This is just some ramblings I have on the subject. Amnesia was amazing. And by Amnesia, I mean the actual game, the story game, as opposed to all of the maps and mods. But since then, generally I have been disappointed with the field when it comes to horror games; nothing scares me anymore, not even really Amnesia, since I'm used to it.

What frustrates me is that what a lot of indie horror games I see do are miss the subtle things that make a good, effective horror game, and go for the cheap scares. This would be your Slender: it's entirely a game that is nothing but jumps cares. Very little refinement. Generally no story to hook the player, or very simple ones in the spinoff games.
A lot of indie horror games, like this, like finesse, and if there is ever one genre where you absolutely have to pull off subtleties and fine tune your game and spend time getting it right, from art to sound design to gameplay design to everything else, it is a horror game, because if anything the lesson Amnesia should teach us is that horror games are at their best when they're driven by mood and atmosphere and intrique, not cheap jumpscares. Amnesia didn't have to rely on jumoscares because everything else, sound design, visual design, story presentation, was fine tuned to create and extremely scary atmosphere.

Or you have unrefined games on the other end of the spectrum, like your Anna, that try to be all atmosphere but aren't well tuned and are confusing and nonsensical in both story and puzzles - a game that feels like it was thrown together quickly and cheaply (even though it probably wasn't, I'm hoping!).

Anyway, I'm just disheartened that it seems like indie game developers are focusing on jumps cares, or just making mods for already good games rather than thinking up something new, and not putting time so much into long term, original projects. I haven't been scared since Amnesia and I expect the sequel will be the scariest thing I play for a long time when it comes out. I just kind of want more horror games that are on Amnesia's level made by people committing a lot of time into making a truly ambitious project, rather than relying on cheap scare tactics or just riding on the coattails of existing games! As an aspiring game designer and artist myself, I hope to make those sorts of more ambitious horror games someday like Amnesia that are unique and stand alone, but that aspiration is a ways from now.


Anyway, time to get off the soapbox!

Amnesia wasn't a copy of penumbra! Penumbra was glitchy and unrefined, it had combat, the monster spawning and patrol system was totally different, it didn't have all the great sound design that Amnesia did..And various other differences. I thought the story of Amnesia was great as a breadcrumb trail to lead the player on, though it became worse at the ending; but the ending doesn't matter as much, since the story is there to lead the player on more than anything. Amnesia was certainly better than Penumbra, and the monsters in Amnesia don't at all in the same way, though of course they're similar. The devs learned a lot about how to make good horror in Penumbra, then they went and applied those lessons to Amnesia.

As far as the sequel, I'm looking forward to it and I'll judge it when it comes out. In my opinion level design was the biggest shortcoming in Amnesia so I am certainly glad they will have better design in the sequel than before.
I didn't like Anna. Anna is a game where the puzzles are so obscure and complicated and random and nonsensical it kind of ruins the game. If you overdo the puzzles in horror games, it takes away from the atmosphere because the player just gets frustrated after a while.

As for Dead Space, that series has just become action games with a horror theme, not horror games.
For me it just comes down to the fact that the games that are really good and stand out have developers who were really committed to the game. Creating maps or a mod is a great way to start, but I would hope indie developers would want to go on and actually commit to a project, and make it good, rather than always doing the easy thing. Amnesia took a couple years to make, and was based on work before it that also took years, so it was the product of people willing to invest time in making something great, rather than churning out a bunch of little, bad games. There's a place for jumpscares, but they shouldn't be what horror is all about.

That's just it. I think people are lazy, and make cheap formulaic games, and players snap it up and play it because there isn't a lot of horror games out there, and also many Let's Players will play just about anything horror regardless of the quality. People don't work hard to make good horror games because they don't really need to.