Witchfinders

Witchfinders is a short twine game that is, as you may have guessed, about people who find witches. The twist is, you’re not a witchfinder – you’re a witch, and the absolute last thing you want to do is get caught. The game focuses on one day in your life, where you try to use your supernatural powers for good while avoiding the watchful eye of the Inquisition.

What I Liked

First of all, this game has great cover art (which is why I’m playing it so early)! The author is also credited with drawing the cover, so hats off to them for that – they’re clearly very talented in multiple areas.

Moving on to the game, I was impressed at the amount of puzzles and pizazz Witchfinders packs into its short runtime. The puzzles are all of the get-x-ingredient-to-solve-y-problem variety, but they each have a unique and engaging framework around them that keeps them fresh. There’s even a few tasks you can do seemingly just for the hell of it (why yes, I do like raspberry tea!) I felt the world of Witchfinders was well fleshed out, and nicely balanced hope and kindness against the inherent darkness of the premise.

What I Didn’t

Balancing difficulty in social puzzles is a tricky thing, and unfortunately the puzzles in this game fall on the side of “too easy”. In each case there’s obviously-right and obviously-wrong ways to tackle each problem, so you have to go out of your way to be obvious if you want to lose. I would have liked to see some more shades of grey in the puzzle design, with third options that would attract attention at the cost of doing good.

Other Thoughts

The game uses random descriptions well to keep things fresh. I liked checking the poster and reading the spellbook each run-through to see what ridiculousness would show up next.