I’ll freely admit that I’m terrible at adventure game puzzles (I play them for the story), and I got stuck often, despite the hints given. Sometimes even that isn’t enough, with the occasional clue that’s too vague or can be interpreted in different ways-or, in one case, when even the hint-giver will give up on you and just leave it at “Surely even you can figure out something this easy”. You’ll be ridiculed for it-not in a jokey, mocking, try-to-make-you-feel-dumb way, but in that’s more depressing, that’s more hopeless, that makes you feel more lost even though you’ve been shown the way forward. There’s also a built-in help system that means that, no matter how abstract a puzzle or how obtuse the clues to its completion may be, you can (almost) always get a hand when you need it. Related: Unavowed delivers an exciting journey through New York’s supernatural underbelly, assisted by charming companions and fresh point-and-click puzzles.īut don’t be put off. It’s a game that sometimes makes you feel like you’re pushing a boulder up a hill because that nonsensical, desperate effort that always ends up being in vain is exactly what it wants to explore. Strangeland is, ultimately, a game about grief-not so much about the stages of grief and the grieving process, but about the shock and that comes with finding out that most horrible news, having your world turned upside down, and trying everything you can possibly think of to fix what can’t be fixed. Sound frustrating? It can be, but that’s deliberate, and in a far more substantial way than a simple throwback to the moon logic of yesteryear’s adventure games. It’s a game where sometimes you need to fling yourself down that well, just so you can die and take yourself back to where it all began. It’s a game where sometimes you need to throw a stone at a raven to make it scream “Ow, my beak!”, so that a blind old eccentric who speaks only in quotes of old sages can scribble “beak” on some paper, so that you can use that page as a work order for a talking furnace to make yourself a dagger. It’s a classic point-and-click adventure game, but taking place in this surreal world that turns the already roundabout logic of adventure games on its head. With the heavy atmosphere well and truly set, what follows is an effort to try and stop this woman from repeatedly killing herself-at least, at first. It’s a shocking thing to witness, but you’re soon informed that she does this all the time-by a disembodied head in a glass jar, a talking raven, and a mysterious voice at the end of an old-timey payphone, no less. After a decidedly creepy clown-shaped entrance welcomes you with a couple of jokes, made all the more unsettling for how nonsensical and unfunny they are, you step through its mouth, into the big tent, just in time to see a woman throw herself into a well. If those words have at all piqued your interest, stop reading right now, and go play Strangeland.īut if you must know more, here’s the deal: you awake outside a nightmarish carnival (the titular Strangeland) in the middle of a black void, with no memory of how you got there. The less you know about it going in and the more you can just let yourself drown in it, the better.
It’s a bleak, eerie adventure, darkly funny at times and deeply, terrifyingly depressing at others, but an assault on the senses from start to finish-and I absolutely mean that as a compliment. It’d be a strange, surreal ride regardless, but coming in with no expectations, knowing nothing about it other than the title, and letting it just overwhelm the senses is Strangeland at its best. I didn’t really go into Strangeland with any preconceived notions, other than a fondness for Wormwood Studios previous game, Primordia.
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