Witchpunk
released on Nov 19, 2022
Play as a skateboarding witch who battles against a tyrannical corporation seeking to destroy Halloween. Gain speed on your skateboard and use your hammer to deliver devastating melee attacks!
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Absolutly solid proof of concept. Its a free 30 minute game with an awseome artstyle and cool mechanics. The skateboard feels great and I love the idea of doing combos while kick flipping through a spooky punk rock city. There is still polish that needs to be done on the framerate and overall options but if this would be made into a full game I would definitly give it my money.
Charming little student project, would be pretty interested to see it expanded into a full-fledged game.
Cute game, sadly the boss is bugged and i couldn't beat it.
Skater witch student game. It's short and sweet, with killer aesthetics and fun, fast movement mechanics.
Jet Set Trick-or-Treat: How the Anti-Establishment Halloween Gurrl Liberates the Means of Fun-duction via Xtreme Sports and Magic
It's a 15-to-20 minute demo of the best indie arena action-meets-skateboarding games yet to be made. That fact really doesn't mesh well with the program's filesize, a whopping ~8 GB freeware package courtesy of the DigiPen Institute. (For a student project, they've already nailed their industry's tendency towards comically unoptimized assets and downloads!) Don't be fooled or alarmed by that short runtime, however. Witchpunk comes with a simple, nifty ranking system based on how well you score against its limited waves of baddies, mini-bosses, and the big bad herself. And reaching that top rank means playing as fast, tight, and smart as one would hope for in a character action classic, now condensed into a small but expertly interwoven skate park of horrors.
The premise explains itself: a villainous girlboss has invaded your local grounds with an army of silvery Halloween battle-bots, seeking profitable victory over the festivities. It's up to our heroine to stop this uncool reign of terror, bashing the bots into junk heaps before taking on the aggressor herself. I didn't go in expecting any Trenchant Insight on class warfare, capitalism, or punk ethos and attitudes in general, but Witchpunk does a good job of embodying these themes in spirit. Your swagful attire, zesty cat familiar, and resilient set of wheels do a lot to instill confidence, as does the excellent audiovisual style found and heard all throughout. I could easily compare it to the aforementioned graffiti-spraying blockbuster from SEGA, or even something recent like Friday Night Funkin', but I think this manages to stand out on its own, even in a sea of other dalliances with cel shading and angular, colorful designs.
While I wouldn't say Witchpunk is style over substance, it can come a bit too close to that for comfort. The main issue stems from a relatively limited moveset: no button-combo tricking, advanced melee or magic options, etc. It counterbalances this with an emphasis on boosting, going faster and faster around the map to increase your damage multiplier and dodge enemy fire. This feels like a meld between precision action-platformers and the extreme sports genre, albeit a bit simplistic in areas. Controls are thankfully quite responsive and fine-tuned to make this game loop work, with tons of space to maneuver and herd squads together for juicy combos. It's always satisfying to master different racing lines and hopping between tiers of elevation, defending through evasion and attacking with just the right amount of hesitation.
A lotta love went into this undergraduate effort, but I really wish it had a level editor for us to mess with, or an outright "full" version at all. Much like Narbacular Drop oh so many years ago, this feels like an ambitious but rushed DigiPen showcase that can surely become something great, with better fleshed-out boss fights and missing essentials like gamepad controls. It's a decadent vertical slice even compared to its peers from the school, brimming with "the vibes" as some would say; I'm legit surprised there isn't a soundtrack release for this yet! We're living through a renaissance in Jet Set Radio-inspired experiences, each honing in on different strengths which that series pioneered or refined to a sheen, and I'm glad to say these guys are already mostly there.
Why this hasn't blown up on streams the way other DigiPen-borne releases like FPS Chess has is beyond me. Like, who wouldn't want to hop around, get down, bop clowns, and clean up town in an urban fantasy like this? Witchpunk answers this question quite ably, and I only wish it had more examples with which to demonstrate its proof of real skate-bonking sorcery.
It's a 15-to-20 minute demo of the best indie arena action-meets-skateboarding games yet to be made. That fact really doesn't mesh well with the program's filesize, a whopping ~8 GB freeware package courtesy of the DigiPen Institute. (For a student project, they've already nailed their industry's tendency towards comically unoptimized assets and downloads!) Don't be fooled or alarmed by that short runtime, however. Witchpunk comes with a simple, nifty ranking system based on how well you score against its limited waves of baddies, mini-bosses, and the big bad herself. And reaching that top rank means playing as fast, tight, and smart as one would hope for in a character action classic, now condensed into a small but expertly interwoven skate park of horrors.
The premise explains itself: a villainous girlboss has invaded your local grounds with an army of silvery Halloween battle-bots, seeking profitable victory over the festivities. It's up to our heroine to stop this uncool reign of terror, bashing the bots into junk heaps before taking on the aggressor herself. I didn't go in expecting any Trenchant Insight on class warfare, capitalism, or punk ethos and attitudes in general, but Witchpunk does a good job of embodying these themes in spirit. Your swagful attire, zesty cat familiar, and resilient set of wheels do a lot to instill confidence, as does the excellent audiovisual style found and heard all throughout. I could easily compare it to the aforementioned graffiti-spraying blockbuster from SEGA, or even something recent like Friday Night Funkin', but I think this manages to stand out on its own, even in a sea of other dalliances with cel shading and angular, colorful designs.
While I wouldn't say Witchpunk is style over substance, it can come a bit too close to that for comfort. The main issue stems from a relatively limited moveset: no button-combo tricking, advanced melee or magic options, etc. It counterbalances this with an emphasis on boosting, going faster and faster around the map to increase your damage multiplier and dodge enemy fire. This feels like a meld between precision action-platformers and the extreme sports genre, albeit a bit simplistic in areas. Controls are thankfully quite responsive and fine-tuned to make this game loop work, with tons of space to maneuver and herd squads together for juicy combos. It's always satisfying to master different racing lines and hopping between tiers of elevation, defending through evasion and attacking with just the right amount of hesitation.
A lotta love went into this undergraduate effort, but I really wish it had a level editor for us to mess with, or an outright "full" version at all. Much like Narbacular Drop oh so many years ago, this feels like an ambitious but rushed DigiPen showcase that can surely become something great, with better fleshed-out boss fights and missing essentials like gamepad controls. It's a decadent vertical slice even compared to its peers from the school, brimming with "the vibes" as some would say; I'm legit surprised there isn't a soundtrack release for this yet! We're living through a renaissance in Jet Set Radio-inspired experiences, each honing in on different strengths which that series pioneered or refined to a sheen, and I'm glad to say these guys are already mostly there.
Why this hasn't blown up on streams the way other DigiPen-borne releases like FPS Chess has is beyond me. Like, who wouldn't want to hop around, get down, bop clowns, and clean up town in an urban fantasy like this? Witchpunk answers this question quite ably, and I only wish it had more examples with which to demonstrate its proof of real skate-bonking sorcery.
Speedy witch perfection in a nice art style!