Strange Antiquities Review

Over on the other side of town from Strange Horticulture is another little shop that deals in the esoteric and unusual. Strange Antiquities has you putting down your trowel to grab your book of gemstones and magnifying glass, as an Apprentice Thaumaturge who’s probably just hoping for a few quiet days while the boss is away.

It doesn’t take long after Eli White, the Thaumaturge & Proprietor, leaves his shop in your care for things to get rather strange. With a number of returning characters from Strange Horticulture, your day-to-day work sees you inviting customers into your shop, each coming with a request for an occult object to aid in some part of their life, from wanting a Shadow Hold to halt a feeling of creeping darkness entering your home, to wanting something to give you wisdom and protection for a journey ahead, but some of your visitors bring foreboding omens with them, messages and letters. Barton Potter’s bad eye is giving him discomfort once again, there are portentous ravens abound, and signs of a darkness rising in Undermere – this twisted rendition of Windermere.

While there’s a darkness and mounting peril to the tale that unfolds, with narrative junctions where you can choose to help or hinder people in some of their more dubious desires, this remains an undoubtedly cosy puzzle game. There’s no time pressure as you investigate, link clues together and find the particular and peculiar items you’re trying to find. That lets you soak in the atmosphere, the flickering candle light in the shop, rain pattering outside, the adorable heterochromatic cat Jupiter on the counter, and the relaxing soundtrack.

The presentation of Strange Antiquities is leaps and bounds ahead of Strange Horticulture. Bad Viking’s first game crammed everything onto a single screen, with customers off in the corner, a horizontally scrolling carousel of plants, and most of the screen taken up by the table where you investigate plants and dig through books and clues. That felt cramped when playing the game on Switch in particular, but it’s also just an outmoded approach compared to the sequel.

Now the customer is front and centre when they approach to share their request, and you have a range of shelves and nooks to arrange all of your artefacts on, able to group them yourself and shift your view to more space on the left and the right. Everything is much larger on screen, thanks to the inspection table now being below the main view, again having more space dedicated to it (though not enough to avoid having your reference material overlapping), and a magnifying glass being readily available if you need it.

You really feel this improvement when hunting for the relevant information and connecting clues up to the artefact you present to your customer. There’s now three books that you will need to cross reference, with gemstones, auras and a book of general information on various occult topic, and there’s multiple maps to explore for the town of Undermere, a manor, and some clues and narrative trails that will lead you down into the catacombs.

With so many more moving parts, the game features more engaging and tricky puzzles to figure out. Nothing is insurmountable, but it’s easy to make a slight misdiagnosis or investigate the wrong place when following a clue, and while there’s no time pressure, making too many mistakes can lead to failure. Thankfully that’s no game over, and a game of dice can bring you back to the moment… or I guess you can just load up a recent save as well. There is also a hints system, though it’s not always the most helpful with the help it tries to give.

The story builds and builds throughout this, the danger grows as darkness swells in Undermere, and the narrative choices that you’re presented with lead to a number of narrative endings. Replaying to try and reach the best ending feels like it will be worthwhile – some people can die as a consequence of your decisions and Thaumaturgy skills – but a single play through is still plenty rewarding.