Strange Antiquities Review
Identify strange, mysterious, and sometimes dangerous artifacts in Strange Antiquities.
Strange Antiquities. Credit: Bad Viking / Iceberg Interactive
Bad Viking follows up their beloved Strange Horticulture with another trip to the gloomy town of Undermere, this time putting you behind the counter of a shop that trades in occult curiosities. Strange Antiquities, published by Iceberg Interactive, delivers engaging puzzle gameplay, but stumbles when attempting to tell a compelling story that frames it all.
You play as an apprentice thaumaturge left in charge of Strange Antiquities while the owner leaves town on urgent business. As customers begin reporting strange happenings and a mysterious illness, it falls to you to provide mystical artifacts to help the townspeople. Or are you making things worse? Sinister forces are at play.
Strange Antiquities. Credit: Bad Viking / Iceberg Interactive
You spend the game behind the shop counter. Each day, customers arrive requesting specific occult objects for particular uses, such as healing, protection, curses, and more. Your job involves cross-referencing three different guidebooks that cover folklore, symbols, and gemstones to identify artifacts. Even though you almost always have their names, nothing on your shelves is labeled, so correctly identifying them is crucial. I haven’t played Strange Horticulture, but my understanding is that you only use a single reference book, so the puzzles here are more complex.
Get too many items wrong in a day and your sanity cracks, forcing you into a dice-rolling minigame to recover. I only encountered it once during my playthrough and found it fairly manageable, so the stakes never feel particularly high.
Strange Antiquities. Credit: Bad Viking / Iceberg Interactive
Between customers, you explore multiple maps that you unlock over the course of the game. The town of Undermere, a manor, and eventually the catacombs beneath it hide secrets to be discovered. Daily clue cards and letters from Undermere’s residents provide cryptic hints about artifact locations, creating some of the game's most satisfying puzzles. These treasure hunts often proved more challenging than the standard item identification, requiring careful reading and lateral thinking to pinpoint the right spot. Of course, picking the wrong one takes a toll on your sanity.
Strange Antiquities. Credit: Bad Viking / Iceberg Interactive
Unlocking hidden areas of the shop itself provided my favorite moments. Secret panels slide open to reveal new spaces, or even mysterious portals. Each discovery feels genuinely rewarding, even when the puzzles to get there weren't particularly interesting. There's something deeply satisfying about watching your workspace expand as you peel back its mysteries like a puzzle box.
Where Strange Antiquities falters is storytelling. Everything unfolds secondhand through customer conversations rather than direct experience. You hear about ominous events and rising darkness without ever witnessing them, creating emotional distance from supposedly urgent threats. The narrative choices affecting townspeople's fates lack impact because you never really get to know any of them. As I looked at the ending summary, I couldn't recall who half of the people were, let alone care about their fates.
Strange Antiquities. Credit: Bad Viking / Iceberg Interactive
Despite those issues, the developers clearly invested a lot of time in the world's lore, and it shows as you learn about the artifacts and some of the stories behind them. Reading the background information in the books is necessary to solve the puzzles, but it was a pleasure to do it.
The polished, vectorized art style works beautifully for UI elements and objects. However, it leaves characters feeling stiff and emotionless, which is something that clearly doesn’t help with the emotional investment problem, either. The visual approach prioritizes clarity over personality, which serves the puzzle gameplay but undermines the narrative ambitions.
Strange Antiquities. Credit: Bad Viking / Iceberg Interactive
Strange Antiquities succeeds where it matters most—the puzzle design. I was determined to identify all the artifacts. The story may feel like an afterthought, but the satisfaction of labeling the odd trinkets and uncovering new, hidden portions of the shop made the game irresistible to finish.
Strange Antiquities is available now on Steam and Nintendo Switch.
Overall Score: 7/10
Played on: Steam Deck
