Witch's Heart

released on Dec 25, 2017

While playing up in the mountains, Claire Elford finds herself taking shelter from the rain in a mansion. Soon, she finds four other people, some bizarre monsters - and no way back out. In the company of demons, the five must figure out how to escape... and solve the mystery of the legendary wish-granting treasure, the Witch's Heart.


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In the opening, a young woman named Claire runs into an old mansion to escape from the rain, oblivious to the intense and terrible journey that was to await her. Much akin, my lack of reading comprehension on vgperson's website made me wander into this game, just wanting another cool and cozy RPG Maker experience, unprepared to lose my mind at the journey ahead. What presents itself as a pulpy horror anthology, and very often is one, turned out to be the root of one person's ongoing mega project that's left me incredibly enticed.

An interesting realization came upon me while playing Witch's Heart: one that probably should have been obvious much sooner, but feels particularly pronounced here. RPG Maker has been utilized by a lot of professional illustrators who wish to display their creative visions in game form: Miwashiba, Omocat, Deep Sea Prisoner, Segawa (I think), Nemlei, IZ (the creator of this game). It makes sense why, it's a relatively easy to get into series of engines that does a lot of the lower-level work for you. Oftentimes this leads to a lot of the fidelity of the games being showcased through illustrated stills, playing to the creators' strengths, and it's something I really love. It makes connecting with the characters in these games so much easier when provided such a vivid visual showcase of them. Witch's Heart is no exception, with a frankly absurd number of CGs throughout each cutscene that add so much to the experience.

When initially faced with the chapter selection, I was under the impression each would lead to an ending of ambiguous canonicity, like much of its RPG Maker ilk. I was kind of right, but you end up playing each storyline in order, with each one rearranging similar set pieces to tell a new storyline that builds off the ones that come before. This framing ends is used really well to shine a spotlight on each of the characters. My early favorite was Ashe, the silliest zoomiest Poochy-bait-est character ever, but despite not being present much until the end, Noel grew on me a ton as well. The story framing also ended up playing into the story itself, culminating in a moment that made a bit emotional towards the end (which isn’t an easy thing to do)!

While most of the story is communicated in effectively a visual novel format, thrown in are adventure segments comparable to moon, where you wander the mansion helping out the monstrous inhabitants. The connective tissue between these two different modes is almost non-existent. You’re just told “okay go help the monsters” for no real reason, not even in the macro sense of why you’re helping them out in the first place. Claire is just that nice, I guess. The total non-sequiturity throws a wrench into the pacing at times, especially when the adventure segments are slammed right before a big story moment. Then you have to figure out how to continue the story and, damn, sometimes you’re just forced to check every room to continue. Thankfully, the mansion itself is fairly small, but it ends up as a consistency annoyance regardless.

In spite of the pacing issues, however, the adventure segments themselves are a cozy time. Much like how the story overlays upon itself with each route, colorful “fantasy zones”, stretching beyond the walls of the mansion, reveal themselves. Each one id full of its own nooks and crannies to explore and often portals deeper into completely different worlds. Venturing through each neon-illuminated landscape can feel almost like a tiny version of Yume Nikki. You even get new tools across each route to interact with these worlds in new ways.

Some areas even include something that could be considered combat!…? In a very bold decision, the game tries to approximate Zelda 1-esque combat under the limitations of the RPG Maker 2003 engine, and it goes about as well as you’d expect. Every time you press the attack button, it pauses to check for an interaction, making it all feel so start-and-stop. It sucks. I can appreciate the attempt to do something different, but it sucks. Graciously, you don’t have to engage with the combat much at all, but it leaves me wondering why bother having it in the first place. It never feels like the game benefits from the combat in a thematic sense, and it finds plenty of non-combat ways to up the tension.

All these issues, as easy they are to gripe about, slip away with just how engrossing the story is. Finishing the third storyline right before having to leave for work left me with such an itch, desperately wanting to know how the book closes on these characters. And well, I still don’t know! Upon completing the fourth route, I discovered this is but Act I of the full Witch’s Heart story and that’s… exciting! I’m all for getting more time with this cast, to see how this story can be layered upon further. Only 2 of the remaining 5 routes have been released in the six years since the original release, but I’m ready to the process. This is now my Deltarune.

i love this game with all m,y heart ndjsfbsjgvd

this game does not have combat. possibly 4chan game

Não joguei muito, mas amei :0... só que o jogo não está cooperando muito fkkdkd :0...