Double, double, toil and trouble - the Halloween season is upon us, and what better time is there to dive into Strange Antiquities and find out what inspired it, where it might go, and if the cat is based on a real one. We look into the minds behind the series, talking to Rob and John Donkin. They're the brothers who make up Bad Viking, the studio creating both games.
The Strange games start with 2022's Strange Horticulture, and now 2025's Strange Antiquities. You're left in charge of a store of the same name, where you must process customers' requests and provide them with the totems they desire. What they do with them isn't your business, but there is an underlying story to uncover. The mystery surrounding the game left us wanting to know more, so without further ado, here's our interview with the Bad Viking duo!
Pocket Tactics: To begin, is Undermere based on Windermere? It's a town in the Lake District, in England's northwest, which matches up to Undermere's location when looking at real-life maps.
Bad Viking: Yes, Undermere is very much based on and inspired by Windermere and the Lake District in England. It's essentially an alternate-history, Victorian-era version of the Lakes, where things are just a little bit… well… strange.
What inspired this? Why the Lake District instead of similar places in, say, Scotland or Wales, and what about Windermere specifically?
Both of us spent a lot of time in the Lakes as kids - climbing fells, exploring the woods, and swimming in the tarns. It's such a magical place: beautiful, green, lush, and vibrant, but with a kind of brooding atmosphere too (well, it does rain a lot!). It felt like the perfect backdrop for our game, a place where it's easy to imagine folklore and the supernatural slipping into everyday life. Undermere is really our way of capturing the romance of the Lake District and then layering in something stranger and more unsettling.
As the largest town, Windermere was the obvious place to situate our shop, but we wanted it to exist in a fictional mirror of the real world. Thus, it became Undermere - mainly because we loved the name, which has an uncanny, mysterious quality to it. In Strange Horticulture, we even kept the real place names across the wider map to give players a sense of place as they head up the fells or into nearby towns looking for unusual plants. Strange Antiquities builds directly on the setting but narrows the focus to Undermere itself.
Both Strange Horticulture and Antiquities are spooky, dark, puzzle games with occult themes sprinkled in. I wondered, where did the dark vibe come from initially?
The spooky vibe was there from the start. Our concept was always an "occult" shop, so the darkness is inherent. Part of the magic for us comes from juxtaposing the coziness of running a candlelit shop against the unease of something unsettling happening beyond its walls. It's part of the reason why this blend of 'dark and cozy' works so well - it's fun to see it being talked about as its own subgenre.
Were there any specific inspirations for the Strange series?
As for inspiration, it comes from all over. Board games influenced the tactile, hands-on feel of the interface. Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, for example, influenced the map mechanic, whereas Eldritch Horror influenced the dark mood. 'Papers, Please' showed us how effective a single-screen setup can be, distilling things down to the basics and keeping the scope manageable. As kids, we loved the Usborne Puzzle Adventure books, packed full of delightful puzzles. And then there's the TV we loved growing up - things like 'The X-Files', with its mix of monster-of-the-week stories and the bigger mystery running in the background. All of that, and more, feeds into the tone of the Strange series.
The Strange series, as mentioned, starts off with Horticulture. Here, you run the plant store in Undermere, giving out greenery with certain properties to the people. What led to the plant focus of Strange Horticulture?
That initial idea for Strange Horticulture came from the most mundane of places - a bus stop advert! Rob spotted the word "horticulture" one day while out walking the dog, and the idea just clicked for both of us: Strange Horticulture, an occult plant shop. And everything flowed from there.
The theme felt natural. It stems from the idea that in the days before modern science, much of the world was not fully understood, and plants were seen as mysterious and magical, used in early forms of medicine and rituals. We found a certain romance in the idea that in an unexplored world, anything is possible; so we took this idea and pushed it further. On the gameplay side, plants were fascinating because they're tricky to identify. They're similar enough to be confusing, but distinct enough to reward close observation. That quality lent itself nicely to the kind of detective puzzle design we wanted to explore.
Then, what inspired the use of antiques and branching into thaumaturgy in the sequel?
When we started thinking about a sequel, we had two options: stick with plants or pivot to something new. We briefly considered DLC for Strange Horticulture, but we felt we'd already explored most of the interesting plant-based ideas. The more we talked, the more we realised we wanted to expand the world with a brand-new shop.
Antiquities quickly rose to the top of a pretty short list - it fit perfectly with the occult, tactile vibe of our first game. And moving into the world of antiquities opened up so many new puzzle possibilities. Artefacts with greater detail, combined with more books and reference materials, as well as new tools for inspecting items, meant we could create puzzles that felt more varied and surprising than ever. It was the natural next step.
While designing the game, how did you come up with the items? There's a wide range of objects that made the cut, from pendants to effigies and pieces of stone. What was the process of choosing the types, meanings, and designs, and are any of the pieces based on real things you've seen?
To begin with, we immersed ourselves in research - diving into books on amulets, symbols, folklore, and all things arcane. An inspiring visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford gave us plenty of ideas. The museum is crammed full of fascinating artefacts from around the world, loosely curated in glass cabinets with authentic handwritten labels. And indeed, some of these even served as visual references for our own items. Others came out of our imagination, starting with the kinds of objects you'd expect to find in a curious old shop or stumble across in a dusty museum, and then asking what makes them strange?
Often, the design of the items grew out of the puzzles themselves. If we needed something to make use of a particular symbol or gemstone, we'd design the object around that, while thinking about what it might be used for and what it might be made out of. Then came a lot of iteration - adding details, similar features, red herrings for other puzzles, while making sure each item is both visually interesting and has a gameplay purpose. Between the art, the written book descriptions, and the way each one is then woven into the story, every item is carefully thought out. It's a painstaking process and a lot harder than it sounds.
Strange Antiquities opens up Undermere's map a bit, allowing you to explore different places like a stately manor and catacombs. Was this a natural progression, or was it based on feedback about Horticulture?
One of the things people loved about Strange Horticulture was exploring the map, so we knew we wanted to expand on that. But we also wanted to add variety. Each illustrated map in Strange Antiquities has a different style, a different feel, and each one supports different types of puzzles.
So when you visit the castle, or descend into the catacombs, it's not just about expanding the lore of Undermere - it's also about surprising the player and adding to the gameplay in new and exciting ways.
Do you own any (potentially) cursed antiques yourself? Or plants, perhaps.
I can't say we do personally - at least not that we know of. Our parents, though, have a house packed with odd stuff: scary masks, old wooden scales, a gold-painted wooden cat, a large selection of bronze mortars and pestles, and even a heavy old leather desk with ornate gold trimmings. You can see where we take our inspiration from! None of them are cursed (we hope) - although there is one tribal mask that terrifies the kids - even gives us the heebee-jeebies!
As for plants, working on Strange Horticulture definitely rubbed off on us. We both got more into houseplants afterward. Rob even has a terrarium now.
The cat, Jupiter, that sits on the counter in the shop is a very welcome guest, and breaks up the spooky atmosphere a bit between customer requests. Is Jupiter based on a real cat?
Jupiter is sort of an amalgamation of many cats we've known. Two in particular stand out: a tabby cat Rob met in Italy, stretched across the counter of a little leather shop, and one John spotted in the window of an antiques shop in Oxford. He was perched regally in the centre of this big fancy ceramic bowl, calmly watching the world go by, occasionally licking his paws, as if he owned the place.
As for the name, that's a nod to Robin Jarvis's Deptford Mice books, which we adored growing up. In them, the rats in the sewer revere the Alchymist's Cat, Jupiter, as a living god. It felt like the ideal name for our own watchful shop cat, and we gave him heterochromia to make him feel more unique and special.
Now that we're all licensed thaumaturges with our successful shops, where does the Strange series go next? Perhaps there are plans for some DLC or another entry in the future?
Right now, we're not ready to say. Making these games is incredibly hard. They're dense with puzzles and layers, and it takes a lot to put it all together. So a little break is needed (though we still have plenty to do with Strange Antiquities' Mac version and other consoles).
That said, the appetite is clearly there. The biggest thread on our Steam forum is "What should the third game be?" So we know players want more. Whether that's DLC, a third entry, or something entirely new, we'll need to take stock and figure out where we want to go next. But Undermere has a way of pulling us back in…
I, for one, would welcome another entry, be it focused on books, crystals, or even clothing. Hopefully, you enjoyed our foray into the backstory of Strange Antiqtuies. If you haven't delved into the puzzle game yet, we highly recommend you do, and its predecessor. You can also read our Strange Antiquities review for a deeper look at what to expect.