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Anomalies is an interactive procedural generator rather than a traditional game, letting you create and observe endlessly varied alien structures with musical accompaniment. Players can leave it running passively to generate strange forms, making it closer to a visual toy or music visualizer than something with goals or narrative. Best suited for those drawn to generative art, ambient experiences, or simply watching algorithmic oddities unfold.

About this game

Players, last 30 days

Peak 0 · Low 0

Daily peak concurrent players, sampled once a night from Steam.

What players are saying

▲ Recommended 9 hrs

First off, don't let my recorded time in this program fool you. I had it running for hours in offline mode.

Anomalies is NOT a game, so don't expect it to be or you will be disappointed. Anomalies IS a really neat interactive toy. When I was in college and on a lot of drugs, I got way into playing with music visualizers and playlists. This reminds me of that, even though it is actually quite different.

I really enjoy sitting back and watching the timed mode on this while taking some bong rips or laying down for the night. That said, I don't believe enjoyment of it needs to be limited to those activities. That's just my personal favorite time for something super chill and casual like this. It's a contemplative and generally peaceful experience.

Only downside is that there seems to be a slow memory leak. I don't actually know how long it takes to crash the program since I fell asleep with it on and woke up to an "Out of memory!" crash dialogue. Maybe this is something the developer is willing to work on. I'll post on the forum and find out :)

At the price of admission, definitely get this if it sounds at all interesting to you. Can't go wrong.

78 found helpful Steam ↗

▲ Recommended 3 hrs

This is pretty wild.

I've got a real love for procedural generation -- no actual UNDERSTANDING of it, mind, but a real love for it -- and while this game, or non-game, or whatever may share some things in common with similar generate-it-and-watch experience Mountain, it has way more variety and none of Mountain's pomposity. It lets you generate strange, alien structures and examine them from every angle, all the while grooving on the exotic, offputting tunes they generate. During my first few minutes with the game, I explored:
- the glowing, dismembered skeleton of some vast, spacefaring beast
- a thorny, plantlike entity that waved gently in the solar wind
- a whirlwind of oddly flattened stones
- an enigmatic alien pyramid that glowed red like some infernal forge
- a colony of twisting worms flitting to and fro, occasionally meeting nose-to-nose as though exchanging information

I'll be coming back to Anomalies. It's not a game; it's a trip.

30 found helpful Steam ↗

▼ Not recommended 1 hrs

Follow our curator page: IndieGems if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

Anomalies really isn't your typical game on Steam. If you are looking for a game with a story, a purpose, or immersive gameplay, then stop right here. It's a fairly nice program for generating some random forms of artwork with varying degrees of symmetry and obeying certain rules of motion in space, coupled with some backgrounds to represent the vacuum in space.

Positives

+Neat generation of artwork
+Good degrees of freedom

Negatives

-Not really any explanation of what the different parameters will control
-Could benefit from real-time on-screen display changes with changes to the parameter, instead of needing to respawn each time
~~-Priced too high~~ (Price is now set down to 0.99 USD)
-No 4K support, trying to pick this option led to program crashing when picking full-screen mode. When picking windowed mode, it sticks at 1080p window.

Other Thoughts

It's a good program to look at once in a while if you want to generate a funky looking graphical image, and I do like the range of freedom the user has been given.

There are some neat output images and potential wiggling motions to make a cool GIF or video.

But once again it's not your typical game, ~~it's also perhaps priced a bit too high for doing only that.~~

~~I had no financial input into looking at this software because I received it for free through Curator Connect. But if I bought this for $4 base, I would be sure to refund it soon after purchase.~~

For that fact, I cannot really recommend that my friends and readers buy this or do much with it.

I did make a brief video of my looking into this program, you can see basically what it is and decide for yourself. I did have a good time looking at it for a few minutes, but I wouldn't necessarily buy it myself.

https://youtu.be/TA4KevS-mPs

I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.

21 found helpful Steam ↗

Reviews are by Steam users, hosted on Steam.

Latest updates

New DLC: "Dungeonomalies"

237 days ago

I have not update Anomalies in a long time. But it's been about ten (10) years since the original game was released so I thought it was a good time to put something new out there.Why Dungeonomalies?It's a bit of a long story, so I figure I will start from the beginning. It all started when a person commented on the music for Cyclopean: The Great Abyss, my recent CRPG based on the underworld of Lovecraft's Dreamlands. Here is the comment:Now I can't say I fully agree with this sentiment, but I will take a compliment where I can get one. I had not really been formally introduced to dungeon synth, but here was someone saying (or rather implying) that my music was somehow included in this genre. So I went down the rabbit hole, and discovered a whole new (to me) genre of music that I had not realized existed. It's true, I had a few run-ins with it before, most notably the sound track for "Dungeons of Blood and Dream" which I can strongly recommend. Anyway after a couple weeks of listening I happened across Erang's Dark Dungeon Synth Starter Pack over on Bandcamp, and I realized I could use those sounds with Anomalies. After some minor adjustments I put the sounds into a testing build of the game. I thought it sounded fantastic! Maybe it's just me, but the notes rang out more clearly than before, and it game the whole thing a more polished, but also decidedly more "dungeony" feel. Thus "Dungeonomalies" was born!The DungeonsThe new backgrounds are based on photos I recently took of some ancient Roman and Greek ruins. There is also a background noise associated with each new background, so you might hear the hiss of an old audio tape or the crackle of a dusty record player when you are experiencing your new anomalies...Cyclopean IIUltimately, I am doing this for my own reasons. As I am currently working on the sequel of Cyclopean: The Great Abyss, I have been thinking about the background music. I wanted it to be different and stand out from that in the original game. Dunge...

Anomalies - "Oddities" Release

2044 days ago

Ever since I started Anomalies, and added sounds to it, I have always been fascinated with some of the music it produces. I've been compiling these songs into different albums, some of which are available here on Steam. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/26705830/9215f9900a53aafc5e012f83142d960987c541dd.jpg "Oddities" is the latest of these records. It is actually a collection of songs that, for various reasons, did not make it onto any of the other albums. You can listen to and download the album for free on my Bandcamp page if you like: https://mkschmidt.bandcamp.com/album/anomalies-oddities However, it is also included with the Anomalies Music Collection as of later today (uploading as I type this). About Anomalies Music and Images I have stated it before, but I want to mention this again ... please feel free to use any of the images or sounds produced by Anomalies in your own projects. It's not really a "tool" in any practical sense, but if you felt like using anything, you have my permission. Please provide credit if you choose to do so. I used Anomalies music to create the soundtrack for my latest game Paradox Vector: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1051840/Paradox_Vector

Orbital Cheese and so much more...

2302 days ago

This fellow has shared his Anomalies, some randomized, some hand crafted, on his YouTube channel. I really love seeing some of the things people experience with this game, as it can sometimes even surprise me, the game developer. https://youtu.be/k0e7Pw9_BLg Here's another one, part of a presentation of Procjam entries, he seems to get a real kick out of it and almost "explodes" his computer. https://youtu.be/c7YPlg1IK7k?t=2422 Feel free to comment on these video or share your own videos or screenshots here or in the discussions forum. Also, I noticed a bunch of people bought Anomalies both here and on Itch yesterday and today. I am curious why this happened, and whether it was because of some Youtube video or article that I am not aware of. Let me know where you found out about Anomalies in the comments!

Posts come from Steam's official announcements feed.