Witchcrafty [Xbox/Switch]
Developed by PigeonDev, Witchcrafty follows the story of a strange phenomena blighting the land. Previously peaceful mushrooms have turned aggressive, and the residents of the world, from the forests to the caves and beyond; are all at war with each other. You’ll need to set off across each of the biomes to get to the bottom of what is causing all of these problems, and restore peace at last.
Your main form of combat is through using your wand as a melee weapon, though you’ll soon gain access to magic attacks such as Fireballs, with this having a limited number of uses before having to be replenished at fountains, though defeating enemies will also help with this. Later, you’ll gain new magic powers, including lightning bolts and ice magic, and as you progress, new blockades and treasure chest types can be found, requiring the use of these different magical elements to unlock. There were one or two places where using the wrong type of magic (and then running out of mana) would then leave you trapped, requiring you to restart to get back out of this, which was a pain. You can collect Witch Soul shards, with four allowing you increase your magic power, and Forest Heart Shards, with four of these increasing your health; though these are all gained pretty quickly, leaving basically nothing in the way of upgrades going forward - some of these shards are found in the world via treasure chests, and others can be found in the shop.
The shop is located within each level, however, this mechanic is quickly wasted due to the abundance of gems leading to all items being bought by the time you meet the third shopkeeper. The four pedestals in front of the shop hold two of each shard type - but once these have been purchased, nothing returns, which just seems pointless. Having the shops restock, even if with lower-value items such as health potions, would have made things a whole lot better - especially since your low amount of health (even once fully upgraded) can easily be wiped out by certain enemies in a couple of hits, and health is pretty scarce.
The pixel art is fantastic, definitely the best we’ve seen from PigeonDev so far, with lots of cute, pastel colours and adorably designed characters and environments, though this sadly makes the game seem far more inviting than it is. A CRT option can be accessed within the Settings menu, to give everything a more retro vibe, which is always a fun little bonus, so I can appreciate that. There are a variety of enemies spread throughout different regions of the world, from angry mushrooms, to goblins, wizards and more - and these all fit within the overall look of each biome. The soundtrack, by RyanAvx, is enjoyable, with a variety of surprisingly decent tracks as you move through the world - all with a very retro feel to them.
The enemies you fight are mostly simple to deal with, though their movements sometimes will catch you off guard - wiping out a shocking amount of health in the process. You will no doubt die a lot - I certainly did - to random, seemingly avoidable enemy attacks, that just for whatever reason, connect. This, coupled with the severe lack of health, and the fairly infrequent flowers dotted around (that give back one heart), will result in lots of deaths, and therefore lots of repeating long sections of the same bit of gameplay, since you’ll get zapped back to the last save point. Some boss battles take a little bit of figuring out, causing extra deaths (just in case you haven’t had enough yet) , like dodging Igor the Guardian’s bats - actually pretty simple once you know what you’ve to do, but infuriating when you just think it’s impossible to squeeze in between them. The game does have a tendency to totally change up the whole routine at times, regardless of which boss you’re facing, which can be an absolute pain once you think you’ve finally sussed out a specific attack pattern.
Within the world you will come across gigantic books written by a mysterious Sir J. Vanderwalt, detailing his exploration of the world - as well as things he has discovered, which later comes into play as you piece the story together. These seem to just provide a little bit of backstory to the world, but as with the dialogue given elsewhere in the game, it seems to be overly convoluted and doesn’t really provide any enjoyable insight. Truthfully speaking, it’s just not very well written game at all in terms of story, and there are a lot of seemingly poorly translated parts, which just adds to this. You gain access to a fast travel mechanic via broomstick, but only from specific points in the map where the Flymasters reside (once you’ve already visited them). This allows you to backtrack for previously missed treasure chests - particularly ones that you’ll need your newly-gained powers to unlock. This again seems slightly wasted, as you will literally only need to use it a couple of times for this, it doesn’t really lead to further exploration or new areas. Weirdly, a bug affected the achievement for meeting the Flymaster for the first time, so a second (partial) playthrough was required in order to trigger this.
Unfortunately, there are a significant amount of bugs that make things super frustrating. Like, so frustrating that you’ll give up playing for a while out of anger. When you finally return you’ll realise that there are no options/control menus to speak of, so it’ll take you a bit to readjust to the control scheme relying on trial and error - only to inevitably run into the same bugs all over again, speaking from experience here. Everything from character animations freezing at times, causing you to slide around the screen (and preventing you from jumping) until you take damage, to awkward direction changes mid-attack leaving you vulnerable, and attacks not working when they should; all of these just take their toll, draining you more and more. This seemed to be the same across all versions played, though they happen randomly (and often), so you can never fully prepare.
Overall, Witchcrafty is a game that started out well, but fell down in a lot of areas. The long, drawn out dialogue segments ruined much of the flow of the story, and the sheer volume and frequency of bugs left a sour taste to an otherwise sweet premise. Priced at £8.99 on the Switch eShop, £8.39 on Xbox One and Xbox Series X (yes, there are two versions) - Witchcrafty is just sadly not worth it in my eyes, not at full price anyway. A free trial is available on Xbox if you want to give it a go without sacrificing any cash, so I’d recommend doing this first if you’re interested; but definitely wait for a sale if you’re looking to part with your hard-earned money.
In the end, we decided to give Witchcrafty the Collecting Asylum rating of 4/10.
Are you interested in Witchcrafty? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to PigeonDev for the Witchcrafty Xbox and Nintendo Switch review codes!
