Which Woods?
Wytchwood is a crafting adventure game developed by Canadian studio Alientrap and published by Whitethorn Games. It was released on December 9, 2021.
You play as a witch in a dark fairytale world, attempting to fulfill her end of a dark contract by enacting justice on twelve wicked souls who wronged someone close to her. You accomplish this primarily through crafting items that you use to create magic effects.
Wytchwood provides examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Many inhabitants of the different areas, even the human ones, have brightly-colored skin in unnatural shades like green and purple.
- Ambiguous Situation: We start out not knowing who exactly the Sleeping Maiden is, her relation to the witch, or what exactly the twelve villains did to harm her.
- Amnesiac Hero: The Witch can't remember anything from before she woke up in her hut and met the Goat.
- Anti-Frustration Feature:
- The journal gives you a very detailed checklist of what exactly you have to do to complete each task. It even tracks them for you, checking things off as you accomplish them.
- One of the items you can craft is a hearthseed which will magically transport you back to the Hub Level so you don't have to run all the way back to that area's portal if you want to go to a different area.
- Attack Reflector: You defeat the Snake by holding up a Magic Mirror as it tries to use its Hypnotic Eyes against you. It hypnotizes itself instead.
- Bag of Holding: You can open your grimoire to review the truly staggering number of ingredients you collect as you move through the different areas. How exactly you're carrying all that isn't explained.
- Bubblegloop Swamp: The swamp area is rainy and populated with giant mosquitoes and leeches that will deplete your health if you let them get too close to you. The dragonflies are similarly huge but will not attack. However, the flavor text does say they've recently developed an affinity for meat.
- Cool Gate: Each area has its own portal which you can use to teleport between the different areas.
- Creepy Cemetery: The Graveyard area is dark, foreboding, and crawling with dangerous ghosts and ghouls.
- Deal with the Devil: Though she can't remember making it, the Goat informs the Witch she made a bargain with him to bring him souls in exchange for waking up the Sleeping Maiden.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If you lose all three hearts, you drop some items and appear back in your hut. You can just go back and retrieve the items at the same spot you were hit.
- Don't Go Into the Woods: The Wolf lives in an area north of the swamp called the Dark Wood. Before you have to go in to face him, the flavor text tells you not to go in and that nothing good happens there.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Each area has different creatures that will attack you and deplete your health if you get too close. These can range from the fantastic to the mundane. For example, in the Fields area, pumpkin monsters will attack you, and so will the turkeys.
- The Fair Folk: Several tasks require the player to interact with the various fairies, pixies, and goblins inhabiting the forest area.
- Fairy Ring: You can find several fairy rings in the forest area and one in the fields area consisting of a circle of mushrooms around a spiral rune carved into a stone in the center. These areas are typically populated with floating fairies and glowing fireflies.
- Fairytale Motifs: The world has a distinctly "fairytale" setting and storylines with curses, prophecies, and bargains with mysterious entities all coming into play. The player encounters and interacts with various mythical creatures such as talking animals, fairies, unicorns, and mermaids. Some of the storylines either reference specific fairytales or are an outright Whole-Plot Reference.
- Foreshadowing:
- Before you encounter the Stag Prince, you can find a giant statue of him in the forest.
- There is a missing persons board in the middle of the village covered in pictures of young women and one elderly lady. You find out later these are the Wolf's victims.
- When the Witch first wakes up in the hut, she chides the Goat for waking a "young lady" up from her beauty sleep, foreshadowing that the Witch is in fact a young lady because she and the Maiden are the same person.
- Forest of Perpetual Autumn: The forest area has distinctly autumnal colors in contrast to the other areas.
- Furry Confusion: The villains are all anthropomorphic animals, but there are many regular animals in the different areas as well. It's not explained why some animals can talk and wear human clothes while others cannot. This is especially conspicuous with the Hog sisters who run a hog farm and butcher and sell pigs.
- Haunted House: The old, decrepit mansion right next to graveyard is absolutely crawling with ghost and ghouls.
- Healing Potion: One of the craft-able items is a healing poultice. It can be used as an ingredient in other recipes or restore your health if you get attacked by one of the various aggressive creatures in the areas.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Witch enacts her justice by allowing most of the villains to reap the consequences of their actions.
- Hub Level: A platform floating in a black, starry void contains portals that correspond to each area, making moving between them easier.
- Instant Runes: Anytime you use an item or potion to cast a spell, glowing runes float in the air and a runic circle appears on the ground.
- Item Crafting: The gameplay mechanics require the player to craft various items and potions made from the raw ingredients they can pick up as they navigate through the different areas.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: Since the mechanics revolve around item crafting, not only can you pretty much pick up everything that's not nailed down, you often must to progress in the game.
- Love Potion: One of the items you can craft. It specifically says it just heightens affectionate emotions and does not force a romantic attraction.
- Nameless Narrative: No characters are named. Both the text and the characters only refer to people by titles such as The Witch, The Bear, The Barmaid, etc.
- Once Upon a Time: The opening lines to the game, befitting its dark fairytale setting.
- Only the Pure of Heart: The alchemist's stone you help the Rumpling make can only be safely used by those who are not greedy. Since the Witch has no use for gold and wants to use the stone to help the Millers, she is able to use it.
- Our Witches Are Different: The player character conducts her magic through constructing magic items using the recipes in her grimoire. Her design also isn't that of a "typical" witch. Rather than a pointy black hat, she uses an upside down cauldron for a helmet it's actually her head as she is just a construct created by the Sleeping Maiden, who certainly looks more like a standard fairytale princess than a witch.
- Philosopher's Stone: One of your quests is to make an alchemist's stone that will turn mundane objects like grain into piles of gold.
- The Reveal: Once you collect all twelve souls and bring them to the Goat, he reveals the Witch and the Maiden are the same person. The Maiden imbued a vessel with part of her consciousness in order to complete her contract with the Goat, creating the Witch.
- Reverse Relationship Reveal: You begin the game believing the Witch was the one who made a deal with the Goat regarding the Maiden, but it was actually the Maiden who made a deal regarding the Witch.
- Role-Playing Game: You play as an amnesiac witch on a mission to defeat twelve evil anthropomorphic animals.
- Save the Princess: Though she isn't stated to be a princess, the main quest at first appears to follow a similar fairytale plot of the player saving the Damsel in Distress placed in an enchanted slumber. Subverted when we find out the maiden was the one who made the deal with the Goat. The Witch was just a vessel containing part of her consciousness that she created to collect the souls.
- Second-Person Narration: The text along the bottom narrates to the player in second person what the Witch is doing and thinking.
- Soul Jar: After the Witch defeats each villain, their soul is then contained in a representative physical item she brings to the Goat.
- Spell Book: Your grimoire contains the recipes for the magic items/potions you can craft.
- Utility Belt: You have a tool belt that holds a set amount of items you can equip or unequip.
- Welcome to Corneria: When you hover over an NPC you can't interact with, or have already finished the storyline that involves them, the same text pops up above them every time.
- Wicked Witch: Somewhat surprisingly for a fairytale-themed game, this trope is inverted. The player character may be abrupt and takes matters of justice into her own hands, but it's clear she cares about the troubled people she meets and goes out of her way to help them. The retired witch you meet in the swamp is similarly benevolent.
