Wormwood Studios & Wadjet Eye Games
proudly present:
STRANGELAND
Welcome to 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, figuring out where—and who—you are is one of the game's many mysteries.
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.
This has been a tremendous journey for me, personally, both in terms of growth but also mentally, I cannot explain how proud I am for this game, at least not with my own words. Everyone that has worked for Strangeland has given it their all, can only hope the result justifies our efforts!
(http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot_Strangeland_02.jpg) (http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot_Strangeland_03.png)
(http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/wp-content/uploads/Strangeland-2021-04-12-11-18-12-45.png) (http://primordia-game.com/Files0/StrangelandPROMO/x7.png)
Features:- A brand new adventure from the makers of Primordia!
- Approximately five hours of gameplay, replayable thanks to different choices, different puzzle solutions, and different endings
- 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)
Written by: Mark Yohalem
Artwork & Music by: Victor Pflug
Voicework by: Dave Gilbert
VA: Abe Goldfarb, Steven Kelly, Miranda Gauvin, Mike Ciporkin, Mike Pollock, Elsie Lovelock, Lucas Schuneman, Tom Schalk, Patrick Langer, Maya Murphy, Abby Wahl, Brittany Lauda, Dara Seitzman, Ivy Dupler, Alice Yohalem, Dave Gilbert
Extra Stranger Animations by: Daniel Miller
Coding & Visual Effects & Additional Music by: James Spanos
BUY:- [STEAM] (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1369520/Strangeland/)
- [GOG] (https://www.gog.com/game/strangeland)
Various Links:- Strangeland's homepage (http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/strangeland/)
- Wadjet Eye Games Twitter (https://twitter.com/WadjetEyeGames)
- Wormwood Studios Twitter (https://twitter.com/WWSGames)
- Wadjet Eye Games Discord (https://discord.gg/K7yWBgcVUK)
- Wormwood Studios Discord (https://discord.gg/fg5Nu8w)
Screenshots:(http://primordia-game.com/Files0/StrangelandPROMO/Strangeland-2021-04-12-11-15-16-21.png)(http://primordia-game.com/Files0/StrangelandPROMO/Strangeland-2021-04-12-11-14-51-01.png)
(http://primordia-game.com/Files0/StrangelandPROMO/Strangeland-2021-04-12-11-14-11-99.png)(http://primordia-game.com/Files0/StrangelandPROMO/Screenshot_Strangeland_04.png)
Just received the email!
(https://i.imgur.com/a1zYRzO.jpg)
Congratulations on the incredible release!
Congrats on the release! Sooo looking forward to play this!
(https://i.imgur.com/RxflyI1.png)
Finally! 8-0
_
OMG, been waiting for this one!
Congratulations on the release!
Thank you guys, can't hear what you all think <3
Congratulations! Great to see this finally releasing and hopefully it will enjoy lots of success and acclaim.
Sadly, this is the first AGS game that my decade old lappy really struggles with. Some other games have had a few hiccups here and there, but this one lags pretty hard in some areas, making it pretty much unplayable. So, it'll have to go in the backlog for the moment, waiting for better days.
From what I glimpsed, I can compliment you on a solid options screen, better than most other AGS games.
Also, what the hell are you feeding your save games with, they're huge!
Hey Hobo, thanks!
I mean, yeah, the game was made in a 10 year old pc that handled it fine, anything below a duo-core will struggle for sure, specifically something like a laptop that also overheats as time goes by, meaning even further performance drop.
There are no AGS save games, only ours, 24kb each. :) We can infinitely upgrade Strangeland and it will never break savegames.
I do have a duo-core, but I'm guessing it's the lack of dedicated graphics card that's pushing the cpu to the max.
Quote from: Dualnames on Fri 28/05/2021 19:55:14
There are no AGS save games, only ours, 24kb each. :) We can infinitely upgrade Strangeland and it will never break savegames.
Ooh, impressive, non-breaking saves is a real fancy and useful feature to have. So the big (compared to other AGS games) agssave.001 and agssave.999 files are part of that custom system?
Yes those are saved default by ags and serve no real purpose :)
Bought Strangeland on Steam and beat it earlier today. Fantastic game with awesome graphics (not surprising, its Pinback), and an interesting story that held my attention. Its not a long game, and I found it to be just the right amount of time in that super dark world.
Heya everyone here's a small post about what it took to make Strangeland.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1369520/announcements/detail/2969544592376634893
Hi Dualnames, fascinating read! The amount of work put into fixing/working-around the shortcomings of AGS must've been quite a challenge.
At the risk of sounding cheeky, are you considering backporting any of the changes you made into the main AGS codebase? The new save system sounds like a wonderful addition for everyone, for example.
I'd be very interested in reading more pieces like this, thanks again for taking the time to write this up.
All the extended functions are available on github, i'll try to sorten out the save relatable ones, and make a plugin solely out of them, but a custom save system is not exactly plug-n-play for a different project.
I also enjoyed reading it and have a great deal of respect for the work that went into it. It's very admirable! Thanks for posting.
Quote from: Dualnames on Sun 11/07/2021 12:00:46
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1369520/announcements/detail/2969544592376634893
Interesting and enjoyable piece of reading, thanx for sharing and kudos on all the custom work on the project, Dual!!
Glad you guys enjoyed it <3
Congratulations on the release. Looks beautiful!
And interesting writeup! Nice work!
Steve <3
How did I not know about this game until this moment? :shocked:
You can fix that, Ponch!
Congrats, what an effort. The RAIN looks really wonderful!!
I've spent the last couple of days playing and completing this. Now I'll try it with annotations and commentary and hunt down those last achievements I missed because I solved some puzzles in an optional way. (nod)
The game is very good. The production values are high, with great art, animation, sound, music, voice acting and options. The story is surreal and filled with allusions and symbols, but it's not necessary to have a master's degree in lit to have fun with the game. However, the allusions hit my home territory, so to speak, and I enjoyed seeing another take on what for me was familiar characters.
Most of the time, I knew what to do next, but a couple of times I didn't. Some of the puzzles required me to take a break and simply think through what I'd done so far...and then I'd come up with a suitable plan. I got through the game and found the different endings without using the hint system, but that doesn't mean the game's too easy. It took me a fair few hours, and some of the tasks are quite difficult.
Recommended. However, the game deals with difficult topics, such as death, suicide, grief/depression and hints at more if you interpret the symbols/metaphors in certain ways. It's interesting how it addresses some of the same topics as If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers, but in quite a different manner.
I'm glad to hear you got a positive reaction to it,
Spoiler
the allusions to myths and metaphors eventually die out as the game becomes more visceral!
Yeah, I firmly believe that an allegory only works if the story (game) is functional on the "first floor of reality", then the interpretations and symbolism can come as a bonus. Also, it's kind of cool to see some of the quotes in English and hear how they sound, when I'm familiar with them only in Nordic languages.