Recent reviews by mapmarster

This game constantly gets worse every update for two reasons.

1. The Devs hate their community and try to counter their op builds, which in turn forces both new players and long time players alike to search up said op builds online instead of being encouraged to learn the game through trial and error. After all no sane person would want to waste their valuable time learning about mechanics that don't make sense / are designed to be very anti player, every... single... update.

2. They decide to add new mechanics to the game, which either are not play tested at all and instead rely entirely on community feeback / backlash, or they do not ever consider the new player experince and expect everyone to be well versed with the plethora of different mechanics that exist within this game.

TL;DR even though this game was in alpha for 10 years, the devs still miraculously managed to realse a janky and undercooked product that is desgined to screw over new players and long term players alike.

Cash grab, I'd rather go back to playing the first game.

Garbage controls and uninspiring gameplay

This game is a load of fun and is just as entertaining as Strange Horticulture.

There are just a few things that I would change for what I think would be an even better experience. Firstly the auto saves are at the start of the day as well as at the players current progress. So if you want to go back to change a decision or see a different ending, you have to re-collect everything and re-identify every artefact each time you restart the day.

Secondly you are not given much free will. From being forced to serve every customer (both good and evil), as well as being forced to give the correct artefact every single time. This leads into the third thing I dislike, you cannot lose nor are you ever punished in this game. At the worst your character starts to worry and you play a dice game to calm your character down... except you cannot lose this dice game either and if you do mess it up then it just restarts until you win. This only takes away from the tension and the atmosphere of the game as well as potentially trapping players in a bad game play loop if they misunderstand something or if they get stuck.

I personally would love to see a game as well made as Strange Antiques and Strange Horticulture, with a more punishing game play loop and the ability to refuse customers that I do not like at my own expense.

Game bugged out and was unplayable at the checkpoint towards the end of chapter 3, which forced me to restart the chapter. I had no intention of sitting through 30 mins - 1 hour of the walking sim I had just completed so I uninstalled.

Do not recommend due to game breaking bugs.

If you purchase this game here is what you can expect:

5% puzzle solving
5% deciphering poorly worded hints
90% waiting on rng to let you progress with the game

This game has an amazing story and atmosphere, but it would be far more entertaining to watch an edited play-through than to waste your time playing it like I have :)

A lot of improvements with the new update but the despawn and respawn features remain untouched and are very anti-fun. Either I will run into every enemy immediately, kill them and have no threats all level or they will fail to path towards me, despawn and then all respawn on top of me and immediately start pathing towards me at the same time. It doesn't help that when you alert one enemy, every other enemy in the map starts pathing towards you as well.

At this stage the AI and it's pathing rewards you for hunting down enemies asap instead of treating them like a real threat.

On a side note guns are still very inferior to the melee weapons. While you can easily whip out the sledge hammer and one shot most enemies, you cannot use a gun until the physics have stabilised. Also ♥♥♥♥ the large vases, they didn't need to be ruined by the physics update >:(

The demo was better.

Kinda wanna ♥♥♥♥ a ghost not gonna lie