Like a diabolical shopkeeper awaiting his first victim—sorry—customer of the day, I've been eagerly anticipating the release of Strange Antiquities since it was announced last year. The follow-up to 2022's Strange Horticulture lets players get their Needful Things on, selling eldritch antiques to an array of weird townsfolk. And it turns out the Lake District's most accused curiosity shop is opening its doors sooner than I expected, as Strange Antiquities launches next month.
For the uninitiated, Strange Horticulture saw players pairing plants with paying punters in a dark, faintly Lovecraftian story where your horticultural choices could result in murder or even cosmic Armageddon. A narrative puzzler with a dash of Papers Please, Chris Livingston called it "the best detective game I've played in years" in his Strange Horticulture review.
As the name implies, Strange Antiquities swaps out the flora for relics and artifacts crafted by (probably) human hands. Yet while it takes place in the same Cumbrian-inspired setting of Undermere, there's more to the successor than a new story and a thematic switcheroo.
Primarily, Strange Antiquities places considerably more methods to identify objects at your disposal. Going beyond the magnifying glass-based analysis of Strange Horticulture, Antiquities lets you weigh items, touch them, smell them, and listen for any noises they make. In addition, the game will also let you explore Undermere in a more specific fashion, using a detailed map of the city to depart your shop and retrieve new objects.
It sounds substantially more involved than Bad Viking's previous effort, which is something the developer is also keen to emphasise. "With Strange Antiquities, we wanted to make a game in which players feel like real investigators of the occult, poring over manuscripts and reference materials by candlelight while the rain beats down outside," writes Bad Viking in a recent Steam post. "We've made a game that trusts you to piece things together for yourselves—to delve into the details, to follow the breadcrumbs, and to notice what matters."
Strange Antiquities launches on September 17. But if you can't wait that long before embracing the role of shop-based sleuth once more, Strange Horticulture inspired numerous similar games that have set out their stalls in the years since. I'd personally recommend Do No Harm, where you play a doctor treating a town afflicted with unusual diseases. It has a slightly stronger Lovecraftian flavour than Strange Horticulture, but it otherwise boasts a similar blend of observation-based deduction and dark narrative choices.
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