The Stone of Anamara (La Piedra de Anamara, originally in Spanish) is a point-and-click flash game from 2004 made by Gabriel RodríguezAnamara 3D - A 3D remake of The Stone of Anamara.
Synopsis
While escaping from the police you arrive at a sinister building that appears to be the perfect hiding place. Face supernatural forces, unveil the mysteries hidden in the Mental Asylum for Children and fulfil the destiny of “The Stone of Anamara”.Play La Piedra de Anamara updated in 2023! (anamara3d.pt).
Genre
This is a point-and-click game made up of static images in Flash Professional and fits into the genres of suspense, mystery and ritualistic psychological horror.
The creator
Escola La Metro (hoje), Córdoba, Argentina
Gabriel Eduardo Rodríguez, born in 1979 in Córdoba, Argentina, was 25 when he set to work creating La Piedra de Anamara. This game served as his thesis so that he could complete his university course and receive a degree in Multimedia DesignLa Voz del Interior On Line - Portada, at La Metro, which at the time presented itself as an “audiovisual communication school”. This school is also located in CórdobaCourse presentation - PowerPoint.
There the author was able to learn various skills in the area, including multimedia design, programming in ActionScript, Flash Professional, Photoshop, video and animation, among others. As a student, he also learnt how to produce products for websites and CD-ROMs and had contact with graphic and musical composition, animation techniques, etcCourse presentation - PowerPoint. These were undoubtedly qualities that he required to develop the game.
[Recorte] Living room newspaper in the game
However, the author presents himself as a musical artist within the game itself, and the newspaper in the room reads: “Between the most outstanding artists that have confirmed their attendance we can mention the young man who has demonstrated to be the most promising figure of national pop music: Gabriel, from Argentina. With his songs he will captivate the audience for two consecutive nights”. Apart from multimedia, did Gabriel have another passion?
Website banner in which Gabriel appears to be advertising a musical work
In addition to this evidence, there was an advert that he had placed on the game’s official page at the time, stating “Soon you’ll hear what I feel”. In this advert, possibly for a musical show, the author seemed to show clear signs of another passion, that of music.
Gravestone and supposed death
“Descansa em Paz”; uma atualização no jogo em 2005
Due to an update to the game in 2005 containing a tombstone on the technical sheet that read “Rest in Peace” under his name, with Gabriel’s dates of birth and supposed death, a certain buzz was generated in the comments areas of social networks, blogs and forums, spreading the news that the creator had died.
Due to fan investigations, it is known that Gabriel did not die. He is still alive and is aware of his fans’ requests, but he doesn’t reply to their messages. It is believed that for personal reasons the author no longer wants to touch the game. Since 2005, a year after its release, Gabriel has apparently disappeared from everything that surrounds the game he created, at least until his return in 2016.
Musical career
[Recorte] Gabriel e banda após espetáculo
Today, Gabriel isn’t completely separated from the video games field. As far as his musical career is concerned, he currently belongs to a band created in 2009 called Level Up, dedicated to performing covers of anime, series, films and video gamesLevel Up - YouTube.
Contests and boom
Gabriel Rodríguez, vencedor do Codear 2004
When the game La Piedra de Anamara was created in 2004, Gabriel registered it in September of the same year in the 2004 Argentine Game Development Contest (Codear), awarded by the Argentine Video Game Developers Association (Avda), and won first prize.
Gabriel then created a website and registered it with search engines. This led to a boom, as he says in an interview with the newspaper “La Voz OnLine”, where the game began to be leaked by free games sites all over the worldLa Voz del Interior On Line - Portada.
Due to the game’s success within borders, the La Metro school enlisted the game in the 2005 Independent Games Festival competitionLa piedra de Anamara | 2005 Entry | Independent Games Festival, an indie games festival held in San Francisco, in the United States, where several people were able to play the game. It’s possible that Gabriel was present at the event, although no photographs have been found to prove it. In fact, the festival’s website doesn’t list him as the author, but rather “La Piedra de Anamara Team”.
Origin of the game
Gabriel says that a year earlier, dreaming between the sheets, he had been drawing the bloody and mysterious crime of a little girl in a children’s neuropsychiatric hospital. So he planned the whole story of the game and went into action when he finally started developing it in FlashLa Voz del Interior On Line - Portada.
Game story
The story revolves around Anamara, a girl diagnosed with mental problems who ends up horribly murdered at the Children’s Psychiatric Institute, run by medical and psychological scholar Dr Alexander F. Graves.
In the 1940s, medicine was still very precarious. Patients with mental problems were neglected and used for studies hidden from their families. Anamara is a 7-year-old girl who ends up a victim of the lack of knowledge and cruelty of the so-called “cures” of the time, which ends up leaving her trapped in that house in another dimension, where she shares space with a demonic spirit released during pagan rituals.
The story of The Stone of Anamara begins when Ezequiel runs away from the police after robbing a shop. As he escapes, he stumbles upon Dr Alexander Graves’ desolate Psychiatric Institute for Children. Seemingly the ideal place to hide, Ezekiel stays overnight. A new opportunity to change his fate arises when Ezekiel discovers the horrifying crime that has taken place. As he is guided by Anamara’s spirit and haunted by the demon that imprisons her, Ezequiel is invited to save the girl from demonic clutches, righting the wrongs of the past through the power of Anamara’s stone.
Technicalities of game creation
The game Anamara’s Stone is made up entirely of static images and can be navigated by clicking on their corners to go to other images. The 2D images are renderings of 3D scenarios created in 3D Studio, then passed on to post-production in Photoshop and only then to Flash support, where Gabriel did the programming in ActionScript 2 and the animationsLa Voz del Interior On Line - Portada.
Game music
Without official sources, it is believed that, given his interest in music, the author created the background music that helps to create the great atmosphere of the game. As for the sound effects, he may have had the help of a collection of sounds on the Internet.
Part 2 / Chapter 2
Little is known about Gabriel’s intentions for Part 2. Supposedly, the developer had a complete idea of the game’s story even before he started making it. It is also known from his own statements that he did not intend to divide it into chapters. However, he was forced to put a “continue…” when the game, still half finished, spread across the Internet without his controlLa Voz del Interior On Line - Portada.
To this day, Part Two, as the creator envisaged it, remains a mystery to all the fans. Many still harbour a glimmer of hope that one day it might come out.
Return in 2016
Dois novos tweets em 2016
Gabriel could have publicly disappeared from what surrounds the game until today. However, this was not the case. In February 2016, the official Twitter page featured two new tweets informing us that a new official website was up, that updates would be published in the following weeks and that the address of the official Facebook page had been changedThe stone of Anamara (@stoneofanamara) / Twitter. If we didn’t know that Gabriel was alive, we might think that someone on his behalf would have acted on the page. However, he is, and something may have motivated him to do so.
The truth is that all the official websites have been down since 2014. Possibly the domains of the sites had expired and the author hadn’t tried to resolve the situation. Now, Gabriel seemed to be returning with a desire to give his fans new hope. Unfortunately, no new publications have been published to date and nothing really new has emerged from the author in relation to the game.
Official game website
What’s strange is that, despite the author’s disappearance all these years, the last of the official websites is still up, which usually depends on costs.
This implies that Gabriel has an interest in maintaining the community of The Stone of Anamara, perhaps so as not to lose his fame, because he wants to maintain the possibility of one day finishing the game, or perhaps because he has strong feelings about his creation, or because he maintains a source of income with donations from the page, or perhaps just to be able to make updates to the page. Perhaps it’s a mixture of all options.
Janela do navegador sobre última atualização do site
It turns out that the site has had subtle updates over the years, which have gone unnoticed by many fans, most recently due to the end of support for Adobe Flash. So that the game can continue to be loaded and the site fully functional, on 10 October 2022 the author made his last update to the site, choosing to install Ruffle and replace the Flash animation in the page header with a static image.
Different versions of the official website
The biggest changes were made in the first few years after launch. The page even included a short trailer and an entrance image.
The first address was lapiedradeanamara.com.ar, which was discontinued in 2014.
According to research into the old sites, Gabriel also created other pages for the game, one in English and one in Italian, as a result of his concern to offer different languages in the game.
The new addresses lapietradianamara.com.ar and thestoneofanamara.com.ar were active between 2005 and 2014.
Only on 6 February 2016, the address stoneofanamara.com was created, in English only, keeping the site “alive” with slight updates until today. Since the relaunch, the new domain, hosted by Hostgator, was last renewed on 22 January 2023stoneofanamara.com whois lookup - who.is. This is the last known date that the creator was involved with the game. The domain will expire on 6 February 2024 if it is not renewed. We’ll see what happens then. [updating…]
Translated from Portuguese by DeepL & João Frade.