Strangeland

I bought this game because Wadjet Eye games are generally very good. This is not. At most, it's mediocre. I could go into details about why I didn't like this and that, but I guess others might disagree with me. It's all quite subjective, after all. The real problem, though, is that Strangeland has a fundamental flaw that I think kind of transcends my personal opinion. You know the groundhog day? The game is structured the same way. You make some progress, then you "die" (to die is part of the story, you can't really avoid it) and respawn at the first location. So you have to walk again to the place where you left, same actions, same cutscenes, over and over again. Moreover, you get to understand what the plot is aiming at quite early, so all the "nonsensical" setting falls flat very soon and you start to skip dialog after dialog becasue you kind of already got the point and for the rest you simply don't care.

I originally discovered Strangeland after watching a brief playthrough on the Alpha Beta Gamer Youtube channel and the game had me completely enraptured. The bizarre visuals, captivating story, and incredible voice acting reeled me in and I purchased the game soon after. Strangeland pays homage to titles from the past that share similar thematic elements: Silent Hill 2, Planescape: Torment, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, etc. The story touches on similar beats and if those games resonated with you, Strangeland almost certainly will as well. The game generally respects your time and keeps you moving along, thanks to an easily-accessible hint system and puzzles that tread the line between easy and difficult quite well. It certainly doesn't overstay its welcome - I finished in a bit under 5 hours, and it felt like an appropriate time for the game to end. Also, I can't rave enough about the voice acting - Strangeland has some of the best I've ever witnessed in a video game. Strangeland really stuck with me, and it's a beautiful, melancholy, surreal experience that I really think fans of adventure games shouldn't miss.

After Primordia, which was an ok but not necessarily very good game, this was heralded as a great improvement and it delivered - not. For this review I just played the game again because I had forgotten everything about it, despite it being only a couple of weeks since playing it last. And even now I find it difficult to come up with much. The graphics and design and some other ideas clearly and obviously take inspriration from some of the horror classics of the 90th like Phantasmagoria, Sanitarium and — most importantly — Darkseed. One could almost say some parts are a blatant copy. But while these were serious (and successful) attempts at psychological horror, this game is not. The utter lack of a story or any real content makes this an unsubstantial, boring and uninteresting game. Just having "Giger-inspired" graphics is not enough for a good game. Now, the premise of a man caught at an infernal, strange carnival certainly seems promising and interesting and opens up many possibilities but not much was really done to work with this. As a result, the game is more or less just a short series of random pseudo-horror puzzles threwn together with no story to bind them. It's quite sad to see what the developers wasted their time on. The voice actors are not bad and did what they could, but there is only so much they can achieve when the writers mess up. My advice to Wormwood would be to hire new story authors and writers (and new designers while they're at it) and maybe next time the result will be better. For anyone else: This game is worth neither your money nor your time. Spend both on something else.

An older style point and click adventure game where death is just part of the journey. The plot is quite obscure and heavy on the psychology which can be off-putting, but is part of its overall style and does improve as the game progresses. The dark, depressing and grotesque settings are pretty detailed but due to the limited colour pallet, can look dull and very similar. There are also only a few different characters and scenes but this adds to the atmosphere of being trapped and forced to repeat the same horrors again and again. The game play is simple and apart from one puzzle near the beginning isn’t too difficult. The full voice acting is good enough, but the music was unmemorable and even though it encourages different choices and multiple playthroughs, it still ends up being a very short game.

Metaphors, allegories, solve some casual puzzles in a tiny carnival , a few more metaphors, a few more allegories, repeat the nonsense. This sums up the whole 4 hours experience. Using a few metaphors/allegories is ok but to structure the whole game through a plethora of those is the definition of pretentiousness. Characters exist only to spout metaphorical nonsense non-stop without contributing something meaningful to the plot. It's like those indie small pretentious movies that put you in a loop, which lets you guessing what is happening all the time. Again, it's not a bad thing to assume and /or think about meanings, and come to conclusions for yourself, but the writer over used it in an autistic way. Apparently he forgot what ancient Greek philosophers have said in the past, "all things in moderation". Story feels kinda of "dark" and at the same time uninteresting and meaningless for the reasons I've mention above. Also don't expect to get answers or interesting endings, as I said it's a guessing game not an "adventure" game. Gameplay wise also don't expect much, exploration is reduced to a minimum with very few tiny rooms to explore and interact, puzzles are very casual and the one that felt like a bit of a challenge, was retarded in the end. The only good things I have to say about this are the art style and the sound design, but of course these are not enough to recommend the game. Finally, this game has nothing in common with Sanitarium and to even compare it with it (as a few clueless folks here did) it's a disgrace.