Go to the game's main page
Review
Remedial Witchcraft is a tight game: in a genre full of excess, it does a good job at keeping witchcraft manageable. There’s only a few spells and a handful of locations, and for the most part the puzzles are fun and well-hinted.
There’s some good atmosphere going on here too – the world building is (thankfully) light on exposition, and the writing is clear, if a little laconic.
(Spoiler - click to show)
If there’s one thing about RW I would ask for, it’s just more. The cauldron interaction is so well fleshed out for using it only once, and the rock/wand mechanic has a lot of untapped potential (I was hoping to throw it through the witch’s bedroom window, alas).
I also had a number of small bugs playing through my downloaded version – the teapot description mentioned it being captured even after I freed it, the teleportation circle in the room didn’t work, and I had to resort to the walkthrough to get the word ‘dispul’, which never triggered for me.
Looking at the updates afterwards, however, it seems as though these problems have been fixed. Perhaps only the online play file was changed?
As to the end game – it was so unexpectedly glum after such a so-far charming experience I’m wondering if perhaps there’s more than one ending?
Overall, I really liked RW. It’s my favorite of the competition so far and I had a great time with it. I look forward to seeing what dgztiea puts out in the future, and for a first published parser game, they should be very proud.
