Strangeland

Strangeland is from the creators of Primordia, and published by Wadjet Eye Games. I have played the previous games from this publisher with Director’s Commentary, but this one seemed very verbose. There is also an option for “annotations” which constantly interrupts dialogue to point out references and inspirations. I turned them both back off after 30 mins or so. There’s lots of inspiration from nordic myth then probably philosophy, books and film.

Abe Goldfarb, a voice actor commonly employed by Wadjet Eye Games voices a few characters including the main character.

It is set in a surreal carnival, and deals with mental health and psychological horror. It’s a relentlessly bleak and depressing world. I think the story is basically that the character is dealing with the death of his partner, and if there's more to it than that, then it's just lost in all the references, and trying to be too abstract.

When your character enters the carnival, you see a woman jump down a well. A phonebox rings, with the guy telling you to dial 0 for hints. There’s a talking crow, as well as a fortune teller machine. This area has 3 paths to other carnival areas. It took me a while to notice these exits due to other objects obscuring them. There were other times where I also missed areas, and was frustrating when I called for hints and he told me I haven’t explored the carnival.

The entire game is set in the carnival, so there’s only a few scenes. However, later on, you see an even darker version of the carnival but it’s the same setting. I was yearning to see something different.

Many actions can result in death, but your character respawns at the carnival entrance. Sometimes you have to do this intentionally to progress.

There’s 2 ways of using items, the menu at the top, or a scrollable menu activated by your mousewheel. When you hover your mouse to the top of the screen, a menu pops down, and most of it is taken up by a panel I expected to be used later in the game, but it isn’t. Then you have a few small buttons to the right, one is the inventory which pops up a dialog box. You can open it with a keyboard shortcut. Not sure why they didn’t just place your items directly on the initial menu since you never have a large number of items. With the current design, I think it seemed better to use your mousewheel for the more compact menu. However, this is annoying to use when you pick up a mysterious box, because scrolling to the box triggers dialogue that your character doesn’t want to open it.

The “How to Play” option states that “you are not required to memorise anything, key information will always be repeated”. However, I think you can forget some objectives. In some point and click adventures, I have made notes so when I get stuck or come back after a few days, I can glance at my notepad and see there is something I have forgotten about. I didn’t take notes because the game told me not to, and I had to use the phone to prompt me. You aren’t penalised for using the phone but some players could consider this cheating, like looking at a walkthrough.

There’s one puzzle where you are supposed to work out a phone number and I had the first 3 numbers from the poster (431). Then I get a fortune from the fortune teller who says "You will call for three, wanton one, three", which I thought just meant the last 3 numbers were 313 - but you actually need 4 numbers, but couldn’t understand how “wanton” could be converted to a number. There's a big thread on Steam of people criticising this puzzle. Many are saying it is bad because English isn't their first language so they didn't recognise the word "wanton". But the definition of the word isn't the puzzle, it's a play on what it sounds like; "wanton" is therefore misheared words of one-ten. The fortune teller is actually giving you the full number: "for" is actually 4. Maybe a puzzle like this doesn’t work when you have text subtitles because there’s a bigger leap in logic that you have to not trust the subtitles.

I think the puzzles are generally logical, with some of them needing to understand the in-game mechanics like when you get the dagger which can absorb souls.

I managed to eventually work out what to do with the snake, but found its reactions inconsistent. Interactions with the snake led to death, so I assumed you had to do something from range. But no, you have to do something close to the snake.

The game has multiple endings, but you can experience them by saving at the end where you make your final decision, then reload to find the others.

It's a short game, taking around 4 hours. I think it suffered from the lack of locations, and an underdeveloped protagonist. You don’t know anything about him, and it seems you are supposed to see him as a hopeless and dim character, but with good intentions (which I guess is a common trope in the genre like Deponia or Monkey Island).

A densely harrowing, unique experience that seems to have been engendered by the likes of Kafka or Beckett.

After a replay it still grabs my throat and carries me away with a rare subtlety, largely unparalelled in any media.
One could argue that for a graphic adventure that relies on puzzles it doesn't present the (albeit challenging) most fresh or ingenious ones.
Nor does it engage the player with tawdry tropes.
Where it doubtless excels is as a narrative: a maelstrom where level design and a (sort of) stream-of-consciousness story blend together as if inchoate.
The result is nothing short of hard-hitting, haunting and remarkably authentic.

As a whole it belongs to some of the most imaginative, profoundly moving stuff I ever played.