Witchever

(This review was originally posted on the IntFic forum during ParserComp)

Remakes! I dunno, man. They’re everywhere and of course mostly awful (my wife and I were talking about this and the only worthwhile ones we could come up with off the top of our heads were Sabrina – romcom, not witch, though that would be more relevant to the review I suppose – and The Thing), and an obvious sign of the entertainment industry’s creative bankruptcy. Yet, while as far as I can tell, these are the universally-agreed-upon views of everyone who voices their opinions, these remakes keep coming because people watch and play and like them. And if it’s true that ideas mostly don’t really matter, it’s all about execution – which I think is right – what’s the matter with dusting off an old concept, for its name recognition or its unrealized potential, and just trying to do it different or at least better? What if remakes are just… fine?

These heady thoughts brought to you by Witchever, a game that coyly acknowledges that it’s a remake of the author’s 2023 Comp entry The Witch. I remember The Witch! It had a fun opening, where you’re a Keebler-ish elf who wakes up in a tree, sporting a vicious mead hangover (but I repeat myself), and has to save his village from an attack by the eponymous enchantress. I dug the setup, but the game itself situated itself too far on the wrong side of 1990 for me to enjoy – I remember annoying inventory limits, an always-ticking-down timer, and some buggy business with a badger, which meant I let my playthrough peter out halfway rather than power through to the end.

Witchever recycles the opening, which is a savvy call, and likewise retains the dry whimsy of the original:

"The bark is utterly smooth and white and seems to shimmer in the sunlight. Oddly, the entire tree rotates clockwise at regular intervals (you’ve heard that magic trees rotate counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere), the canopy overhead rustling with every turn."

There are some set-pieces in common – I remember solving a version of the puzzles around this turning-tree in my first go-round, and the chair lift pinged my memory – and I think the final way to defeat the witch is the same, but otherwise this is a pretty thorough reworking (no badger in sight – which this time is great, unlike in the earlier game where its failure to appear locked me an unwinnable state). Some of these changes are cosmetic and don’t amount to much, like the way that instead of saving your own village, you get dragooned into visiting the next town over to save them before the witch gets to you. But there are substantial new areas, like a gnome burrow, a maze, and a giant-pumpkin patch.

Look, this is still an old-school game where you’re not given much direction or motivation – and the maze has a gimmick but it’s still a maze, and that pumpkin patch will instantly lock you into a game-losing trap unless you happen to have brought a couple items that you’d have no reason to expect you’d need. But the proceedings are notably less buggy, and the gameplay’s smoother too. There’s menu-based conversation, and better clueing throughout – I had to hit the hints a couple times, but I was often able to get past sticking points by stopping to think about what I needed to do, having a logical idea, and seeing it work once I tried it, with some genuinely clever puzzles I haven’t seen before (I really liked the way you figure out the path through the colored doors, for example). And the wit often did leave me chuckling:

“I have great… well, some confidence that you will be able to defeat the witch as well. If I can provide you with any assistance…” his voice trails off and he starts to dig around in his pockets. Finally, he pulls something out of each one and hands it to you.

This is the king of the elves speaking; he gives you two somewhat-dinged-up pieces of candy. And there’s an unexpected two-factor authentication gag that merits a mention too.

There are still places where the implementation could have been tighter – I was stymied for a while because ON and ONTO aren’t synonyms, for example – and the plot is notably light even by puzzle-fest standards (it wasn’t really clear to me what the witch was doing to make the elves so upset). And there are a few clunkers remaining in the puzzle list, like one involving a paperweight. But Witchever is a solid time on its own merits, and because I was playing it while haunted by the memory of its earlier, more hostile incarnation, I found myself perpetually relieved when the lows weren’t as bad as I’d remembered, while the highs were much higher indeed. I guess that’s what they call the soft bigotry of low expectations, but at least in this case, it kinda worked for me – bring on the remakes!