Strange Antiquities is the first game in a while that treats magical objects like magical objects
I need help identifying an Ossic Ring. Whatever an Ossic Ring is, it’s related to a serpent goddess and is great at keeping away vermin. Legend holds that you can hear it hissing. I’m not sure if the Ossic Ring is an actual ring, and if so, whether it’s a ring for your finger or a ring necklace or a ring design found on something unhelpfully nonringular.
With time running short (I am playing the demo for Bad Viking’s Strange Antiquities on the train), I grab weird knick knacks from my shelves at random and thrust them imperiously at the customer. Perhaps this berringed corpse’s hand? No? How about this iron band enclosing a blue crystal tear? I get it wrong three times in a row and my character’s brain saturates with Dread. To dispel the Dread, I must play a farkle-style dice game, matching faces to sigils before my soul collapses. Ah, this is just like recommending guest beers at the gastropub I worked in before getting my first job in the shitpost business. Do Strange Ales next, Bad Viking.
As you may guess from the title, Strange Antiquities is essentially 2022’s Strange Horticulture but you are running a magic antiquarian store rather than a magic garden centre. I haven’t played much of Strange Horticulture, but the broad strokes of Strange Antiquities seem identical to those of the verdant puzzler Alice B (RPS in peace) described as “quiet, meticulous, delightful, dark, and beguiling”. Ring the bell and customers materialise from the green streets of Undermere to ask for a particular item – a bony emblem to aid with the hunt, for example, or a Moon Heart to provide solace for a lonely grandmother. You then work out which of your initially unlabelled commodities fits the bill.
First, you look up the name in an illustrated antiquarian’s guide. Then you try to find an artefact that has the right shape, texture, material composition, temperature, smell, sound and psychic resonsance. Perhaps you also refer to your book of symbols, which is otherwise used when writing labels. According to Alice B, there was a reward in Strange Horticulture for labelling things very precisely, and I imagine the same is true here.
The appeal of Strange Antiquities, for me, is that it cuts against the disposability of so-called magical artefacts in many other games. Today’s RPG-flavoured free-to-play or live service offerings especially are larded with eldritch geegaws, frou-frous and doodads that exist to be fed continually into progression systems. They are glittering sequins on the face of a slot machine.
Strange Antiquities wants you to run curious hands over every dusty Ascendant Shard or poundshop Holy Grail and diagnose its aura. There’s a patent loveliness to this. Between sales, you’ll also investigate the interior of the shop, which is full of locked compartments and peculiar mechanisms. As in Horticulture, there’s a wider world to glean from customer requests, troubled dreams, and expeditions to recover artefacts that take place on a paper map.
My chief criticism, I guess, is that the occult elements don’t feel very occluded. Yes, you have to figure out the lore, but there’s no doubt that everything in stock is a potential Lament Configuration. I think the game would be more engrossing if the objects at your disposal appeared mostly or entirely devoid of supernatural import, and you had to impose and cultivate those associations by striving to fulfil orders. But that would be a very different game. This one will probably be quite enchanting enough if you adored Horticulture. The demo launches on 5th June. Find out more on Steam.