As this year comes to a close in gaming, what are you most looking forward to in 2025? Become an adventurer in Avowed? A scammer in GTA 6? A Norman Reedus in Death Stranding 2? A…civilization, I guess, in Civilization 7?
I want to be a trader. Helping customers, petting my cat and, oh yes, using detective work to solve a series of puzzling mysteries revolving around bizarre occult antiques. The sequel to the excellent detective game of 2022 Strange horticulture is called Strange antiquesand developer Bad Viking just gave us our first look at the type of sleuthing you can do in a new gameplay trailer:
Once again, you have a map on your desktop, but instead of showing the countryside, it now shows the sprawling town of Undermere, where your shop was located in the first game. A customer walks in with a request, but this time he is not looking for plants but for arcane artifacts and relics. It's time to grab your magnifying glass and get to work solving your first mystery.
While the research in Strange Horticulture involved closely examining plants and matching their attributes with the descriptions in your book, there is much more to discover in Strange Antiquities. Here are some of the methods you can use to determine the attributes of the items you collect:
- Weigh them on a scale
- Compare them to written notes
- Examine their color and composition
- Touch them to assess their texture or warmth
- Detect their smell
- Listening to the sounds they make
And of course, you can also just assess the mood of each element, or as the developers said in the trailer: “Does it provoke a growing sense of dread that makes you question your self-esteem and pushes you to the edge of sanity? Which is weird, because that's how I felt the time I bought a Funko Pop Ted Lasso while waiting in line to pay for socks at a Target. Maybe I'm already a miracle worker!
Instead of just one book to leaf through in your search for clues, there are several: an encyclopedia of artifacts, a tome on “Hermetic Symbology,” and a guide to “Gemstones and Their Thaumic Properties.” Once again you will encounter a group of colorful characters who will enter your shop looking for help and, no doubt, sometimes with ulterior motives. And like in the original game, your own store is full of secrets and puzzles that you will have to solve between customers.
There's a bit more to the trailer that's woefully unexplained, like a dice rolling system and a board covered in runes, but I don't really want to know more about it before playing. The original game was such a delightful experience that I don't want a single mystery to be spoiled in the new one. Strange Antiquities doesn't yet have a release date, or even a release window, but I'm crossing my fingers that the wait won't be too long.
