S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Anomaly

In 2018, six years after Strelok fought his way to the heart of Chernobyl, the Zone remains a dangerous place...

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Anomaly is a free and standalone fangame based on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, developed by fans using a customized fork of the X-Ray Engine that powered the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. It uses the assets from and combines the maps of the first three games in the series to create the largest version of the Zone seen yet.

Like the official games, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Anomaly is a first-person shooter with RPG elements and an emphasis on survival. The player must eat and drink to stave off hunger and thirst, sleep regularly to avoid weariness, and maintain their weapons and armor to ensure that they keep functioning reliably when they are needed most. The repair system has been deeply expanded, with dozens of new items added to the game to aid in maintaining, repairing, and upgrading equipment.

There are nine different factions to choose from when creating a character: Loners, Bandits, Clear Sky, Duty, Freedom, Mercenaries, the Military, Ecologists, and the Monolith. Three additional factions, Renegades, Sin, and UNISG, can each be unlocked by completing each of the first three chapters of the campaign. Each faction has their own headquarters in the Zone that the player can start from as well as their own dynamic questlines to follow. However, the factions that are hostile to all but their own (such as Monolith) cannot trigger the main story campaign of Anomaly.

As of v1.5.1, Anomaly has a story campaign that consists of three chapters plus a bonus chapter that can be accessed if the player chooses to pursue them. The first chapter, Living Legend, tasks the player with finding Strelok to learn why he has returned to the Zone, with the other chapters progressing in sequence.

In addition to the basic "Story mode", Anomaly features many other ways to play the game. In Survival mode, all NPCs are replaced with zombies that head towards the player's location. In Warfare mode, similar to the dynamic faction wars of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, the various factions of the Zone engage in open warfare to claim territories, and the player can assist their faction in conquering territories by commanding units through the PDA map.

There are also several modifiers that can be combined with some of the other modes to change the game even further. With Ironman mode enabled, dying will result in the removal of all saves with that character; with Campfire mode enabled, the player can only save at campfires; with Agony mode enabled, the player cannot save unless they are perfectly healthy; and with Azazel mode enabled, the player possesses the body of another random stalker in the Zone upon dying.