Strange Antiquities review

During my archetypal 2 hours serving Strange Antiquities' customers, I tugged the bronze pendulum of an ornate timepiece astatine slightest a twelve times, wondering what the resulting rotation and settee of its hands meant. I checked my occult encyclopaedia's scale for mentions of clip and compared the timepiece look to shapes successful a publication of hermetic symbols. Each clip I drew a blank I yanked the pendulum a fewer much times, conscionable successful case.

This follow-up to the joyous 2022 puzzler Strange Horticulture is packed with these promises of aboriginal puzzles: a locked furniture with nary key, a sliding-door cupboard with nary wide purpose, 3 bare plinths beneath your store counter, an engraved table with 4 missing chunks. I knew they were each clues, I conscionable couldn't archer what for.

Until, successful a bid of glorious moments, I could.

When I realised however the timepiece acceptable into a multi-part puzzle that revealed a caller country of my shop, I genuinely chuckled with delight, and that feeling repeated respective times during my 10-hour playthrough. This is simply a longer and much uneven puzzle crippled than Strange Horticulture, but besides much ambitious, and conscionable arsenic beguiling.

The wide conception remains the same. Customers travel to your store for a circumstantial named item. Your encyclopaedia holds clues for each one, from the factual – similar the signifier oregon worldly – to the much abstract, specified arsenic the feeling it evokes erstwhile you clasp it, oregon the information it's utilized to gully humor successful an initiation ritual. You touch, perceive to, and odor the objects connected your shelves, and if you prime the close 1 you tin onslaught it from your agelong list. Outside, a communicative of curses and cults unfolds, and immoderate of the decisions you make, specified arsenic which of 2 items to springiness a peculiar customer, tin alteration the outcome.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Iceberg Interactive

The objects are imaginative: carved totems with unfamiliar symbols, bejewelled boxes that drawback spirits, medallions designed successful the representation of a snake god, a blood-stained chromatic held by an eagle's talons. They each look fantastic connected your shelves, nevertheless you take to put them. Descriptions are evocative, sometimes with treble meanings that made maine privation to decipher them adjacent more. Does this necklace springiness maine goosebumps due to the fact that it's acold oregon due to the fact that it's creepy? Which of these woody objects could conceivably beryllium described arsenic a "finger"?

At the start, simply knowing that an entity is made of bronze with a azygous gemstone is capable to place it, but soon the puzzles go tricky, layered challenges. Alongside your encyclopaedia you get a publication connected gems, a publication of symbols, and a publication of curses, and you'll often request to flip betwixt them aggregate times to place a azygous object. A elemental example: if idiosyncratic comes successful for a curse cure, you'll archetypal work your curse publication to place their malady, find that curse successful your encyclopaedia's index, and past work each the related entries to place the entity you need.

I was regularly stumped, but each clip I divided the puzzle into tiny chunks I could whittle down the imaginable answers. The hint strategy points you vaguely successful the close absorption without outright telling you the answer, which I like, but you tin inquire for aggregate hints astatine once. When you lick a puzzle you're handily told which clues were applicable – sometimes these were details I hadn't adjacent noticed, and that gave maine caller ideas for solving aboriginal puzzles.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Iceberg Interactive

I emotion the feeling of mastery it builds. When you get a caller encyclopaedia introduction it flashes connected screen. You tin disregard it, but the cardinal accusation often stuck successful my mind. I mislaid number of the times I aboriginal thought "Wait, I cognize that name", and it's satisfying to usage cognition you didn't adjacent realise you had. The mode encyclopaedia entries travel from 1 different encourages you to travel your way of thought, and earlier you cognize it you've identified 3 oregon 4 objects, alternatively than conscionable the one. By the extremity of the crippled I'd go a due adept shopkeeper: I knew, without thinking, which gemstone meant decease and which meant fire, which awesome meant summer, and which winter. Sometimes I could prime the close entity without consulting my books, which felt fantastic.

Its champion moments – similar with the clock's pendulum – are not erstwhile you're identifying objects, but erstwhile you're poking astir your shop, discovering puzzles hidden successful plain sight. To unfastened the locked furniture successful 1 country I had to manipulate an entity successful a mode that I hadn't initially thought was possible, and that bare cupboard I mentioned earlier proved instrumental successful a mode I won't spoil, but was arsenic delightful. The game's scope perpetually amazed me, and it delivers connected each 1 of the promises it teases.

Even the game’s collectible maps conceal secrets of their own. Click connected a determination and you get a communicative vignette, often ending with the find of a caller object. The clues to find these locations – riddles, matching shapes, signifier designation – are simpler but nary little engrossing, and later, you get a instrumentality you person to spot implicit 1 of your maps to find the close spots. I felt similar a genius erstwhile I figured it out.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Iceberg Interactive

In a crippled with truthful galore puzzles, and truthful galore antithetic types of puzzle, a fewer duds are inevitable. I gave up identifying a peculiar medallion lone for the hint strategy to archer maine I had to archetypal lick different puzzle I'd picked up (and enactment down) overmuch earlier successful the game, successful what seemed similar an arbitrary process. On another, I narrowed it down to 2 imaginable objects and simply had to conjecture - adjacent erstwhile I saw the close solution, the different entity appeared to acceptable arsenic well. Still, Strange Antiquities’ density and accordant generosity marque it casual to forgive these tiny missteps.

It helped that I enjoyed simply inhabiting the shop, listening to the rainfall and thunder outside. I petted my feline each greeting until helium purred, and stuffed my papers successful their drawers each night. After the archetypal lawsuit of each time I reshuffled my shelves to lucifer my mood. Early connected I arranged medallions by worldly – bronze, gold, wood, tin – with a abstracted conception for items that looked peculiarly arcane. Later, I moved each my identified objects to a abstracted support and sorted medallions by the colour of their gemstone. This isn't busywork - it's flexibility that makes the store consciousness similar a profoundly idiosyncratic space.

I privation it was somewhat easier to navigate with my mouse, though. When respective objects seemed to acceptable the clues, I liked to stack them connected the table beneath my counter, a publication unfastened adjacent to them, truthful I could amended comparison their markings and gems. To determination an entity from your shelves to this table you person to drawback each one, clasp it astatine the bottommost of the surface until the table appears, and past driblet it - an annoyingly fiddly process erstwhile it involves shifting 4 oregon 5 items successful a row. It is, admittedly, easier if you usage the keyboard too, but if ever determination was a crippled designed for a rodent successful 1 hand, java successful the other, this is it. I besides recovered it excessively casual to zoom successful connected a publication (double click) erstwhile I simply meant to unfastened it (single click).

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Iceberg Interactive

My enthusiasm for the puzzles besides waned successful the last hours, partially due to the fact that its champion challenges are each successful the middle, and partially due to the fact that I didn't attraction astir what was happening extracurricular the shop. The town's communicative of curses, death, betrayal, and rival factions is, similar each the words successful Strange Antiquities, finely written, direct, and concise. Mildly poetic, even. But due to the fact that you walk truthful overmuch clip buried successful your books and staring astatine artefacts, it's casual to hide what the past crippled improvement was. And adjacent if you support track, the communicative loses its momentum astir two-thirds of the mode through, delaying and delaying what feels similar an inevitable conclusion.

Even so, the restitution of a fully-ticked database kept maine going to the end, and I happily lingered for a fewer much hours to place objects I'd missed. The highs of Strange Antiquities – and determination are galore – lucifer those of thing other I've played this year, and surely enactment it up determination with Blue Prince among the champion puzzle games of 2025. It is fiendish and delightful, and hopefully, 1 of galore much Strange games to come.