Witch it Review

Witch It is a hide-and-seek game with very similar gameplay to the popular Garry’s Mod game mode “PropHunt”. Though the game is still in Early Access, it is very well polished with a surprising level of player activity for a smaller game, meaning if you had any doubts as to whether you’d actually be able to find games (as some multiplayer games can often be very inactive), rest assured that this game will not leave you in a searching queue for hours on end.

The game is fairly simple – you are placed randomly into either a team of “Witches” or “Hunters”. The witches are able to turn into any object within the map, and can move around while doing so to escape if they are found or to turn into something else. The hunters are required to find the witches by attacking suspicious props that look out of place. Though this is fairly difficult at the start, you very quickly learn to work out how to make yourself inconspicuous as a witch and to be more perceptive as a hunter. The hunters win if they find every single witch in the game, while the witches win if even one has not been found within the four-minute time frame. There are two currently completed game modes and one that is still being worked on. In “Hide and Seek”, the same basic gameplay that is described above is utilised, while in “Mobification”, found witches then become hunters. The “Hunt a Hag” game mode that is currently being developed is a very fun game of “tag”, which has roughly the same concept as “mobification” but the witches are unable to transform, while hunters cannot use their long-ranged attacks. With how the “mobification” works and as the “teams” can usually benefit from working alone, this also means that people don’t ever get toxic in the game, as your loss is very clearly on yourself.

Your characters also get various skills when levelling up that can make escaping as a witch or seeking as a hunter much easier. This rewards players with more experience and gives you an incentive to keep playing. You also unlock cosmetic items which of course, everybody loves in a game. It’s impressive that a game in Early Access has given a bunch of thought to these unlocks, especially when the game functions so well that it would still be fun and draw many players without it.

The game’s six maps are all very attractive despite a fairly basic art style and most importantly, perfectly designed for the game. With the way this game works, attention to detail is extremely important as to create maps that make it easy for the witches to hide without making it impossible for the hunters to find them. With that in mind, I do think that the maps they created have made the game very well balanced, where the hunters and witches both win a fairly equal number of times. The maps have also been fairly good for their new “Hunt a Hag” game mode too, as running around the map on top of buildings usually feels smooth, which again goes to show how well the maps were made.

The sound design has also been fairly well done. The sound cues for the skills that the witches and hunters use do not only fit the theme, but can also be used for fairly funny social interactions. The entire Hunter team spamming their grunting voice lines in the spawn seems to be ubiquitous over all games. The music is fairly good too, though it usually gets reduced to pretty quiet background noise as the player finds it far more beneficial to listen carefully to hear the other players moving around.

PropHunt has proven to be a very popular, enjoyable game type and Witch It is perhaps the best version of this style of game that has been made. Though I’ve always been very sceptical of Early Access games, this game in particular impresses by being essentially bug free, extremely well designed and enjoyable to play. It also is fun to play both alone and with friends, and is highly repayable. If you’re looking for a new game to go play with a group of friends, this does work well and allows very easily for you to play while not having to necessarily just talk about the game. I can’t wait to see what the developers do with this game next, but judging from how fun it is to play already and from the work they’ve already put in, I expect that this game will only find success.

REVIEW CODE: A FREE PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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