Developer Interview: Strange Antiquities

We are Rob and John Donkin, two brothers who have been making games together for over 15 years under the name Bad Viking. We enjoy a wide variety of genres in the games that we play, so we've covered a lot of different genres in the games that we've made as well! One of our more successful earlier titles is a multiplayer artillery game called Bad Eggs Online, but we also love puzzle games and have learned a lot from making (mostly quite silly!) point-and-click games and level-based puzzle [titles over the years]. Strange Horticulture, and subsequently Strange Antiquities, drew on a lot of that experience as well as the experiences of playing and enjoying games like Myst, Riven, Discworld, and many others.

We felt we'd explored the horticulture theme as much as we could in the first game, so we wanted to try something different for the sequel. Antiquities was an idea we'd been toying with for a while, and the concept of dark artefacts felt like it had a lot of potential. We did explore other directions — like a bookshop or even a collection of cryptid creatures — but the antiquities theme held the most appeal to us. If Strange Horticulture was Professor Sprout's Herbology class, then Strange Antiquities is definitely more Borgin and Burkes.

We immersed ourselves in research — diving into books on amulets, symbols, folklore, and all things arcane. One particularly inspiring trip was to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which is packed with fascinating artefacts from around the world and gave us plenty of ideas. We even used some as visual inspiration for our own items.

One of the more interesting real-world antiquities we came across was the "Hand of Glory" — a trophy cut from the body of a hanged man and turned into a macabre candle. It is said to keep people under its spell in a deep sleep (while you burgle their house, of course!). And then there's the Tempest Prognosticator, which is a storm-predicting device that makes use of a series of leeches in jars! Both of these objects can be found in the Whitby Museum in the UK.

Absolutely! We learned a lot from Strange Horticulture — particularly what players enjoyed (and what they didn't). With Strange Antiquities, we've aimed to give them more of what they loved: more books, more maps, more secrets, more puzzles, and greater variety overall, whilst keeping that dark and cosy atmosphere that really resonated with people. One of the biggest takeaways was that the format of the game worked really well. While we did explore some wilder ideas during early development, we ended up keeping the core gameplay that made the first game special, but expanded and deepened in all the right places.

One of our mantras as we develop any game is "surprise the player". That doesn't have to mean grand surprises or twists; it just means that we try to keep it varied and fresh, gradually layering in new tools and ideas. Like many games, we introduce concepts in more straightforward puzzles and gradually add complexity as the game progresses. Some of the later puzzles in Strange Antiquities are on the trickier side, but by then, players are more tuned into our way of thinking. It has taken a lot of fine-tuning and playtesting to get it to this point, but we feel like we've reached a good place on the balancing front!

The biggest one, that will be music to people's ears (literally), is that we've hired an excellent composer, Ben Young, to score the game. In Strange Horticulture, one of the more frequent complaints we received was that the main theme gets repetitive and boring, which is fair enough because there is only one track playing on loop for most of the game! We're really happy with the music Ben has produced for us for Strange Antiquities and can't wait for you to experience it for yourselves. It's such a lovely atmosphere sitting in your shop as the rain beats down outside — I often find myself leaving the soundtrack running while I'm working on other things.

Without a doubt, the biggest hurdle was designing over 80 unique items and ensuring that the process of identifying them stayed engaging throughout. We underestimated how much more complex that would be compared to working with plants. Plants share common features, so creating satisfying puzzles around comparing and identifying them was relatively straightforward. Items, on the other hand, are considerably more varied, which meant we couldn't rely on the same approach. At times, it felt like a real headache trying to figure out how to structure those puzzles and how to weave in an increasingly intricate web of clues and red herrings. In hindsight, that challenge pushed us to come up with some of our strongest ideas, which have in turn helped Strange Antiquities carve out its own identity.

Creating a sequel to an acclaimed game is definitely daunting at times, especially when trying to live up to the success of the first title. But one major advantage is we now have an audience eager for more, which gives us the confidence to go 'all in' with fewer risks than we had with Strange Horticulture. We've poured a lot of love and energy into this game — there are lots of fun little references to the first game and lots more stuff to play around with in general.

Of course, every new project carries its own risks, and we don't take our audience for granted, but having the success of the first game behind us has allowed us to be more ambitious with this one. We've spent more time developing the sequel than we did on Strange Horticulture, even though they share a great deal in common — something that's only been possible because of its success.

As we mentioned earlier, the biggest surprise was how much more challenging it was to design identification puzzles for items compared to plants. Beyond that, though, the new theme felt like a natural evolution — it gave us a rich platform for new ideas and slotted seamlessly into the overall tone and atmosphere of Undermere. It opened up a lot of creative possibilities, even if it was a challenge at times.

Without giving too much away, we drew inspiration from a range of sources. There are elements of Greek mythology, along with nods to various fantasy and sci-fi stories, as well as a general Lovecraftian influence throughout. We had a lot of fun taking the story in different and unexpected directions based on the choices you can make in the game.

We were definitely inspired by games like Papers, Please and Coffee Talk, where the format of having a visitor as a self-contained puzzle makes for a very satisfying gameplay loop. But beyond that, we took a lot of inspiration from board games like Eldritch Horror and Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. We wanted to capture that tactile, immersive quality you get from playing a physical board game, so we worked hard to integrate our UI directly into the game. For example, instead of having the map accessible from a menu, we have a physical map that you can pull out of a drawer, place on your desk, and pore over with a magnifying glass.

Haha, probably most of them! A lot of them are really quite dangerous or have some significant downsides. I'd certainly steer well clear of a Spirit Eye or a Blood-Beck!

I think we spent more time and effort naming Jupiter than any other character! We focused on inspiration from Celtic deities for a while, such as Morrigan, Taranis, or Flidais, but none of those felt quite right. We also looked at various elements from the game itself for inspiration. Malachite, Raven, and Selena were all in the mix at one point, but we kept coming back to Jupiter. We liked that it's also a nod to The Alchymist's Cat from Robin Jarvis' Deptford Mice series, which we were both fans of when we were younger.