Strangeland

About Strangeland

Strangeland is Wormwood Studios' second game, published by Wadjet Eye Games on May 25, 2021, for Windows, macOS and Linux. The studio made it as a follow-up to Primordia. It is a classic point-and-click adventure in pixel art at 640x360, fully voiced in English, with hours of original music.

You wake in a carnival that is not part of the real world: floating islands of tents, rides and broken track over a smoky sky. A golden-haired woman throws herself down a bottomless well for your sake. Ravens jeer at you. An eyeless scribe, a living furnace, a mismade mermaid, a telepathic starfish and a trio of masqueraders offer clues and riddles, and from the top of a towering roller coaster a shadow shrieks. Until you destroy this Dark Thing, the woman will keep jumping, falling and dying.

You explore dozens of rooms, many of which come back changed as the carnival grows more twisted, gather otherworldly tools and win strange allies. Puzzles often have more than one answer: one player wins a carnival game by sharpshooting, another by electrical engineering. Death has no grip on you here, and you use that to your advantage. The makers set out to remove the punishing parts of old adventure games, such as dead ends and pixel hunting, and there is an optional in-character hint system.

The horror is surreal and sad rather than sudden: grotesque bodies, a death that repeats, and a story about identity, loss, self-doubt and redemption that reviewers note deals with trauma, depression and suicide. Critics were split on it: Steam players rate it Very Positive, while OpenCritic's critics average 72, several praising the writing and art and some finding the last act weak.

A first run takes about four hours on HowLongToBeat, and different choices and solutions lead to different endings. Developer commentary and an annotation mode that explains the references are there for a second play. It suits players of dark adventure games such as Fran Bow, Sanitarium or The Cat Lady.

How to play Strangeland

1. Buy it on Steam or GOG for Windows, macOS or Linux.
2. Click to walk through the carnival and look at and talk to everything.
3. Collect tools and items; scroll the mouse wheel to cycle through them and use them on the world and its denizens.
4. Try different approaches; many puzzles have more than one solution.
5. Use the in-character hint system if you are stuck.

Tips

• Revisit rooms as the story moves on; the carnival changes.
• Since you cannot die for good, try the risky options too.
• Talk to everyone about every topic: the riddles and remarks of the carnival's denizens are often the clue.
• Turn on the annotation mode or the developer commentary on a second play to see the references explained.

Questions