If those words have at all piqued your interest, stop reading right now, and go play Strangeland.īut if you must know more, here’s the deal: you awake outside a nightmarish carnival (the titular Strangeland) in the middle of a black void, with no memory of how you got there. The less you know about it going in and the more you can just let yourself drown in it, the better. It’s a bleak, eerie adventure, darkly funny at times and deeply, terrifyingly depressing at others, but an assault on the senses from start to finish-and I absolutely mean that as a compliment. It’d be a strange, surreal ride regardless, but coming in with no expectations, knowing nothing about it other than the title, and letting it just overwhelm the senses is Strangeland at its best. This feels like most an art exhibit and nothing more.I didn’t really go into Strangeland with any preconceived notions, other than a fondness for Wormwood Studios previous game, Primordia. To explore a world and story and characters. What is Strangeland? Why am I here? How did I get here? Why am I in a straight jacket? Nothing is answered or explored which is the main reason adventure games exist. It looks good, it's not super cryptic like most adventure games are, and the voice acting is good, but the story just doesn't make sense and we never get to know more about the characters. In the end, Strangeland is so short that I don't have a lot to say about it. I really enjoyed the art and the voice acting, but that's all there really is to the game. It ended so abruptly and unsatifactorily that I just shrugged in the end. Your ultimate goal is to kill The Dark Thing, and I believe the ending had a choice, but I wasn't sure. It's not possible to get lost, and once you exhaust all the dialog options with a character you can no longer talk to them. There's gore, gross fluids, strange pits that lead to nowhere, and sadly it's all smushed into this tiny play area with not much to do. And again, I can't stress how awesome the art is. There are many 8 main screens you visit, and the second half of the game reuses these screens when you are in Deadland. I just randomly clicked around and solved them, so there's that. It's not really hard to figure out what items go where you don't get that many, but there are a few puzzles in the game and they don't feel like puzzles. Even the ending didn't really make much sense after all of what you go through feels pointless. This world looks interesting and I want to learn about it, but it's so short, about three hours long, and there are so few characters that I feel I have rushed along to the end. Each character speaks in pointless riddles that have no meaning and I don't understand why. The largest downside to Strangeland is its complete lack of world or character building. There isn't much to the controls as you just walk around picking up items, some might need to be combined, and figure out where to use them. You can acquire hints for the game at any time by using the payphone in the main area and this is a really big help. The main goal of Strangeland is to fight something called The Dark Thing and you are trying to find a golden-haired woman who you think is your lover, but you aren't sure. As you talk to the talking entranceway you gain entry to the main area of the game and like every adventure game ever made you progress by exploring, talking to people, and picking up objects. The point-and-click adventure pixel art of yesteryear looks great and I love this style of visuals. The art style is dark, dreary, depressing, and looks great. Strangeland starts out with you playing like a man I a straight jacket inside a carnival of sorts. By ivory_soul | Review Date: June 12, 2021
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