It’s not every day that you pick up a controller to try out a new game and discover that the main character is… old. An elderly lady, to be precise, but this senior citizen is not to be underestimated. She’s the old witch in the woods that your parents—and Grimm fairy tales—warned you about!
It was the artwork that drew us into Wytchwood to begin with, and it really is an aesthetic treat. It looks like an illustrated storybook, evoking that sense of fairy tale wonder, despite the fact that as the story gets underway, it’s fairly dark.
The PAX demo began with the witch being woken up by a petulant goat, whereby you help her gather some basic items and head outside to find your other goat… which also happens to be possessed. Yikes. That goat gives you a job to do: clear the ancient altar in the woods and offer up a sacrifice containing specific ingredients.
This starts the exploration part of the game, and shortly after heading into the woods, it became clear that crafting is just as important as anything else. You’ll need to gather resources and get particular items in order to create traps and tools that will help you then obtain other items. It’s a process, there isn’t just one simple way to grab what you need and move along.
For example, in order to get Dog’s Fur, one of the ingredients required by the demonic goat, the witch needed to find the components to build a snare, then trap a critter, then harvest its flesh and combine it with some mushrooms (which also must be tracked down). The mushroomy meat then becomes “soporific meat” which can be tossed to a nearby canine, who chows down and passes out. Use your shears to cut some fur, and voila! Ingredient one obtained!
We needed a bit of assistance from the booth team to figure some of this out, but once we realized what the game wanted us to do, it made sense. The progression is tricky but not illogical, and the more you play, the more these connections will come to you based on the items you have an need (we suspect, anyway).
On the whole, Wytchwood controls well, looks great, and has excellent voice acting and a compelling story. Although it has been in development for some time, it’s almost complete and currently set for a release sometime later this year. Here’s hoping the rest of the game shapes up once it lands.
