Video Game / Gnarled Hag

In a small mountain town in Virginia there is an abandoned house...

It's rumored that an evil WITCH lives there...

A young girl entered the house on a dare and has not returned...

GNARLED HAG is a short horror sidescroller-stealth game by Pompasaur based on Hansel and Gretel, with the premise of "what if Gretel had to escape the witch's house on her own?" In it, you play as a girl who, on a dare, visits an abandoned house in a Viriginian small town. Said house is rumored to be inhabited by a Wicked Witch, but hey, rumors, right?.

Unfortunately, the witch turns out to be quite real.

For her troubles, the girl ends up up locked up in a cage in the witch's attic. Using only her wits, the girl must now escape the house while hiding from the witch.

Gameplay consists of sneaking through the mansion, collecting items to progress, while avoiding the witch by listening to her footsteps to tell where she is.

It was released in July 31, 2020.

---

This game contains examples of:

• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The 1.5 version added a number of these. There's now a tutorial so you can get oriented with the controls before actually playing, and the option to toggle the crouch button instead of holding it down. Originally, pressing the escape key closed the game entirely, now you need to hold it to quit, and it boots you to the title screen. The developer also added "Onomatopoeia Mode", where the witch's footsteps will make a Written Sound Effect indicating where she is and how far away.
  • Concerning the end-game, when the witch appears after you grab the axe, she doesn't attack immediately. After a second, a prompt appears telling you to attack, and the attack button. There's also an arrow in the loft telling you which way the exit is. Both of these were done to mitigate last second panic/confusion and unfair deaths .
• Alien Blood: The various bug carcasses that can be seen chained in the basement's ceiling, have blue blood oozing out from where the hooks have penetrated them.
• Big Bad: The titular Gnarled Hag has imprisoned the girl inside her house, and the girl must escape while hiding from her.
• Blackout Basement: The basement is unlit save for a candle near the end, and you need to get a lighter from the hag's bedroom before you can go down.
• Bladder of Steel: There's no pausing, saving, or checkpoints. You have to beat the entire game in one go. Luckily, it's not that long, and there's nothing stopping you from hunkering down in a hiding spot indefinitely.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: Downplayed. When the girl is hiding, her entire sprite is shadowed, except for her eyes, which remain in the same lighting they always are. Completely averted in the Blackout Basement.
• Creepy Basement: The basement of the house is badly lit, and contains two children turned into slugs crying in the basement. Notably, the girl starts sweating from fear when inside the basement.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: In order to get a key needed to advance, you need to kill a giant slug, which used to be an innocent child, by pouring salt on them. Though considering their situation, this could count as a Mercy Kill.
• Deliberately Monochrome: With a bit of Color-Coded for Your Convenience. The environment is purple, the witch is black, and the girl (as well as items you can pick up) are blue. When the girl escapes, the blood washes off her, revealing the actual color of her skin, hair, and clothing. It goes back to monochrome in the ending proper.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Downplayed, as while the girl doesn't outright defeat the witch, she does hit her face with an axe and make her bleed near the end.
• Downer Ending: Despite the girl managing to escape the house, it turns out the witch followed the girl to her home, and even if she manages to escape again the witch will most likely follow her again meaning she will never be safe.
• The End... Or Is It?: The girl finally manages to escape the house and the witch, and we see her on her bed, holding a stuffed animal... but then the lights darken, and the hag's shadow can be seen hovering over the girl...
• Eyes Are Mental: The slug on the kitchen table has human eyes.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In the basement, once you pick up the book, you can hear the witch's breathing. As soon as you pick up the axe, she appears.
• Forced Transformation: In the dining room is a giant slug with a shirt and human eyes. The basement has two kids turned into cocoons, and a variety of Big Creepy-Crawlies are hung from the ceiling.
• Hell Is That Noise: The witch's presence can be identified via her footsteps, or by the gross, squelchy sound she makes when she passes under a door.
• Nameless Narrative: Neither the girl nor the witch are named.
• Ominous Music Box Tune: The music box at the beginning of the game holds the key to the witch's room, but opening it causes it to play, alerting the hag to your location. It shows up again during the ending when the witch is slowly appearing in the girl’s bedroom.
• Salt Solution: To get one of the keys, you need to take a jar of salt from the kitchen and use it to dissolve a child-turned-slug.
• Scare Dare: The intro tells us that the girl was dared to enter the hag's house, which she did, and got herself trapped by the witch.
• Security Blanket: In the ending, the girl is shown hugging a stuffed animal, presumably for comfort after having escaped the hag's house.
• Snap to the Side: A gameplay mechanic. While you can locate the witch off-screen by listening, the girl's eyes will also point in her general direction.
• Stealth-Based Game: The girl must hide from the witch behind shadows and listen for the witch's footsteps.
• Transformation Discretion Shot: Enforced. Technically you do have the option to see the witch enter One-Winged Angel, but running from her afterwards is basically futile, so truly your only option is to run once you've axed her.

---