Indie Game of the Week 391: Strangeland

Remember when adventure games got real weird around the mid-to-late '90s? Not just explicitly horror-themed stuff like Phantasmagoria, Dark Seed, or Bad Mojo but in the way every other graphic adventure game became "whimsically dark" like Toonstruck, The Neverhood, or Normality. The makers of 2021's Strangeland sure do remember that era; they'd better, as Wormwood Studios is one of many developers working with adventure throwback specialists Wadjet Eye in producing pixel-based games that felt like they were plucked out some missing disk library of Alexandria for the genre circa maybe 1992-95, when CD-ROM tech was at a level of nascency that meant full voice-acting and redbook audio but not necessarily the chops to run a whole bunch of polygonal environments and characters. I have covered Wormwood before, incidentally, not on this feature but in one of its May Madness antecedents: 2012's Primordia. Glad to see this studio is still has a knack for bleak, overcast worlds full of horrors. But hey, what better description is there for the month of October?

Strangeland sees an unnamed protagonist wander into a metaphysical carnival on what appears to be sitting on the edge of reality, and is psychologically tortured by various figures as he attempts to save a golden-haired woman who keeps throwing herself into the abyss despite his protestations. In a story heavy on the semiotics and, frankly, some slightly (if also knowingly) overeducated dialogue about the nature of man, of mortality, of self-inflicted misery, of mythology, and of masks, this stranger in a Strangeland goes about completing the usual series of adventure game puzzles albeit in a setting that doesn't necessarily lend itself to logical processes. Thankfully, that doesn't also mean that the puzzles are as abstract and bizarre as the world they inhabit. That the game is mercifully short both chronologically and geographically means that getting stuck for hours on end on a real tough headscratcher isn't really the modus operandi here. It's more in the pursuit of spinning a yarn and simply using the traditional adventure game format as its figurative vellum and quill with a minimum of filler. As I've often said, most Indie adventure games tend to acknowledge and sidestep the usual issue of having too much real estate to traverse and too much junk in the trunk to juggle by deliberately limiting the amount of inventory and hotspots to deal with, so even when the solutions can feel a little opaque and contingent on an unpredictable world built out of dreams and shadows there's not a whole lot of what I'd consider annoyingly prevalent roadblocks due to the ever-limited moves at the player's disposal.

As to what those puzzles involve there's obviously only so much I want to write about here without running into spoiler territory, but there's a few fetch quests that stick out specifically regarding the forging of equipment to help traverse the more out-of-reach parts of this nightmare carnival which later becomes a recurring solution to obstacles. For instance, it took a while to open up a hole through a tent flap, its canvas apparently immune to both blade and acid, until you finally figure out a way of creating what you need. It also becomes clear early on that the final destination is up a roller coaster track but most of the game's broken bridges sit directly between you and its zenith. The arrival of "The Dark Thing", a malevolent entity whose identity is a mystery right up until the end of the game (unless you've spent as much time on the couch as I have, metaphorically speaking), creates a sort of ticking clock and recurring threat throughout your journey following its emancipation which adds to the game's tension and sense of horror survival. In fact, death is your constant companion in Strangeland: you learn early on that any demise is transitory at best, and dying even factors into the puzzles occasionally (there's also an achievement for kicking the bucket in every way it's possible to do so, which made for a fun if somewhat macabre scavenger hunt).

I quite like Strangeland's vibe, for as inscrutable as it is initially, in part because of the aforementioned nostalgia factor of tapping into that era of adventure games where they got super trippy as a matter of course, perhaps inspired by some beloved and famously idiosyncratic forebear (that I've ironically forgotten about) or else just joining an ongoing trend of drawing an audience through thoroughly confusing them with the trailers and promotions, but I also just appreciate any game willing to get weird with it. Adventure games have always been the best avenue for this because their mechanics are relatively simple, offering a structural anchor of straightforward sanity in a tornado of stylistic senselessness, and Strangeland knows its adventure game history and how to differentiate between merely discombobulating the audience and frustrating them. I also think its visuals are pretty good, especially on those close-ups of its haggard protagonist and its menagerie of grotesque creatures, though it still runs into the problem a lot of pixel-based adventure games (and Wadjet-produced modern incarnations of same) do where the way it tends to messily scale sprites moving in and out of the background has a real uncanny edge to it, and not in the sense of uncanny the game is otherwise reaching for.

So that's Strangeland. As stated, it's a fairly brief descent into madness at around four hours completion time but that's probably long enough to comfortably soak in its surreal atmosphere like a warm bath without getting all wrinkly afterwards. Brain wrinkly. I forget where this analogy was going. Point being, much like other adventure games made in this archaic model in modern times, it knows exactly how long it needs to tell its tale and bow out gracefully while dropping the stage curtains instead of padding out that time with puzzles that never amount to anything or a deliberate attempt to sabotage the player with impenetrable solutions or pointlessly irrelevant empty screens that necessitates hours of feverish clicking to add to the game's time-based illusion of value. Don't mind me, just getting flashbacks to being an adventure game fan in the 2000s. I wouldn't recommend that. But I would recommend Strangeland, especially if you—in this scare-ready time of the year—prefer the slow-burn type of horror that's meant to unsettle and disconcert over those that are content to merely startle you into a premature cardiac episode. I get enough of those from my poor lifestyle choices already thank you very much.

Rating: 4 out of 5.