll exchange exposition for whiskey. Like Lovecraft, it's obsessed with decay, antiquarian histories, and above all with writing. There are reams of newspaper clippings, cryptic journals, and archaic tomes to uncover—paper has been shoved into almost every nook and cranny. A confluence of setting, theme, and genre lifts up Anchorhead. Lovecraftian protagonists are everyday people, often scholars or investigators, thrust into horrific circumstances. Anchorhead's focus on all of the ancillary reading, the mundanity of its puzzles, all of that fits. And while many parser-based games of this era avoid NPCs because of how hard it is to make them lifelike, Anchorhead has a fairly expansive cast. It's possible to render the game unwinnable on day three because you didn t pick up a towel on day two. I...Read full article on PC Gamer
