Strangeland - Psychological Horror Adventure Game

Started by Dualnames, Tue 25/05/2021 14:13:29

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Dualnames


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!








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:




Various Links:





Screenshots:


Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

eri0o

Just received the email!



Congratulations on the incredible release!

Potajito

Congrats on the release! Sooo looking forward to play this!


arj0n


Snarky


Dualnames

Thank you guys, can't hear what you all think <3
Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

Hobo

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!


Dualnames

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.
Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

Hobo

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?

Dualnames

Yes those are saved default by ags and serve no real purpose :)
Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

kconan

  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.

Dualnames

Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

Hobbes

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.

Dualnames

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.
Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

newwaveburritos

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.

arj0n


Dualnames

Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

Kweepa

Congratulations on the release. Looks beautiful!
And interesting writeup! Nice work!
Still waiting for Purity of the Surf II

Dualnames

Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

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