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Finally have just a little bit of time to play games again! Yay! But it's not a ton of time, so I figured I'd start with some smaller indies first, before I try to start getting back into bigger games.

And this time that was The Witch's House MV. I played it on Steam Deck, as I do most things and for the most part it was great there. While it was working, it was working. But especially earlier on in the game, there were some pretty annoying crash-ish type things. Sometimes, the video would just totally give out, but you could still hear the effects still in the background, and I'm pretty sure the controls still worked because I could hear the footstep and menu sound effects. Sometimes, if you try to skip through a dialogue box too quickly, it'll freeze up and stop responding all together. I tried doing some tinkering, changing Proton settings, changing in-game settings, but halfway through the game it just kinda stopped breaking. Does it work good on other platforms? Maybe, I dunno. But the frequency with which these happened was definitely frustrating, especially considering they happened early on, and the runtime of the game. I spent about half of my first session outside of the game itself, which is not ideal.

But again, when it works, it works great. And at a point, the issues just stopped happening for me, so I was actually able to enjoy more of the game.

The gameplay of this is a bit interesting, it's an RPG-Maker game, so it uses those basic movement, saving, environmenty-interacty mechanics. And that basic level of it is really good. You get stuck in a witch's house, and she leaves clues for you, so you follow those and do some basic puzzles to get you room to room. But it's atmosphere is what's good about it. The level and character art are really well suited for the tone - it's very Halloween spooky: it's foreboding enough to build genuine tension, but not so much that it isn't still fun and slightly comforting. I've only played the demo of Crow Country, but it's that same kind of feeling - like curling up under a blanket during a really bad thunderstorm. It's a really nice vibe that I adore, and that's what I loved so much about this game. The music comes from a royalty-free site as far as I can tell, and it's actually really well picked. I listened to the title song a few times before starting, and I thought the game had a dedicated composer until I got the credits.

So that's why I don't really like the actual danger it has. You'll be forced to do something you don't want to to progress - cut off a teddy bear's limbs, sacrifice your frog friend - and that's enough for me. At that point I'm felling enough dread to be thoroughly engaged. But after those things, sometimes a consequence will occur if you don't play correctly afterwards, and every time that happened, I remembered I was playing an indie game from 2012. A Big Scary Sound would play, and then I'd get chased around for a bit, if I didn't die immediately due to the tiny reaction window I was given. I'm not inherently opposed to the concept of a jumpscare, but these ones just felt boring. I often didn't feel they were led up to, the tension that the environment was building was not fully in sync with the what-were-supposed-to-be tension releases by the scares.

The puzzles were, I would say adequate. I'll admit, I played most of this game after work, right before bed. My brain was not fully in it. But some of the puzzles felt super "retro adventure game". I used a guide for a good chunk of the end game, and the logic puzzle with the red flowers I still don't understand. But they're good enough to keep you engaged in the world, and moving around it to see everything it has to offer.

Apparently this is a remake for modern consoles, so it has a bonus gamemode that has extra stuff in it? I don't think I'll play it now, but I might at some other time, if I'm ever in the mood for this atmosphere again.