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, our follow-up to Primordia, is a classic point-and-click adventure, rich with metaphors and symbols. While Primordia is the science-fictional story of robots finding their humanity in a post-apocalyptic landscape left by world war, Strangeland is the psychological horror story of a man losing, and rediscovering, his own humanity in the post-apocalyptic mindscape left by his own despair.

Strangeland features a rich story, multi-path puzzles, and increased graphical resolution, and improved quality-of-life features.  It is the second partnership of Mark Yohalem (writing and design), Victor Pflug (art and sound), and James Spanos (programming).

Strangeland has won a host of awards for its design and writing Adventure Game of the Year and Best Screenplay from AGOTY; Best Story, Best Writing, and Best Puzzles in the Aggies (Reader’s Choice); Best Puzzles, Best Programming, Best Voice Acting, and Best Character Art in the AGS Awards. It was also nominated for Best Writing in a Game in the New York Game Awards, competing with Psychonauts 2, Resident Evil: Village, and other AAA titles. In addition, it reached “Overwhelmingly Positive” status on Steam just over a year after its launch, and was listed on numerous best-games-of-the-year lists in the year of its launch.

Covered by The Onion AV Club, Vice.com, and elsewhere, Strangeland has received many glowing reviews and some not-so-glowing reviews, continuing our delightful relationship with the gaming media. Some of our favorite takes:

• “Strangeland is a surrealist, psychologic horror adventure that feels like it was drawn by H.R. Giger, designed by M.C. Escher, and written by Aeschylus.”
  
• “Worthy of a tragedy of Sophocles staged by David Lynch .... Brilliantly written, strangely funny, and stuffed with visual and narrative ideas that are intelligently and coherently interwoven. ... Borders heights that most video games do not even attempt to approach.”
  
• “Great puzzles, character writing, and multiple possible solutions give credit to its players while personalizing the path to one of the endings. Overall, Strangeland is a complete experience that masterfully balances grotesquerie and relatability”

Strangeland has also had the good fortune of receiving some great streams, Let’s Plays, and video commentaries. Here are two of our favorite (spoiler-laden) commentaries, from Grimbeard and Pushing Up Roses.

We are grateful that Strangeland has already been translated into German, French, Korean, Turkish, and Hungarian, with a Spanish translation on its way.

We hope you enjoy Strangeland. It is a dark and disturbing game, but although it deals with heavy themes, it is ultimately a hopeful game.