Clockwise from top left: Wilardo Adler, Ashe Bradley, Charlotte, Lime, ????, Zizel, Claire Elford, Noel Levine, Sirius Gibson.
"Do you have... a wish you'd be willing to kill for?"
Witch's Heart is an adventure game by IZ (BLUE STAR Entertainment) made in RPG Maker 2000. It's a story-focused game with some light action, horror and puzzle elements. While it stars a heroine and four of her co-residents who each have a route of their own, it's very far from romance-focus, and for what reason you may find out quite soon...
Claire Elford is a cheerful girl playing in her favorite flower field deep in the mountains of Ribecca. Cue the Rain, and now she need to find shelter to hide from the passing shower.
She then finds a mansion deep in the woods and ran into Ashe Bradley and Wilardo Adler, who are also caught in the rain. While exploring, the three find monsters roaming about in the hallway, as well as no way out of the mansion. They also met two other people, Noel Levine and mansion owner Sirius Gibson, and the five decide to work together to figure a way out.
Just as things got even more confusing, Claire finds out that she's in a Demonic Pact with a demon named Zizel, and that the legendary wish-granting treasure, the Witch's Heart, is hidden somewhere in the mansion. But they then learn of the Witch Dorothy, who is said to have owned the mansion and perpetrated a massacre long ago, and summoned the monsters and demons to make the travelers her next victims in order to protect the Witch's Heart that she holds. The five must now explore the mansion and it's fantasy spaces to figure out how to escape. But as Claire finds out, the others have learned of the Witch's Heart as well, and have come to the mansion to acquire it themselves, each for their own reasons. And as Claire is about to find out, there is much, much more to the story and the mansion than what it may seem...
Currently, it is comprised of 4 main scenarios, which are about 3 hours each, corresponding to each of the four men; a "Bonus Stage", and Sirius' route conclusion. Gameplay consists of exploring the mansion while defeating monsters and completing requests for the friendly troubled demons around the mansion.
An English translation of the game can be downloaded here
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This game provides examples of:
- Acid-Trip Dimension: They're called fantasy spaces for a reason.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: Occurs very often. The whole game shifts perspective from a character to another frequently, in order to tell it's story. Every time this happens, a screen with a heart and "Side *character*" (i.e., Side Claire, Side Ashe, Side Wilardo) appears.
- Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The childhood trio of Noel, Sirius and Claire could be seen as such.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Making a wish through the demonic contract causes the contractor to lose the body part connected to their contract.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Claire at the end of the bonus stage.
- Break the Cutie: Averted with Claire due to her amnesia and reset memories of each timeline, but played straight with many of the characters in the cast.
- But Thou Must!: You must get the Common Bad End in order to advance to Sirius' route. Sure, you still get to choose not to break Sirius' rule while replaying that scene, but you won't go any further than that.
- Chekhov's Gun: The ax mounted on the wall of Claire's room sure comes in handy when Sirius needs to defend himself on the Bad End.
- Wilardo uses an amulet he took from Sirius beforehand to create a safe spot under a table in his mini-boss fight.
- Turns out Sirius has Dorothy's smoke bombs, or at least found out how to make said bombs himself.
- Closed Circle: All the characters decide to find shelter on a mansion deep in the woods, only to find themselves inevitably locked in soon after, kickstarting the plot.
- Colour-Coded Characters: The main characters.
- Claire: Light blue
- Ashe: Green
- Wilardo: Red
- Noel: Blue
- Sirius: Purple
- Content Warnings
- Deal with the Devil: Demonic contracts, namely Dorothy and Rouge, Fiona and Charlotte, and Claire and Zizel.
- Dehumanization: Lime (when she was human) and the other "witches", girls who are treated as lower-class slaves and are forced to bear the brunt of everyone else's abuse. Not to mention they're imprisoned until they reach a certain age, in which they are burned at the stake in a public execution.
- Demonic Possession: Invective possessing Claire during Wilardo's route.
- Devoted to You:
- Noel with Claire.
- Charlotte with her "Papa".
- Dies Wide Open: Ashe in the Bad End, and Sirius in his own route.
- Downer Ending: Every scenario in the vanilla game and Bonus Stage ends up with Claire dying. Sirius dies in all but one of these scenarios as well. It's finally subverted in Sirius' Conclusion, which is a Bittersweet Ending instead.
- Dress-Up Episode: In Invective's mansion, you can ask a demon to take a photo of the character you're playing (or bring along one of the demons). Said character will then dress up in a new outfit for the photo.
- During the bonus stage, you can dress up the respective demon of each scenario in the pause menu.
- In Sirius' final conclusion, both Sirius and Claire can be dressed up in witch outfits if they came together.
- Dysfunction Junction: Our five main characters have their own tragic backstory and personal issues.
- Claire was abandoned at the forest without any memory about her true parents. It's actually worse than that - her mother was executed in the witch hunt, her best friend suddenly disappeared, then she herself fell off a cliff and her grandmother died afterwards, being blamed as a heinous witch. Thanks to Noel's time-looping however, she's by far the sanest and most normal of the entire cast.
- Ashe's family died in a fire caused by his supposedly best friend Matty, taking everything away from him. His mindset has never been healthy since then, Lime told him about "witches" to boost, and he transformed into a murderous, heartless monster whose true self constantly drowns in guilt.
- Wilardo was tricked by the gramp who took him in as an orphan to pick the Dark Lily that made him an immortal in his place. Wandering aimlessly for centuries, his life has become meaningless to the point all he desires is death, and he pretty much is willing to kill for that sole salvation.
- Sirius lost his parents in the witch hunt, later forced to witness Dorothy's death and the nightmarish massacre, but no one ever listened to him since he was too young. He secluded himself for a straight 12 years out of distrust of people. With the right trigger, he can easily go off the deep end of insanity and bashing people around out of hysteria.
- Noel was abused by his own father and then cursed to become a demon. He is doomed to be trapped in the mansion forever while witnessing the death of everyone, especially Claire, all because of the Witch's Heart, without being able to do a thing. After all the time-looping, he's dying, and in Sirius' Conclusion he's even stricken with a morality crisis concerning the similarities between him and Ashe.
- Escape Sequence: Charlotte chases you and can give you a game over early on. Fair warning: she can go through walls, you can't.
- Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Since the demons love negativity, not positivity, their idea of what's funny is...interesting.
- Fictional Earth: The map of the world shown in one of the books is the map of Europe mirrored and flipped upside down.
- Foreshadowing:
- in Ashe's route after Sirius is found dead, Wilardo told Claire not to trust Ashe. He had every reason to do so, as Bonus Stage revealed he saw Ashe lockpicking the mansion in the very beggining of the story.
- Near the end of Wilardo's route, one can see a silhouette of Lime putting the contract on table in the secret room for a brief second. She has and hides the contract that Claire was searching for all along.
- Remember the pink chest in the corner Lime's room that you cannot open no matter what? Lime hides the contract in there, as we found out in Sirius' Conclusion.
- In Sirius's route day 3, Wilardo came out of Noel's bedroom. He finds the contract earlier, and kills Sirius to find more information in his room, making him the culprit of the story.
- Also in Sirius' route when playing as Noel, he can interact with Zizel in the dining room. The information that Noel can see things others can't is only given in the next and last route - Noel's route.
- In Noel's route after Claire had a dream about Patricia, Ashe wakes her up and mention that her door wasn't even locked. This foreshadows his ability to lockpick, which he use to open the door and kill Claire at the end of the route.
- In Noel's route, after Ashe and Sirius get brutally murdered, Noel starts acting coldly towards Wilardo, accusing him of having something to do with the situation. Wilardo laughs it off, saying that he feels something's wrong and even though only Noel, Claire and himself are left he can't suspect anyone. He was, of course, right on the money: Ashe killed Sirius and used his corpse to crate the impression two murders had happened. Claire, Wilardo and Noel were all innocent.
- There are two different scene transitions in the game, "Side Everyone" and "Side Humans". The latter happens after Noel's remains are found, foreshadowing he wasn't a human.
- During gameplay, if you fill the Pretty Bottle with wine and press the action button, the reaction of the character you're playing as foreshadows their relationship with the act of drinking:
- Claire, Wilardo and Sirius drink it and get a heal, indicating that they are ok with drinking and will do so if they feel like it;
- Noel will throw it away, indicating his poor alcohol tolerance and general distaste for drinking;
- Ashe will also throw it away most of the time, but has a very low chance of drinking without healing. He has a Drowning My Sorrows issue.
- If you approach a piano with Ashe in your party, Ashe will play a short piece. You can only learn he's a piano player during the story proper in Bonus Stage.
- If you approach the distorted "Dearest Maria" painting with Invective in your party (which is only possible during Wilardo's route), she'll declare her disgust for the thing. She's the Maria depicted in the painting.
- Forgotten First Meeting: Sirius, Claire, and Noel were childhood friends, however, Claire had an accident that gave her amnesia, and Noel used to go by the name of Patricia. Sirius does actually recognize Claire, but knows about the accident and thus pretends not to.
- Lime was the one who tipped Ashe off about the Witch's Heart, but he doesn't seem to remember her when he meets her again during Bonus Stage. She was partly disguised during that, though.
- Framing Device: In the opening, we're told about different stories that revolve around the titular Witch's Heart, all of them fictional in-universe.
- During the Conclusion routes, Zizel presents the Player with the scenario crystals they've been gathering throughout the vanilla game, and offers access to each character's Conclusion even though they're mutually exclusive in-universe.
- Frying Pan of Doom: When Ashe suggests trying to get out through a window, they find out these are also locked, which prompts Claire to go and pick up a frying pan to do the job.
- Four Is Death: The first part of the game consists of four scenarios. Claire and Sirius die in every scenario.
- Geometric Magic: There are warding circles on the doors of certain rooms that magically prevent the monsters from getting into them.
- Give Her a Normal Life: Dorothy use Fiona's Witch's Heart to erase Claire's memories in hope that she will live a happy life.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Nearly everyone in the game.
- Ghost Story: In Ashe's route, he proposes that everybody find a scary story to tell under the full moon, to pass the time. It was all fun and game until Ashe tells his story of choice, which for a reason pisses Sirius off hard time...
- Happily Adopted: In Ashe's route, Claire and him talk about their families. Claire says she has no memory of her parents but a nice couple took her in anyways so she isn't much bothered by it.
- Sirius and Claire were separately adopted by Dorothy in their childhood.
- Also, Wilardo was once a stray child adopted by a kindly old man. Said old man was immortal and tricked Wilardo in order to pass down his immortality to him.
- Idiot Hair: Ashe, Wilardo, and Noel. This leads to a subtle Running Gag that if you have none like Claire and Sirius, you're surely doomed, and the more you have (like Noel's twin ahoge), you live long but suffer.
- Important Haircut: Ashe at the end of Noel's route to facade the murder.
- I Reject Your Reality:Ashe: "These lumps of charcoal, that I couldn't even distinguish between... I was unable to accept the fact that they were once my family. This is all a bad dream. As if, as if this could happen?"
Ashe: "It was all put into coffins, and everything ended. Or rather... it became "over". Unable to keep up, my heart was left behind as reality moved on. […] ...This, all of this, isn't real. No longer could I believe the things I saw." - It's All My Fault: Noel feels responsible for the incident his father caused in the mansion 12 years ago. Also Ashe, who blamed himself for his family's death after his friend burned his house down.
- Killer Rabbit: Charlotte, who is small and cute with an animal hoodie but can give you the run of your life right at the beginning of the game.
- Living Emotional Crutch: Because of his Friendless Background and his father's abuse, Noel became very attached to Claire in their childhood. This caused him to value the time spent with her even more leading to him setting up the "Groundhog Day" Loop so he could stay with Claire and prevent her death.
- MacGuffin Title: Witch's Heart is the legendary wish-granting treasure, as well as the main motivation for the characters in the story. It can also refer to Claire's heart, (who is the grandaughter of the Witch Dorothy) where the MacGuffin itself resides.
- Mini-Game: Each human character has a unique minigame which you can play to obtain coins.
- You can also play Rock-Paper-Scissors and Spot the Difference with certain demons in order to fulfill their requests.
- Multiple Endings: The game currently has one bad ending, four endings to each of the scenarios, a bonus scenario, and Sirius' route Conclusion. The other final endings will be added later as well. Each ending gives the player more information about the characters and the circumstances of the situation they are stuck in, while Sirius' Conclusion gives us one possible ending for all the stories revolve around Witch's Heart.
- Non-Standard Game Over: If you trade rooms for the night with Ashe, he will tell you he wants to research the place, for it is the most likely room of the witch Dorothy, whom he says he's there to study. As soon as you go to bed you hear an argument that very quickly escalates to attempted murder. Claire will wake up with Wilardo, concerned, at the door. She goes outside Ashe's room and finds a trail of blood leading to her own. Wilardo shoots the door's lock open and they find Ashe dead inside. When Claire goes to Sirius's room she finds him completely horrified, bloody and with the also bloody ax sitting beside him. It is clear he has gone off the deep end and ends up killing Claire as well.
- Not-So-Imaginary Friend: The demon that is given charge of the demonic pact only appears to the human that has become the other half of it.
- Off with His Head! : Ashe's little stunt during Noel's route.
- Really 700 Years Old: Most of the human-esque demons are at least 100 years old. Also the case for Wilardo, who has lived for more than 500 years and his gramps, over a thousand years.
- Precious Photo: Ashe carries one around, and could go berserk without it. It's of him with his deceased family.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Claire's eyes turn red when possessed by Invective. The demons' eyes are also red.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Noel, endlessly repeating the events of each route to try and prevent Claire's death.
- Significant Anagram: "Hater" is an anagram for "Heart".
- Something We Forgot: In Sirius' Conclusion, Wilardo has to remind Noel Ashe was Locked Up and Left Behind in Sirius' room and will die if the mansion collapses with him still inside.
- The Black Death: Heavily implied to be the disease that killed Charlotte, when she was still human.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Lime asks Charlotte how she died during the "Fate of the unfortunate girl" side story, Charlotte delivers a pretty hefty one on Lime's attempts to empathize with the other hater demons. She also does it during the Bonus Stage, towards Claire about how she continues to die due to her excessive need to trust and see the good in people.
- In Bonus Stage, Sirius explodes at Ashe and Wilardo for trying to gain happiness by creating misery: for him, that just makes the joy obtained empty and pointless.
- The Smurfette Principle: Excluding the demons' appearances, Claire is the only girl residing in the mansion. Claire even lampshades it when she meets Zizel the first time.Claire: "Wheww! There's a girl beside me! I was feeling awkward with all these guys."
- Subverted during the bonus stage, in which all four demon girls join Claire in the mansion as "travelers".
- This Is a Work of Fiction: The game gives out this warning when first accessed.
- Wham Line:Wilardo: "...I'll have my gun back."
Lime: Hand over your life to me, I'll live it big and bold instead.
Ashe: Now... Everyone can come back.
Lime: I miiiight have erased the word "positive" from the contract I showed Ashe, though... - Weakened by the Light: Demons are weak to sunlight and fantasy spaces are more likely to appear during the night for the same reason. Noel, a demon, sleeps through the day.
- Weapon-Based Characterization: Some of the characters has their own ways to deal with monsters or fights in the mansion:
- Claire is a Kick Chick.
- Ashe uses a knife, or scalpels coated with poison.
- Wilardo has his gun, and a knife he used to take the Witch's Heart from Claire if he's the culprit.
- Sirius uses amulets, which only affect the monsters in a considerable amount (unless you level him up), but he can also harm Lime.
- Noel uses a knife, too. Or, he can just pass through since he's on the demon's side.
- Charlotte use a scissor despite being an ex-soldier.
- Lime likes Playing with Fire. It's also what killed her as a human.
