Strange ancient review

During my first two hours serving strange antique customers, I pulled at least dozens of times the bronze pendulum of an ornate watch. We checked the time mentions on Occult Mencyclopaedia and compared the clock face to the book shape of the Hermetic symbol. Every time I drew a blank, I pulled the pendulum several more times just to be sure.

This follow-up of this 2022 puzzle’s odd gardening is packed with these promises of future puzzles. Locked cabinet without keys, sliding door cupboards with clear purposelessness, three empty pedestals, under the shop counter, carved desk with four chunks missing. I I knew They were all clues, I just couldn’t say anything.

In a series of brilliant moments, I was able to do it.

I really laughed at joy when I realized how the clock fits into the multipart puzzle that revealed a new area of ​​my shop, and the feeling was repeated several times during my 10-hour playthrough. This is a puzzle game that is longer and uneven than the strange gardening, but it’s more ambitious and equally appealing.

The general concepts remain the same. Customers will come to your store for items with a specific name. Your encyclopedia holds each cues from concrete like shapes and materials to more abstract, from something more elicited when you hold them, and the fact that they are used to suck blood in the ritual of initiation. Touch the object on the shelf, listen, smell it, choose the right one and you can hit it from a long list. Outside, the story of curses and cults unfolds, and some of the decisions you make, such as which of the two items you give to a particular customer can change the outcome.

Objects are imaginative. It is an engraved totem with unfamiliar symbols, a box covered in spirit-catching gems, a medallion designed with the image of the snake god, and a bloody stone on eagle’s claws. They all look great on your shelf, but you choose to arrange them. The explanations are inspiring and sometimes double meanings, so I wanted to decipher them further. Is this necklace cold or does it give you goosebumps because it’s creepy? Which of these wooden objects can be described as “fingers”?

At first, knowing that it is made of bronze with a single gem is enough to identify it, but soon the puzzle becomes a tricky and layered challenge. Alongside the encyclopedia, you will get books about gems, symbols, and cursed books. Often, you need to flip them multiple times to identify a single object. A simple example: If someone comes to seek cures for curses, first read the curse book to identify their illness, find the curse in the index of the encyclopedia, then read all related entries to identify the required object.

I was regularly confused, but with each splitting the puzzle into small chunks I was able to cut down any possible answers. The hint system vaguely points you in the right direction without completely telling the answer I like, but you can ask for multiple hints at once. When you solve puzzles, you know which clues are relevant. Sometimes these were details I didn’t notice and gave me new ideas to solve future puzzles.

I love the sense of proficiency it builds. When you get a new encyclopedia entry, it will flash on the screen. You can ignore it, but important information often remains in my mind. I lost the count I thought later “Wait, I know that name.”and it’s satisfying to use knowledge you didn’t even realize you had. The way encyclopedia entries flow through each other encouraged you to follow the trajectory of your thinking, and before you know it, you identified three or four objects rather than just objects. By the end of the game, I will be the right expert shopkeeper. I didn’t think about which gems mean death, which means fire, which symbol mean summer, which winter. Sometimes I was able to choose the right object without consulting my book, and it felt great.

Like a clock pendulum, its best moments discover puzzles hidden in their appearance, not when identifying objects, but when they plunge around the store. To open a locked cabinet in one corner, you had to manipulate the object in a way that you initially could not have thought of. The empty cupboard mentioned previously proved the instrument in a way that I didn’t ruin, but it was just as fun. The range of games constantly surprises me, and it offers all the promises that make fun of.

Even the game’s collectible maps hide their own secrets. Click on the location to enter a story vignette. Often, it ends with discovering a new object. The clues to find these locations – mystery, matching shapes, pattern recognition – are simpler, but more enthralling. Later, you’ll get the devices that need to be placed on one of the maps to find the right spot. When I realized that, I felt like a genius.

In a game with so many puzzles and so many different kinds of puzzles, some guys are inevitable. I gave up on identifying a particular medallion just for the hint system and told me I had to solve another puzzle I picked up (and put it down) in the game much earlier. In another case, I had to narrow it down to two possible objects and simply guess – even when I saw the correct solution, the other objects seemed to fit in as well. Still, these small mistakes can be made easy with the strange ancient density and consistent generosity.

It helped me simply live in the shop and enjoy listening to the rain and thunder outside. I pet my pussy every morning until he cleansed it, stuffing my paper into their drawers every night. After the first customer every day, I reshuffled the shelves to suit my mood. Early on, medallions were placed in bronze, gold, wood and tin materials. All identified objects were then moved to another shelf and the medallions were classified by gem color. This isn’t busy – it’s the flexibility that makes the store feel like a deep, personal space.

However, I wish it was a little easier to navigate with the mouse. When some objects seemed to fit the cues, I liked stacking them on the desk under my counter, the book next to them, so I was able to better compare their markings and gems. To move objects from the shelf to this desk, you must grab each one, hold it at the bottom of the screen until the desk appears, then drop it. Certainly, it’s easy to use a keyboard, but if you have a game designed for a mouse, then there’s coffee on the other side. I also found it too easy to zoom in to a book (double click) when I was simply going to open it (single click).

My enthusiasm for puzzles also faded into the final time. This is because all of those best challenges are in the middle and I didn’t care what was going on outside the store. The story of the town of curse, death, betrayal, and rival factions is detailed, direct, concise, like all the strange ancient words. Even a bit poetic. However, you spend so much time immersed in your book and staring at the artifacts, it’s easy to forget what the final plot development is. And even if you track down, the story loses about two-thirds of the road, delaying and delaying what feels like an inevitable conclusion.

Still, the satisfaction of the fully engraved list kept me through to the end. The height of the strange bone qui item matches the rest I’ve played this year. Make sure to put it along with Blue Prince in the best puzzle games of 2025. It’s one of the devilish, fun, and hopefully even stranger games.