Detective adventure Strange Antiquities makes me want to be an apprentice thaumaturge, right after I look up what thaumaturge means

As we wind down this year in games, what are you looking forward to most in 2025? Becoming an adventurer in Avowed? A crook in GTA 6? A Norman Reedus in Death Stranding 2? A… civilization, I guess, in Civilization 7?

Me, I want to be a shop owner. Helping customers, petting my cat, and, oh yeah, using detective work to solve a string of baffling mysteries revolving around bizarre occult antiquities. The sequel to 2022's excellent detective game Strange Horticulture is called Strange Antiquities, and developer Bad Viking just gave us our first look at the type of sleuthing you can do in a new gameplay trailer:

Once again you've got a map on your desk, though instead of displaying the countryside it's now showing the sprawling city of Undermere, where your shop was located in the first game. A customer enters with a request, but this time they're not looking for plants but arcane artifacts and relics. Time to grab your magnifying glass and get to work unraveling your first mystery.

Whereas the investigations in Strange Horticulture came from peering closely at plants and matching their attributes with descriptions in your book, there's a lot more to it in Strange Antiquities. Here's a few of the methods you can use to puzzle out the attributes of the objects you collect:

• Weighing them on a scale
• Comparing them to written notes
• Examining their color and composition
• Touching them to gauge their texture or warmth
• Detecting their scent
• Listening for any sounds they make

And of course you can also simply gauge each item's vibe, or as the developers put it in the trailer, "Does it induce a feeling of rising dread that causes you to question your sense of self and drives you to the edge of sanity?" Which is weird, because that's how I felt that one time I picked up a Funko Pop Ted Lasso while waiting in line to pay for socks in a Target. Maybe I'm already a thaumaturge!

Instead of a single book to page through on your search for clues, there are several: an encyclopedia of artifacts, a tome on "hermetic symbology," and a guide to "Gemstones and their Thaumic Properties." Once again you'll meet a colorful cast of characters as they enter your shop in search of help and, no doubt, occasionally with ulterior motives. And as in the original game, your own shop is full of secrets and puzzles you'll need to solve between patrons.

There's a bit more in the trailer that is tantalizingly unexplained, like a dice-rolling system and a rune-covered board, but I don't really want to know any more before I play. The original game was such a delightful experience that I don't want a single mystery spoiled in the new one. Strange Antiquities doesn't have a release date yet, or even a release window, but I'll keep my fingers crossed it won't be too long of a wait.