Strange Antiquities

My first instinct when loading Strange Antiquities was to treat it like a shopkeeping sim, something to half-play while listening to a podcast. That instinct died about 20 minutes in when I realised the reference books, the gemstone codex, the symbology tome, the ever-expanding inventory of amulets and relics, are all interconnected in ways that demand the same focused cross-referencing I usually reserve for a Paradox campaign. This is a deduction-first puzzle game wearing cozy clothes, and the gap between those two things is where most of its charm lives. The core loop runs over 18 in-game days: customers arrive at the candle-lit shop in Undermere with vague, often supernatural problems - lifting a curse, trapping a thief, curing a recurring nightmare - and your job is to match the right artefact from your shelves to their need. You cannot brute-force it. The game tracks wrong guesses and punishes reckless clicking with a dice minigame that refreshes your attempts, which is a smartly unglamorous way of discouraging guesswork. Instead, the correct path runs through careful object inspection (examining colour, composition, scent, texture, and thaumic resonance on each item), cross-referencing those properties against multiple reference books, and then triangulating against whatever clue the customer dropped in conversation. It sounds laborious. It is, and that is precisely the appeal. The puzzle design branches outward from the shop in satisfying ways. Letters arrive containing positional clues that send you to specific grid coordinates on a hand-drawn town map of Undermere; later you acquire a castle map and a catacombs map, each adding new retrieval puzzles layered over the main identification loop. Tarot cards delivered at day's end add another symbolic cipher to decode. The result is a game that rewards players who treat it like a light logic exercise, keeping mental notes, building a personal symbol key, and reading every piece of in-world text twice. Newcomers to the format should not be discouraged: the hint system is genuinely well-calibrated, nudging without solving, and there is no time pressure on any individual decision. Whether it surpasses Bad Viking's 2022 debut, Strange Horticulture, is the question most returning players will ask. Honestly: it is close but not quite. The overarching mystery of what is plaguing Undermere is engaging, but reviewers at both PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun noted the town-wide narrative can get muddied by the constant rhythm of shop duties, and that Horticulture's central premise felt marginally fresher. The lack of voice acting is noticeable, though the ambient sound design and moody soundtrack do compensate. On the plus side, the puzzle variety is broader, the reference book system is richer, multiple narrative endings add real replay incentive alongside close to two dozen achievements, and the whole thing runs without issue on a Steam Deck, which makes it ideal for short-burst sessions between longer strategy commitments. For the audience reading this: if you have never played Strange Horticulture, Strange Antiquities is a perfectly valid entry point. The games share a world but not a story, and the onboarding is gradual enough that you will be competent inside an hour. If you loved the first game, you will feel immediately at home and will likely forgive the incremental rather than transformative design evolution. Either way, the 81 Metacritic score and near-95-percent Steam user rating are earned.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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