Strangeland
You awake in a nightmarish carnival and watch a golden-haired woman hurl herself down a bottomless well for your sake. You seek clues and help from jeering ravens, an eyeless scribe, a living furnace, a mismade mermaid, and many more who dwell within the park. All the while, a shadow shrieks from atop a towering roller-coaster, and you know that until you destroy this Dark Thing, the woman will keep jumping, falling, and dying, over and over again….
Strangeland is a classic point-and-click adventure that integrates a compelling narrative with engaging puzzles. For almost a decade, we’ve been working on a worthy successor to the fan-acclaimed Primordia, and we are proud, at long last, to share our second game.
Strangeland is a place like no other. Even in the real world, carnivals occupy a twilight territory between the fantastic and the mundane, the alien and the familiar. In their funhouse mirrors, their freaks, and their frauds, we see hideous and haunting reflections of ourselves, and we witness the wonder and horror of humanity in just a few frayed tents, peeling circus wagons, dingy booths, and run-down rides. Strangeland, of course, is most definitely not the real world. Indeed, unraveling the connections between this nightmare and the real world is the game’s central mystery, and finding a way out is its central challenge.
As you explore Strangeland, you will need to gather otherworldly tools and win strange allies to overcome a daunting array of obstacles. Forge a blade from iron stolen from the jaws of a ravenous hound and hone it with wrath and grief; charm the eye out of a ten-legged teratoma; and ride a giant cicada to the edge of oblivion…. Amidst such madness, death itself has no grip on you, and you will wield that slippery immortality to gain an edge over your foes.
Navigating this domain of monsters and metaphors will require understanding its denizens and its enigmas. Unlike many adventure games that offer a linear experience and single-solution puzzles, Strangeland lets you pick your own way, your own approach, and your own meaning—one player might win a carnival game with sharpshooting, another by electrical engineering; one player might unravel a strange prophet’s wordplay while another gathers visual clues scattered throughout the environment. Ultimately, Strangeland’s story will be your story. You are not the audience; you are the player.
- Approximately five hours of gameplay, replayable thanks to different choices, different puzzle solutions, and different endings
- Breathtaking pixel art in twice Primordia’s resolution (640×360—party like it’s 1999!)
- Dozens of rooms to explore, with variant versions as the carnival grows ever more twisted
- An eccentric cast, including a sideshow freak, a telepathic starfish, an animatronic fortune-teller, and a trio of masqueraders
- Full, professional voice over and hours of original music
- A rich, thematic story about identity, loss, self-doubt, and redemption
- Integrated, in-character hint system (optional, of course)
- Hours of developer commentary and an “annotation mode” (providing on-screen explanations for the references woven throughout the game)
At Wormwood Studios, we make games out of love—love for the games we’ve spent our lifetimes playing, love for the games we ourselves create, and love for the players who have made all of those games possible. We know that players invest not just their money and time in the games they play, but also their hope and enthusiasm. And we want to make sure that players receive a rich return on that investment by creating games that provide not only a fun, challenging diversion for a few hours, but also lasting memories to keep for years.
We think the best way to achieve that with Strangeland is to adhere to the genius of the adventure genre: the marriage of challenging puzzles and thrilling exploration, on the one hand, with an engaging narrative, on the other. At the same time, we’ve tried to remove the punitive aspects of adventure games (deaths, dead ends, illogical puzzles, pixel hunting, backtracking, etc.). Within this framework, we add uncanny visuals, memorable characters, and thought-provoking themes. The result for Primordia was a game that has received thousands of positive player reviews, and we have refined our approach further with Strangeland. We hope it will not disappoint the players who have given us such great support and encouragement over the years! And we hope that it will find a place in the hearts of new players as well.
Game Discussion
Steam User 10
if you are a big fan of the point n click genre, do yourself a favor and turn on commentary when you are doing your 2nd playthru of this game. it's entirely optional, there's no chievo for it, but it goes into some really amazing depths in what the scenes are trying to portray and how the writers / developers came about their understandings of these dark and cryptic topics. i missed a LOT of the underlying content in my first playthru. but hearing these life stories and having a better understanding of the life experiences that brought writers to these interpretations is really awesome stuff. it's made this game a lot more profound than i initially thought and i am enjoying it on a whole deeper level. this game has some really strong underlying concepts and i have a lot more respect for it after listening to the commentary. it's always such a pleasure playing these wormwood/wadjet eye games! and this one does not disappoint.
Steam User 5
What a darkly beautiful game. Shame it only lasted 4 hours. As in, I wish there was more, but it ended nicely without over staying it's welcome. Would recommend, if only for the downright chilling voice acting.
Steam User 5
What a great game. Played it in one sitting, loved the art style and the quality-of-life phone operator guiding you if you get a bit stuck. Truly immerses you in its weird world that's reminiscent of H.R. Giger and Silent Hill. Unsettling, dark, but ultimately beautiful and doesn't overstay its welcome.
This is the second adventure from Wadjet Eye Games that I've played, the other being Unavowed, and I've loved both so much I'm now a big fan of this publisher. And I will certainly try Wordwood Studios earlier game as I've heard good things!
Final score: 9/10
Steam User 3
Strangeland is a spooky Indie adventure game.
The 2nd game by Wormwood Studios, Strangeland is quite different from Primordia not only in narrative but also in its approach.
We are stuck in a nightmare and stay in the same locations most of the game, while they may change, we never venture further than the protagonist's mind. That's not entirely a bad thing, to be honest.
The art is surreal and the story is is weird.
I believe psychologists will have a field day with this one. Not that it is hard to understand, the ending was pretty much clear, but what each carnival ride and detail represented feels like it had thought put behind it.
About the puzzles: In such a nightmare setting, it is very convenient to move away from simple logic puzzles into absurd territory. Yet it surprisingly feels like Strangeland never resorted to nonsensical moon logic puzzles, instead it used dream logic.
After the rules of this nightmare worlds have been explained and taught to you, you can figure out the dream puzzles yourself. (something you can't do with incompetent moon logic puzzles of Sierra games..)
The phone booth that offers hints is a nice addition like the robot companion from Primordia. Can be cheap, but helps with directions sometimes. I encountered a moment where he got stuck repeating the same unhelpful line over and over..
Psychology was never my major, so I won't go into if this game is pretentious or not. Lot's of people seem to claim so. But I believe the game achieved what it set out to do. That's the most important part in my opinion!
While Primordia was more logical robot game in a techno city, Strangeland tackles the other half of the brain: the surreal & abstract, trauma and nightmares. I liked the juxtaposition.
Fairly short Indie game, that is good as game is not bloated or dragging.
Nice game.
Steam User 2
Strangeland is a shining example of what the point-and-click genre can achieve. It offers a captivating, surreal world that explores deep themes of loss and personal struggle. The pixel art is meticulously detailed, and the voice acting is top-notch, bringing the characters to life vividly.
The puzzles are a delightful blend of challenging and intuitive, perfectly integrated into the narrative. It was intellectually stimulating and deeply engaging. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a game that is both artistically rich and thought-provoking.
Steam User 2
Honestly one of the best point-and-clicks I've ever played. This game is such a masterpiece in so many ways. First, the visuals... stunning. The artist couldn't possibly have captured a psychological horror nightmare carnival more aptly. And the visual effects take it to the next level. You can see the care that went into the game in the subtle things, like mirror reflections or ripples in the water. Overall, a very immersive, surreal, and polished feel.
And then, the puzzles. Generally the perfect level of difficulty. The solutions are mostly logical and fit well with the game story. They feel very thoughtfully designed with the player in mind. One puzzle is a more arcade-style speed/action-type puzzle, but there's an alternative solution for people who don't like that, which I thought was a great addition.
And finally, most importantly, there's the story. Very dark and very deep. There's so much to it, and I think it's really worth playing through a second time with commentary to understand it better because I don't think you can get everything the first time around. I certainly didn't, but I enjoyed both playthroughs because on the first one, I could draw my own interpretations of all the story events and symbolism, and on the second, I could see what the devs actually wanted to convey. The characters are great. The symbolism is great. The writing is great and very poetic, packed with hidden meaning. And the voice acting is great. Abe Goldfarb (Joey from the Blackwell series) blesses us again with his immense talent.
The commentary is good, too. The writer, artist/sound engineer, and programmer all give their own commentaries, and although the artist's and programmer's commentaries are often very technical, you can certainly appreciate how much work they put into the game. It's also quite enlightening if you're interested in game dev yourself. But I most enjoyed the writer's commentary, which dives into the meaning behind different parts of the story or offers personal stories that served as inspiration. Mark Yohalem is certainly a great storyteller. It really helps round out the game and add more meaning to an already very deep story.
So anyway, yes, this game is fantastic in pretty much every way.
Steam User 2
Good point and click adventure game that is not too obtuse with the puzzle solving.