Small indie studio Wormwood Studiosconsisting of three people – a programmer Dimitrios Spanos, artist Victor Pflug and screenwriter Mark Yohalem – nine years ago I managed to celebrate with a small adventure Primordia about the harsh life of robots in a destroyed world after humans. New studio project – horror story Strangeland – explores the boundaries of fears, love and human consciousness.
In the center of events is an unnamed character who finds himself in a strange place, reminiscent of an abandoned amusement park, where a beautiful golden-haired girl throws herself into an ancient well. Trying to save the girl and break the cycle of death and rebirth, the main character must go through a series of strange trials.
Despite the fact that the game is quite linear and does not go beyond the boundaries of the point’n’click adventure genre, the authors have implemented recognizable rogue elements in it. The hero, practicing various options for interacting with the environment, regularly dies, being reborn in one of the points of the world in order to continue his journey from the moment of death. This mechanic often contains a solution to some strange problem or a way out of a dead end. Most of the tasks require the simplest approach, while others require really difficult conclusions. But here the creators thought of a flexible system of prompts to help the lazy player – just call the phone standing in the center of the world and get a transparent hint or even a ready-made solution. After passing Strangeland, they give it to study again with comments and explanations from the developers themselves.
The main focus is on the characters and the history of the world. The unusualness lies in the fact that the environment, the characters and the central character himself are generated by someone’s sick imagination. In turn, the multi-layered story is fueled by a very interesting visual style. If desired, here you can even find the presence of Giger’s light handwriting – from the talking smithy to the blind prophet writing strange predictions on endless sheets. In the second half of the story, Strangeland becomes an even stranger piece of art with a frightening result. Although there is no vivid violence here, the project evokes a strange rejection – like a fragment of black goo on clean asphalt.
