The Anchorite

Really nicely done. The sudden shift in tone was really quite effective.

Few minor issues I encountered:

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• the "3 commandments" and "closed chest" are hotspots, but there are no labels for them (oddly enough, the chest has one, but only when opened)
• the "mess" and "broken pestle & mortar" hotspots are available right from the start
• a few issues with draw ordering:
  • the cake coming through the opening gets drawn on top of the opening
  • when the anchorite is sitting at his desk, writing on the parchment, the parchment is drawn on top of the anchorite
  • the shovel does not seem to go into the ground, but draws on top of the wood surrounding the garden bed
• several "you can't do that" style messages appear erroneously (like when actually doing the thing you're supposed to do):
  • when digging up the garden to plant the seeds
  • when putting the clothes in the tub
  • when putting the bucket under the pump
  • when dropping the water into the tub with the clothes
  • when using the inkwell with ashes on the water in the bucket
• Typo: I won"t be able to get all of the dirt out with just water should probably have a ' instead of a "
• restarting the game (to try out what happens when choosing a different option at the end) results in glitching out almost everything:
  • I have the inkwell, quill and knife already in inventory at the start
  • the cake is already in the room when the young anchorite wakes up
  • Amos's blue text is by the anchorite's head, rather than by the door
  • Amos's sprite can be seen drawn on top of the door and he becomes an interactible hotspot... I can actually ask him the same questions I can in the control room:
    
  • from here the game is too glitched out to be able to get further, I had to quit and relaunch the game to be able to do a second playthrough

I tried to play the downloadable version, but Windows Defender quarantined the archive with an error message indicating it contained a Trojan, "Trojan:Script/Sabsik.FL.A!ml", when I tried to unzip it. Thankfully, I was able to restore the file from quarantine and unzip it as normal. I did have to check "unblock" in the files' properties afterwards to get them to run properly, though.

I'm not sure if it's something you can really do anything about since Windows Defender apparently gets these occasional false positives, but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone else experiences the same problem.

Beautiful start and then...

<<<spoiler>>>

What a plot twist. A kind of “The Truman Show” horror version. Awesome!