First announced in our recent Thinky Direct event, a new demo dropped today for the sequel to the popular detective-shopkeeper game Strange Horticulture. This time around we're focused less on plants and more on magical relics and "artefacts", the uses of which you'll need to deduce and identify in order to help customers. (If in fact your goal is to help them...) Here's the new demo trailer for Strange Antiquities:
You're an apprentice who's recently arrived at this peculiar old shop of oddities in the town of Undermere, serving as an inexperienced custodian of the powerful antiques within. Patrons will arrive at the store requesting help with ailments and problems, and you'll need to use whatever means you can to figure out how best to recommend treatments and purchases. As the Steam page for Strange Antiquities suggests, however, you may sometimes be making deliberate choices to curse people with these magical items — something that will apparently have lasting ramifications in the game's story.
Exploring in forgotten corners of the shop, through dusty arcane tomes as well as out into other establishments of the wider town, you'll need to cross-reference and use deduction to discern the powers and purposes of these artefacts you've been entrusted with. The previous game Strange Horticulture had many of the same activities going on: browsing through botany reference books, poring over maps and speaking with people to identify and catalogue species.
You can download the brand new demo for Strange Antiquities today on Steam and wishlist the game to be notified about its eventual release. The predecessor Strange Horticulture also features a free demo on Steam, and is available for $15.99 on PC and Mac, as well as on consoles and mobile platforms.
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