Strange Antiquities

Strange Antiquities is a charming and cozy occult puzzle game that is surely a treat for budding detectives and puzzle-lovers. With its simple point-and-click gameplay that complements a variety of complex challenges and riddles that require extra brainpower, this puzzle game will surely take you on a spooky but intriguing text adventure through the town of Undermere and the secrets that lie within.

A worthy spiritual sequel to Strange Horticulture, in Strange Antiquities we run an esoteric shop as an apprentice thaumaturge. Customers arrive with vague requests, and it's up to us to identify the correct object among relics and amulets. Gameplay revolves around observation and deduction, analyzing objects, exploring maps, interpreting symbols, and consulting manuals for clues. Progression intertwines complex puzzles and narrative choices, influencing events and endings. Challenging puzzles, a relaxed pace, and a dark atmosphere define the experience.

A worthy successor to the delightfully unexpected detective hit Strange Horticulture. It boasts excellent writing, a strong audiovisual identity, a generous variety of puzzle types and a wonderfully bizarre catalogue of curious items. For the next installment, the narrative could use a more confident structure, a slightly shorter runtime would likely strengthen the pacing, and one unnecessary minigame should have been left on the cutting-room floor. Still, for anyone who delights in inventive deduction, and reading both between and beyond the lines, this is an adventure worth entertaining.

I was disappointed that Strange Antiquities didn’t fix some of my issues with the first game, but it’s still a marked improvement in gameplay complexity and depth. A perfect pick during the Halloween season, Strange Antiquities delivers on that cozy-yet-spooky Victorian vibe with the best of them. If you love mystery games, the pull will be irresistible.

Strange Antiquities is a pleasantly cosy experience, with a nice dusting of horror on top. It doesn't have a tremendous amount of replay value, though.

Strange Antiquities was a lot of fun for me, and I think it’s a great sequel to Strange Horticulture. The occult and spooky aspect fits the game very well, the item and store design are excellent, and the story is amazing, especially since you get many endings. Even if some of the puzzles feel challenging at times, you can go with trial and error to figure out the right solution. Strange Antiquities is one of those interesting puzzle games that will keep you hooked from beginning and up until the end. It’s fun to play, the mysteries are great to solve, and the music score is also fitting for this eerie experience. My favorite part: those Eureka moments where you get to solve complex puzzles. And rest assured there’s a lot of that to be had in Strange Antiquities.

If the progress loop is largely untouched, though, Strange Antiquities gradually reveals greater depth and detail, easing you in before piling up possible angles of research. From the start, when you examine an object you can now do so according to different senses - what does it look like, feel like, smell and sound like, and does it inexplicably send shivers down your spine? And if early customer requests only ask you to consider an object's form or constituent materials, later you'll need to pay attention to inscribed symbols, gems and more. Cross-referencing a burgeoning stack of books, notes and maps, you begin to absorb ancient words and ideas. It's fascinating. At times, Bad Viking gives itself an impossible needle to thread with so many nuanced elements in play. A few descriptions feel like misdirection, sending us to the hint system. More often, though, the game maintains its spell. The instinct to organise and label every last item is as compelling as the elegant interface and the story drawing towards a fateful conclusion. It would be strange to refuse the invitation. [Issue#416, p.122]

Strange Antiquities sticks very close to the premise of the original, Strange Horticulture, while improving on almost every aspect. It offers a dark, atmospheric mystery with multiple endings, but the real entertainment comes in the form of examining the dozens of weird, creepy, and downright unsettling items stocked on your shelves and feeling like a genius when you decipher their hidden clues. Strange Antiquities is an easy recommendation to make for any fan of research-based puzzles.

It's difficult to review a game like Strange Antiquities as most of the pleasure and pain it derives will depend on if you click with the style of puzzle it presents. But if you're looking for a slightly cozy, slightly dark world in which to inhabit as the nights get longer, then I'd suggest at least checking out the demo of this game to see if it works for you. If it does, there's almost no better feeling in the world than getting that eureka moment as you solve a particularly tricky puzzle.