Strange Horticulture and Strange Antiquities

Published Sept. 20th, 2025

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The short and sweet of my thoughts: Strange Horticulture/Antiquities is a game I would recommend for people who like to play analytic games like Papers, Please. Both games require observant eyes, but also offer the full time and space for you to mull over your decisions. You don't need to play both games to understand what's going on, however playing Horticulture first will lend for some fun callbacks to recognize in Antiquities. They also have a cozy gothic vibe about them, but this detail is more like the icing on the cake, and it doesn't "make" the game for me. I'm not too crazy about the stories from either game but I kinda like one of the stories more (more on that later!)

For the bulk of this article, I'm actually going to be talking comparing Antiquities and Horticulture instead of both of them in equal measure. Even though their gameplay is fundamentally the same, I feel like Horticulture is much less complex than Antiquities. Isn't a bad thing in my eyes but I have to mention it. Anyways!

(Also for ease of writing I will refer to Strange Horticulture as SHo and Strange Antiquities as SAn from now on)

(This article will also probably have poorly marked spoilers for the mechanics for both games as well as plot, sorry!!)

Inspection Mechanics

The way in which you inspect objects in SAn is more in-depth than SHo. In SHo, you simply inspect a plant using right click and all the things you really need to know about the plant are in a little text box, alongside being able to look at the plant itself. In SAn on the other hand, all the information about an object is split into four categories: material, texture, smell and sound, and "inner perception". You can also move your cursor over different parts of the object to learn specific things about it (like what material a specific portion of the object is made of, or the different textures). Last thing of note is that you can interact with the object (for example, if the object has a hidden compartment, you can click to open it).

There are also other ways to inspect objects that don't involve the inspection menu. The game gives you a scale with some weights which are used to verify objects that need to be a certain weight (this is getting into specific spoilers for some objects...) as well as a "Thaumic lens", which allows you to see the kinds of energy/magic each object emits. Hell, there's even an object which identifies some objects by pointing to them like a compass. You can also use bits of the environment to aid in identification. I used to think the candles in the shop were purely decorative!

Lastly, there are the documents, other texts alongside your Big List of Plants/Artifacts that can be used to identify what you need. If I remember correctly, SHo only had the fungi book, which was less about identifying the fungi and more about what plants you needed in response to them. Meanwhile in SAn, there are 3 whole other books which aid in identification, relating to symbology (meanings of symbols on objects), gemstones (meaning of gems on objects), and curses (what objects to use in response to some curses), respectively. Did I mention the index as well? Because there are multiple instances of object descriptions referencing or needing pictures from other pages in order to correctly identify them.

As a result of this, SAn ends up feeling much more involved -- like I REALLY feel like a Thaumaturge sifting through my shop's wares with my grubby little fingers all over the antiquities. But with so much to keep track of, that also means there's more things to get wrong, which brings me to...

Game Difficulties

In my experience, SAn felt more difficult to play than SHo in that I was more likely to get object identifications wrong. For the most part I felt like all the hard-to-identify objects were fair in terms of the details that should have lead you to name them correctly, but there are some which I remain a bit butt-hurt about.... (Looking at you, Witch's Finger)

Both games offer a hint system, HOWEVER both also have achievements for not using hints. Kind of a bummer but may be easier if you've played both games at least once and memorize the difficult plants/items.

The game overall also might be easier if you actually write down (in real life) some things, namely the symbols in the symbology book, the meanings of gems, and the different Thaumic field patterns. Being able to directly cross reference what's on an item with IRL notes instead of constantly flipping back and forth probably would have saved me from making a few mistakes.

Plot (Spoilers ahead!!)

To be real with you, I don't know if I'd play either of these games just for the plot. That being said, I like SAn more because of the scale of the conflict. In SHo, you're able to explore not just the city of Undermere, but all the surrounding areas, including, if I remember correctly, a few other towns, castles, and even mountains. In SAn, you're mostly limited to exploring just the city, a castle which, if I did my math correctly, is 12 miles from town, and some catacombs which I actually don't remember the geographic location of.

By being able to explore such a wide swath of land in SHo, it made the "antagonist" of the story feel more global, and the solutions I as a player seem less impactful. It's not like they WEREN'T impactful but a part of me was like... damn, what are my fuckass plants going to do about this scary skeleton monster that straight up kills people... (Some suspension of disbelief is to be had since the plants have very unusual properties, but still...) Meanwhile, the conflict in SAn felt more grounded. You do have brush ins with so called "nameless gods", but they don't pose a direct threat and you often have to be more worried about your fellow townsfolk going crazy (for different reasons).

I will also note that I've only played through each game once. Each game has multiple endings, however I personally find these games hard to replay. The gameplay is very involved, so unless you've memorized every plant/object or have a guide pulled up, playing through the game again can be just as slow as your first play through. Plus, even after you've played through the games once you may get tired of staring at the plants and antiquities.

General Aesthetics

SAn is generally a step-up from SHo in both its UI and the rendering of the art itself. Like I mentioned before, SAn has the sense of being a physical space, where SHo is more about prioritizing it's UI. When it comes to the viewing of your object collection, the viewing portion in SHo takes up less than half the screen, meanwhile the collection in SAn can take up the majority/whole screen depending on what area of the shop you're looking at. Because of this, SAn felt more comfortable for me to play/look at since I wasn't trying to squint to find the thing I wanted. (I know you can just mouse over the plant to enlarge the tag, however being able to recognize the names from afar would have been nice for not parsing each individual plant.)

The added textures for the objects was very nice, though I think making the objects more detailed was a necessity given this game's emphasis on textures and materials. Still might be nice to see some SHo plants be rendered in the SAn style though...