I confess with a certain tremor that I didn’t get the chance to touch the predecessor of this title, Strange Horticulture. A missing opportunity that today feels like a foreboding, because after having surrendered myself to the dark and seductive coils of Strange Antiquities, I can’t help but feel an irresistible urge to step back and investigate the origins of this universe of hidden secrets and buried memories. Bad Viking and Iceberg Interactive have crafted a work that doesn’t shy away from showing its cracks: they’re ancient fissures, like those in stained glass, which yet do not diminish its beauty, but rather enhance its allure.
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Between shadows and forbidden relics
In Strange Antiquities we assume the role of an apprentice thaumaturge of Eli White, guardian of a place that cannot be described as a simple shop. The shelves, packed with strange trinkets, instead tell the story of a crossroads suspended between two worlds: one of light and one of shadow, of healing and of ruin, of hope and of curse. Every day, the weary, tormented figures of the inhabitants of Undermere knock on the door: faces marked by mysterious illnesses, eyes veiled by suspicion, hands clutching more superstitions than certainties. And it is up to us, with our hearts swaying between pity and cruelty, to identify and offer the artifact that may soothe their pain… or feed it.
The daily routine of the shop quickly becomes an hypnotic ritual: hours spent scanning shelves brimming with goods, while candles burn slowly, their wax drips falling like tears that seem to mark time as an ancient clock. Juniper, our feline companion, watches our movements with a silence that unsettles, as if witnessing secrets we still dare not name—but like every cat worth its salt, he’s always ready to pounce on any object placed near the counter with a swift paw. Outside, the world stirs in hushed chaos: the rain taps rhythmically on the glass like a broken heart, crows caw ominously, and the whispers of Undermere’s citizens seep through invisible cracks, reminding us that our shop is but a fragile bastion against an darkness that never sleeps.
Puzzles like rituals
To help us decipher and identify the puzzles and artefacts we will come into possession of, we will have several books — which will represent far more than mere texts: they will be the hidden key, the fragment of arcane knowledge waiting to be reconstructed through our reasoning. Symbols, descriptions, maps are not mere clues, but half-open thresholds, cracks that reveal the abyss without ever fully opening. There are no puzzles designed to break the player’s will or frustrate them: on the contrary, every challenge is calibrated to stimulate deduction, offering that almost ecstatic spark felt when order slowly emerges from chaos.
As the days pass (so the gameplay rhythm is divided), the puzzle plot thickens, intertwining with the game’s own story, perhaps the only real weakness of the work. Some puzzles require multiple steps, multiple layers of interpretation, and the feeling is that you’re performing a secret ritual, lifting one layer after another of truth that, perhaps, would have been wiser to leave undiscovered. Particularly captivating are the cards representing the daily puzzles: small playful jewels disguised as stories, condensing a surprising dose of narrative tension in just a few moves. They don’t merely test your wit, but further open the path to the game’s lore, step by step, day after day.
Narrative spell
The writing that underpins Strange Antiquities avoids fluff (that’s still our job, after all) and doesn’t get lost in superfluous digressions. It’s dry, mostly conveyed indirectly through dialogue and correspondence, yet pulses with a poetic power that evokes more than it openly declares. The horror permeating Undermere is never shouted, never displayed through sudden scares or piercing screams: it’s an unease that arises from the unsaid, the anticipation, the silence pressing at the edges of perception. It’s the certainty that darkness is never empty, but filled with presences better left undisturbed. As already hinted, in a title of such high stature, perhaps the script might represent the greatest weakness for those who don’t appreciate its indirect nature, but that doesn’t make the world seem less alive: the tomes, the parchments, the subterranean spaces themselves become guardians of fragmented stories, fragments of a mosaic that wraps the player like a shroud soaked in lost memories.
And then there’s the music: an element that doesn’t accompany, but envelops. A ghostly, almost spectral voice weaves itself into dark, hypnotic melodies. It’s not a soundtrack, it’s a sonic relic: a fragment of a world that no longer exists, yet continues to live through us.
As with our work as apprentices, the game itself is not immune to errors and imperfections. Some clues turn out to be more murky than necessary, blurred to the point of confusing, momentarily disrupting the smooth flow of deduction. Here and there, typos emerge, especially in the Italian translation (highly appreciated, but we still recommend you play the title in its original language if possible ndr.), which could even mislead our search for the truth, and some mechanics might have been implemented better and exploited more, or in a more original way.
In conclusion
Strange Antiquities is one of those titles that don’t just entertain: at first they seem unable to capture attention, but they seep silently beneath the skin and stay there. Playing it means bending over a worn table, among shelves that smell of mildew and forgotten parchments, holding a magnifying glass in hand and a trembling candle barely illuminating the darkness pressing against the room’s edges. It means attempting to impose order upon a cosmos that watches you with countless, inscrutable eyes, fully aware that that order will always be temporary, fragile, destined to crack. If you enjoy the subtle shiver that arises from ambiguity, if you’re drawn to places suspended between domestic comfort and the shadow of the abyss, if you find pleasure in the patient art of deduction, then Strange Antiquities is not merely a game: it’s a journey you must undertake. I myself, who had not yet crossed the threshold of the first chapter, now discover myself akin to a traveller who, after reading the forbidden manuscript’s second half, can no longer resist the temptation to retrieve the first. Because when a story captures you in this way, every omission weighs as a guilt.
Bad Viking establishes itself as a name to remember.
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