Strange Antiquities review

If the "What Is This Thing?" subreddit existed in the Edwardian era, it'd be a quiet little curio shop called Strange Antiquities. As a temp shopkeeper filling in for the local thaumaturge, I sit behind a desk and spend my rainy days puzzling over bizarre artifacts to determine what they are and what they do.

A glass bottle containing a single glowing strand of hair suspended in blue liquid. An iron claw clutching black gemstone covered in blood-red streaks. Grotesque wooden figurines, several items that appear to be severed hands, a silver pendant with a green eyeball in the center that rolls to follow my every movement. What are these things?

Fans of Bad Viking's first shopkeeping puzzle adventure, Strange Horticulture, will feel right at home in the gloomy yet cozy occult shop solving the little mysteries surrounding each artifact, dozens and dozens of them, over the course of about 12 hours.

While Strange Antiquities doesn't manage to be quite as novel and intriguing as its predecessor, it's still a satisfying detective adventure about gathering clues, solving puzzles, and unraveling a larger mystery taking place outside the doors of your quaint little shop.

Artifact and fiction

(Image credit: Iceberg Interactive)

Welcome to the town of Undermere, where townsfolk visit your store each day with a problem that only a trinket with magical powers can solve. One customer might want something to ward off nightmares, while another is looking for something to improve his hearing, and someone else complains that an acquaintance has been stealing their jewelry and wants to put a stop to it. There are apparently no therapists, doctors, or cops available, so maybe you, a shopkeeper in a store full of knickknacks, has an occult remedy that'll fit the bill?

Before you can become an artifact dealer, you need to become a detective, examining the collection of weird, unlabeled items in your shop and trying to ID them. Start by choosing which of your senses you want to use first, and hover your mouse over the item you want to inspect. Your eyes can tell you what an item is made of, you can use your nose to see if it has a scent or odor, and use your ears to listen to an artifact, as occasionally an item will make some sort of noise. (Unless it's just your imagination.)

(Image credit: Iceberg Interactive)

There's also your sense of touch, to gauge how an object feels, and inner perception, to gauge how an object, you know, feels. Do you experience fear or confusion or maybe power while touching the item? The only sense you don't use in Strange Horticulture is taste, but I wouldn't lick most of these trinkets, especially not the one that looks like a withered hand with a gold spiral ring one finger. Would you put your tongue on that?

With those clues, it's time to do what we did before the internet: look things up in a big ol' book that has, much like your customers and yourself, less than complete information. If a statuette has runes carved into it you can consult your book on symbolism to find out what they might mean. If a pendant contains jade or amethyst or obsidian, page through your gemstone guide to see what the various stones could represent.

(Image credit: Iceberg Interactive)

And your huge artifact guidebook offers lore and history about the different types of items you might come across, though it's rarely as specific as you'd hope it would be. I never looked at an item on my shelf and found an identical picture of it in one of my books. It's not gonna be that simple.

But piecing it all together is where the satisfaction comes in—examining a faded drawing for a hidden clue, deciphering a series of runes, getting the vibe of the item by examining it, then combining all those scraps of information and making your best guess as to what an artifact actually is—and only finding out if you're right when you drag it into the customer's hands. Your reward for solving a little tiny mystery (beyond a satisfied customer) is labeling the artifact you've correctly ID'd and placing it proudly on your shelf. One great little case closed, dozens more to go.

It's not just the items in your shop that are strange, but the shop itself. A little crank on your desk raises a platform with a socket that some item in your collection may fit into, maybe. The symbols running around the edge of your desk have a few gaps—I wonder what happens when I find some spare runes to fill them with? And the clock on the wall has an unusual feature, though not a useful one—at least not yet.

Piecing together the mysteries of your own sales counter is a big part of the fun as you eventually unlock the shop's full potential. One of the most fun items to use (once you figure out how to access it) is a device that lets you view the energy signatures of the various geegaws in your collection—another great tool that'll help with IDing your growing collection of magic trinkets. If an item doesn't have an energy field? Well, that's a big clue, too.

Mapquest

(Image credit: Iceberg Interactive)

As in the first game, there are also excursions of a sort: using one of the several maps you collect and the clues you'll receive in the mail (or even in the dreams you have between the days tending your sales counter) means you can click on a map location and get a snatch of a story describing what happens when you explore it.

The town is filled with locations to visit in hopes of acquiring more long-lost artifacts to add to your collection, and yes, you can even visit the little botany shop you ran in Strange Horticulture. Two more maps eventually lead to new environments: a quirky old castle and a spooky crypt, pleasantly giving a game where you sit behind a desk all day a more sprawling feel.

(Image credit: Iceberg Interactive)

While you fret over all the tiny mysteries in your shop, there's also a sense of gathering dread from the outside world, as customers bring reports of unusual occurrences happening around the town—such as the growing number of people who have fallen into trances, their eyeballs becoming inky black. No wonder your occult shop is doing such good business these days.

Eventually, you'll be able to put your knowledge of occult artifacts to use to stave off grim disaster, or depending on some of the choices you've made, experience a darker ending to the story. I tried being a nice and trustworthy shopkeep in my playthrough and still wound up with several townsfolk losing their minds and more than one person dead. Hey, I did my best. I'm only a temp, after all.

(Image credit: Iceberg Interactive)

As in the first game there's a nice balance of challenges, with some puzzles being pretty straightforward and others being fairly tricky, but there's a well-designed and progressive hint system you can use if you're stuck. The only thing the game doesn't want you to do is rush through it by brute-forcing puzzle solutions, so if you guess wrong too many times you're punished by having to play a pretty mid dice game to refresh your guesses.

I don't love Strange Antiquities quite as much as the original Strange Horticulture, perhaps because even with more maps, reference books, and investigational features to use, it's still a bit too similar to feel fresh, and the overarching story of what's going on in the town isn't quite as intriguing this time around. But Strange Antiquities is still great, a calm and cozy adventure that makes you feel like more than just a shopkeeper in a weird little store. It makes you feel like a detective.