Anomalies: A Solo Horror Journaling RPG
Anomalies: A Solo Journaling RPG of Horror and Revelation
Unravel reality, one journal entry at a time. Anomalies is a solo journaling RPG of horror and revelation where your decisions write the story. Explore a world where the everyday unravels, confronting unsettling situations and transforming your life into a series of enigmas. You can download a Free Preview below.
What Makes Anomalies Unique?
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Innovative and Personal Mechanics: Shape your journey with a unique attribute system: VEIL (perceiving the hidden), HUSK (physical resilience), and ECHO (connecting and persuading). Every choice impacts your skills and how you confront the decay of reality. Dice rolls create narrative tension, from effortless triumphs to terrifying failures.
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Total Journal Integration: Your journal is the game. Every entry, reflection, and detail becomes part of the world, crafting a unique narrative where you control how deep you delve into the unknown. Write or audio-record—the choice is yours.
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Emergent Narrative and Responsive Gameplay: From mysterious infiltrators to environmental catastrophes, Anomalies adapts to your pace. Investigate every anomaly or try to maintain a semblance of normality as reality crumbles. Your actions have consequences, impacting your skills and the progression of the horror.
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A Fresh Take on Journaling RPGs: Anomalies blends a solid ruleset with a narrative-driven approach, offering adventure, creativity, and organic storytelling. Each playthrough is a unique and personal descent into the unknown.
Ready to face the unknown?
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The Uncanny Codex (Expansion One)
In the core book, Anomalies: A Solo Horror Journaling RPG, you learned to survive the awakening. You realized that the world is not a solid foundation, but a fluctuating frequency—a simulation strained by the weight of its own invisible architecture. You learned to hide.
But recognition was only the first breach.
Anomalies: The Uncanny Codex is an escalation of your experience.
Solo Journaling RPG Books
Solo Journaling Rules offers a unique and flexible framework designed for players who want to create rich, introspective solo RPG adventures. SJR provides the tools to craft your own narrative-driven games in any genre or setting.
The Lost World: A Solo Journaling RPG. A game for dreamers, wanderers, and seekers—those who find joy in unraveling mysteries, piecing together fragments of a forgotten past, and writing their own stories. Designed for players who crave both structure and freedom, The Lost World balances evocative prompts and open-ended storytelling.
Emergent Narrative: Solo RPG empowers solo players to unlock the limitless narrative potential within their solo RPG experiences, where every roll, encounter, discovery, relationship, and game mechanic contributes to a uniquely personal and organic story.
You can get now: Write & Play: The Balance of Solo Journaling RPG dives deep into the art of integrating mechanics like dice rolls, tables, and prompts into your narratives, ensuring every session remains engaging and balanced. Through real-world examples from well-known and niche journaling RPGs, hands-on exercises, and detailed case studies, I aim to provide you with tools that go beyond theory.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4.95 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Development log
- Version 1.2 is now available14 days ago
- Expansion One Available!14 days ago
- Version 1.1 is now availableOct 09, 2025
Comments
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Interesting game but it definitely would need a second pass.
For instance, Husk is described as physical resilience and Veil as your ability to see what is hidden, yet the rules says to use Husk to notice anomalies, instead of Veil.
Similarly the rules around risks thresholds are unclear, on one hand it mentions them “rising”, but then they are described as negative numbers. Are the thresholds “Stats-difficulty” or a malus applied to all stats equally ? These are two equally valid interepretations that have wildly different outcomes on the game.
Overall I still had quite a bit of fun, and I think that a 1.1 that just rewords the rules in a tighter manner would make it really great.
Edit: oh also IDK why but the PDF’s chaptering is kind of weird, with lots of “ghost chapters” and whatnot
Thank you so much for taking the time to play Anomalies and share such thoughtful feedback. You’re absolutely right, some parts of the rules would benefit from a tighter second pass.
The Husk/Veil confusion is a great catch. The original intent was: Veil covers perception and sensitivity to anomalies, while Husk handles endurance and resistance, so yes, the “notice anomalies” test should use Veil, not Husk. I’ll make sure that’s clarified and consistent across all examples in the next revision.
As for the risk thresholds, you nailed one of the most common pain points. The system was meant to represent accumulating stress (rising values toward a threshold), not descending negative numbers, but the wording and signs can definitely be confusing. I’m planning to rewrite that section with a clearer example and a visual tracker.
Finally, thanks for noting the “ghost chapters”. That’s a layout artifact from the automatic Table of Contents generation in the PDF. It’ll be cleaned up in version 1.1.
I’m really happy to hear you still had fun despite those issues. I want v1.1 to clarify all the confusing stuff and be a more concise and cleaner version. Your comments really help make that happen. Thanks again.
Version 1.1 is now available for download.
no link?
Thank you. It seems itch was down. Now you have it. Check again.