NoSleepGames has just announced their new puzzle-based visual novel game Annie and the AI. The game is an “emotional and existential story” about the bond between a creator and their AI creation, featuring actress Katy Bentz from Life is Strange: Before The Storm and Life is Strange: True Colours as the voice of Annie, a brilliant young woman who creates an AI during a personal crisis. Annie is a programmer who has to spend a lot of her time taking care of her father and obeying her two sisters, so it is a bit of a Cinderella meets Frankenstein story.
Players will first be introduced to a void and a conscious, as we can see in the game trailer below. The AI, who eventually comes to be known as Esme, wakes up with zero knowledge of the world. Annie, lost as she is herself, will help him, and in return he will help her as both characters need to ask and answer difficult questions about family, love, and life.
Though Esme and Annie lean on each other, it will be up to the player to do the real work. Esme will only learn as the players solve engaging puzzles in the AI’s mind. These puzzles will help Esme grow and develop while also revealing a powerful bond between Annie and Esme by “involving pattern and emotional matching of photos sourced from Annie’s life.”
The NoSleepGames team is very proud of their upcoming game. There will be over 150 hand-drawn illustrations to help tell a powerful and entertaining story about a girl and her creation discovering the meaning of life.
“We have been working so hard to create a beautiful game for others to enjoy and now we get to show it to the world for the first time,” says Jonny Fewkes, the founder of NoSleepGames. “I’m so proud of the work our whole team is doing: the powerful story, gorgeous art, emotional music, and superb voice acting performances are really coming together and we can tell that we are creating something special.”
Telling great stories through clever gameplay is the heart of NoSleepGames. Though they are a new indie game development studio, they have already declared a strong company motto to create by. “At NoSleepGames, narrative is never compromised.” Their goal is to create games with stories that will stay with players long after they have finished the game with gameplay mechanics that are addictive but purposeful.
Annie and the AI is set to release in February 2023. In the meantime, you are able to wishlist it on Steam for more updates. We’ll get to see very soon what addictive puzzles will lead to a story so heartfelt that it lingers while we dream at night.
