Shifty Witchy (vs. The Apocalypse)
Description
Just as prophecy foretold, the Unholy Apocalypse Dragon has recreated the world in her image. She split the greatest elemental shapeshifter into little shifties and forced them into a single corrupted form, along with all manner of creatures.
Finley is a young witch who couldn’t care less about Apocalypse Scripture, until her coven exiled her. Alone and without protection, she doesn’t stand a chance against the monsters at night. While they sleep during the day, she must use her wits and forbidden magic to cure corrupted shifties and get their help. Together, they can fight back with the rhythm of the elements.
How to play
1) Explore and find ingredients for a spell that can free shifties from corruption. This will turn them into your allies.
2) Once you have the ingredients, press space to cast the spell and type the magical words in time to acquire an elemental orb.
3) Press space to give the orb to a sleeping shifty and cure them of corruption.
4) When night falls (or if you walk into them), the monsters will awaken and your shifties will battle them. Use the arrow keys to keep up with the fast-paced rhythm. (You can choose any spell but beware... stronger elemental spells have a faster beat.)
Controls
Arrow keys / WASD - Move
SPACE - Pick up / Interact
SHIFT - Spell
TAB - Book menu
ESC - Pause / Play
NOTE: Press SPACE to reopen the battle menu.
If you cast the combo spell too close to a corrupted creature, it will awaken and attack you.
Characters
Finley is an outcast witch with a bit of a rebellious streak. She carries a book with her that holds forbidden spells, promising to bring back elemental essences corrupted by the All Ruining and Unholy Apocalypse Dragon.
Corrupted Shifty was once a shapeshifter that could change fluidly with the elements. Now, they are trapped in their bodies and minds. Driven mad by the Apocalypse Dragon, they attack any who awaken them from their sleep. Only the purest elemental essences can truly awaken them.
Shifty is a curious elemental shapeshifter that can develop different abilities based on their environment. Once a part of the Great Master Shifty, this creature's lifecycle involves plenty of transformations, which is still shrouded in mystery (more here).
Corrupted Mama Bear is one of many creatures warped by the Apocalypse Dragon. Fiercely protective of her little ones, she sees anything in her sight as a threat or a delicious, bloody meal.
Corrupted Baby Bears are little cubs that follow their mother's lead in every way. They sleep when she does, terrorize prey when she does, and rip apart lost humans just like she does.
Apocalypse Dragon is a terrifying being with a thousand covens that worship and serve her. Prideful and vain, she corrupted all the elements in the world to make the lands and creatures conform to her image of black and white perfection. (Learn more here)
Professor Lashings is an elder witch from Finley’s coven who worships the Apocalypse Dragon with steadfast loyalty. She knows all too well that those who do not obey will suffer the consequences.
Master Shifty is a mythical creature with the ability to manifest elemental power at will. According to urban legend, this benevolent protector fell to the Apocalypse Dragon because of a devious trap set by the Apocalypse worshippers. Their false cry for help at a critical moment helped the Apocalypse Dragon to gain the upper hand to split the Master Shifty into hundreds of corrupted little shifties. (Learn more here)
More characters to come for the map, so stay tuned for more!
Credits
Main
Paolo / @Pikywiky (🛠) — Programmer
ClaraChance (🛠) — Programmer
Supporters for 1-2 weeks
Alex / PileofAmoebas (🛠) — Programmer (Battle)
ShatteredReality (🛠) — Programmer (Overworld)
Kina / @maybemochas (🎨) — Artist (Finley, Items, Environment, Bear)
Felix (🎨👋) — Animator
Jaqui / @littlemissleestories (🎨) — Creative Director / Artist (Shifties, Cinematic)
LisaMichele (🎵) — Composer
Jaqui / @littlemissleestories (✍️) — Narrative Designer, Game Designer
Logan (✍️) — Writer
How to Open Mac Download:
(Mac likes to pretend indie game files are broken to prevent the opening of unreliable software. Luckily, there's a way around this.)
1) Open terminal (go to launchpad and search for it)
2) Follow instructions in this 1 min video: (skip to 0:40 for actual instructions)
Comments
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All of the visual aspects as well as the story mesh so well, however I did find the gameplay to be broken/buggy for the moment. Once you finish casting a spell, nothing happens. With that said, I very much appreciate the concept and hope it can be patched to work properly in the future. I'd like to see where this one goes :)
Oh so after you cast the spell you need to give the orb to a shifty in order to free them from corruption! There are some hints in the menu and dialogue but I’ll add a note to make that more clear!
Thank you for the clarification! I guess I just wasn't sure what to do after typing out the spell. To be fair, it also took a minute to figure out that the spell had to be typed. Perhaps some more instruction regarding the gameplay mechanics (in-game, of course) would be beneficial for this game.
The story, music and art all work so well together! The characters have charm and the object of the first level is intuitive and easy to understand.
I like how there's the extra challenge of making sure to avoid the creatures as you look for sticks and chant the spell - it's a great way to immerse the player into the world. Another detail I really liked was the menu being a book of spells.
I found the typing mechanic extremely difficult, yet was so interested to see what happened next, that I wanted to keep trying. Unfortunately, it was too difficult that I decided to give up. I haven't been able to get all 3 shifties after trying many times. (And wasn't able to win the first battle at night fall)
In fact, on my last attempt, it seemed I did finish entering the spell correctly, but nothing seemed to happen afterwords - so it might be a bug - or I might have made a mistake at the very end and didn't realize it. In that case, adding some feedback for the player to understand what went wrong would be helpful.
One way you might consider making the game even more enjoyable for everyone is to provide the player with different playing modes. You could get more creative with the names (like how the game Hades has a "god" mode rather than "easy").
For Shifty Witch perhaps there could be an option for "training mode" that is more forgiving to typing errors.
A few ways you might be able to do that is by adding checkpoints into the spells. So if the player gets halfway through the spell and messes up, they can start the spell again from the midway point. Another idea is to allow players to make a few mistakes in each spell.
If the modes are not an option, another way is to ease the learning curve with much shorter spells and progressively make them more complex. I noticed the spells change each time - but they all feel difficult to complete, so I think they need to be less wordy at first.
Hopefully, you found this feedback helpful. This is a great concept and I'm looking forward to seeing where you take it next.
Thank you for all the detailed feedback! I really appreciate you trying to win so many times (I’ve been trying too haha)
Yes we are definitely still working on making the game easier, such as reducing the speed of mini games, amount of enemies or increasing damage by the attacks. It’s optional to get all three shifties, although it does help in battle.
It is meant to start out easy and get progressively harder (tempo game and typing game speeding up for later spells) but right now we are already at the hard part haha so definitely working on that
it is great but its too complicated for my brain to handle haha
Thanks for the feedback! Can you share a bit more about what you liked/what you found difficult? We are polishing it up right now so any feedback would be helpful!
it just very overwhelming with all the different mechanics that go along with spelling