Witch Explorer

Witch Explorer is foremost a really cute tower defense game. I absolutely love the art and the mix between tower defense and bullet hell is very well done. The story of the game is simple, but fitting to the game and enough to make this a nice package. The tower defense levels of this game, which are the big part, are also very nice because they are not overly complicated with tons of different towers or anything. No, there are really only the necessary few type, however with the main character also being able to fight and the different types of enemies this makes for a very challenging, but easy to get into gameplay. It is overall really quite challenging though as you have to be careful with not letting enemies pass and getting to the end, building new towers, collecting mana and items and also not getting hit by ghosts and dying instantly. All that multitasking is what in the end can often lead to your doom. The bullet hell levels are also a nice extra, but I would really view them more as an extra and for sure not a big main part of the game, they also arent as good as the tower defense levels. The translation is quite good and I only found a few mistakes. There are also 5 stages with a few levels each giving this quite a few levels to complete and with them being quite hard and the need to farm a bit of money by playing some levels again it really gives this game quite a bit of playtime. The money you earn and the items you get can be used to upgrade your character and the towers and to build new buildings which will further increase your strength.
Honestly I really just enjoyed myself playing this and just love the overall charm this games has with its cute characters, its art and also its music. I also like that it is challenging and the depth in the gameplay. The one kinda big negative I have with it is that you really need a controller to play it, because the controls for the keyboard are not good and you dont get the option to change the keybindings which really only makes a controller the viable option.
Overall recommended if you enjoy tower defense and cute games, the price is also very fair.
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As a PC Tower Defense game, not having mouse control is just bizarre. I guess Japanese devs just have this hardwired mindset that everyone who plays video game has to be using a controller. Keyboard control without a mouse is just beyond awkward, you can just ignore this game if you don't have a controller.
The thing about control is that even with a controller, it still feels cluncky when placing towers. Can you imagine playing Bloon TD but when you place a monkey you have to move through the entire list with shoulder buttons? Yeah, that's what you gonna do for the next 6 hours.
But I still cleared the game. The dev actually thought about it themselves that it's too much grind so they just let you skip the entire stage 3 and straight to the last boss fight. I'm giving a positive review just for that self-aware design decision. Plus the devs also changed bento/retry mechanics that were obviously flawed.
The only redeeming value about this game is the graphics. Other than that it's just a below-average tower defense with unnecessary long grind, but at the same time you don't find that many indie games with graphics this gorgeous, especially the food part.
Devs, if you ever wanted to do a restaurant sim, I would definitely support it. Your art on food is just divine.

Good game but quite short. Promising, but could be more fleshed out. I enjoyed the whole playtime, and I would recommend other people to pick it up.
There's 5 "worlds" of sorts. The first one is all tutorials, and the last one is purely a boss fight. By the time the game gets rolling, it's already over. For how many assets the game has, it's kind of sad how fast it ends. This is going to be mainly pointing out specifics for better development.
(1) Hitbox is unclear. It's kind of difficult to be sure what will hit me and what won't.
(2) Build box is unreliable. It's really annoying trying to figure out if I am properly hovering over what I want to build or upgrade. Left Bumper should reduce my build range, just as Right Bumper increases it, and the tile I have selected should both be more responsive (your build-cursor can't be near the edges for it to count), and more visible (should just have a semi-transparent white square showing which square you have selected).
(3) Controls should be rebindable. Just a straight up bind-to-any key. Having a toggle option of putting Dodge from X to O doesn't make sense if you expect them to hold Square to keep shooting.
(4) Controls don't properly stop during cutscenes or menus. This means if you are pressing X to go through a conversation, it can accidentally take that as a build command and waste your mana building something in a spot you didn't want to, during a dialogue box. Your cancel key could be Summon, and Triangle could be used to dodge, saving X just for building. Similarly, it should be harder to sell a tower; when it doesn't have upgrades, just two accidental presses of your dodge button sells your tower. You could leave the upgrade menu always available even when you're maxed out, so it never defaults over sell. (Why can you sell the towers in stage 1-1, btw?)
(5) It's incredibly frustrating to have to fight ghosts when your bullets can't pierce enemies, and towers don't target them. This kind of thing would normally be dealt with by having anti-ghost only towers, or the ability to swap between two bullet types, anti-ghost and anti-everything, rather than having a ghost spray and pray bullets while being behind a wave of enemies being protected by bubbles.
(6) Give a longer warning before you spawn in enemies. Some of the banshees spawn in with only a second of warning in the middle of the field, making me get hit when my eyes aren't focused on my character, but my tower area.
(7) The flying stages are okay, but also horribly thought out. The stage 4 final boss is really annoying with mobs just constantly showing up during it, with the ice towers sometimes showing up so fast without enough prior notice. The upgrades in towers are pretty dumb? They should be upgrades to your firing ability, not just movable towers. Why would I ever pick up volt or piercing during a flying stage when their range is so low? It almost seems like I am punished not for upgrading salamander tower to max to speed through the flying stages a bit faster. Why can I shoot upgrades off the screen? Why do I have to pick which magic circle catches the upgrade? It should just be, I catch the upgrade, it enchants my shots with volt, or something like that.
(8) Tower ranges are longer than they appear and never as clear as they appear because they seem to target edge-to-edge, meaning if an enemy's hitbox is within any pixel of its range, it will shoot it, or hit it. This makes it so tier 3 volt, for example, can shock 2 blocks out, even though it's not at all clear it can. Ranges should be re-adjusted and made at least not entirely edge-to-edge, like expand tower hitboxes by 50px and then reduce enemy hitboxes by 50px.
(9) Data like how richochet works or how salamander aoe works, and how much damage it does, should be described in the upgrades.
(10) If the game was longer, I would say to make the doll upgrades varied, rather than just big stat increases. Like having her freeze, or do piercing, or do circular damage, or do vertical damage, etc. rather than how simple it is. Same thing with food.
(11) Game should be longer, it's really just 3 worlds + 1 extra stage.
(12) You could have spaced out the ending a bit more story-wise, the sad moment is ripped away from too soon.
(13) Either make game speeds adjustable with more variance (1x 1.5x 2x 3x), make the speed up a key you can hld down, or add in a way to move slower during 2x or 3x. It's nearly impossible to make any kind of precise movements in 3x since you also move 3x faster, and it's easy to run into an enemy because your one tap moved you 1.5 blocks and now you need to restart.

I have put 15 hours into this game.
I quite like what there is of it, but it feels like it isn't quite finished.
I currently have all of the upgrades except the final room which you can't upgrade until some higher "Abyss" level.
And that is the problem. I am only on zone 3 and I have seen all the upgrades. There is no more real to collect coins or items or anything else.
The skill tree really needs expansion.
Indeed, at this point you can't get more powerful, and some of the zones are pretty tough--so there is no way to keep coming back stronger in order to complete the levels.
I very much like the art style and game play, but there needs to be more of the game. In fact, I just came back to this page to see if it was an early release and there was more coming---but it appears to be a final product.

This is a very cute game with some interesting skill and strategy for a tower defense. It's not the hardest game in the world but there definitely is a nice mix of puzzle and dexterity to the game, especially if you want to 3 star all the maps and bosses. Some of the layouts really push you to consider different towers or find the perfect timing to get your tower engine running and even then, sometimes, there are still moments in some maps where you have to frantically fix a lane or really figure out how to patch problems since your witch can only face one direction.
The only real negatives I had for the game is that the story is so-so and you realistically will upgrade everything way before you finish the game, even if you are not replaying missions. It would have been nice to have more things to sink money into, like more art, maybe some extra levels to the towers/doll abilities, etc. And the side scrolling stages (except the last one) felt underwhelming and half baked. The last one was a decent showcase of the system though.
@Pico Games - I love your art and hope you find a way to showcase more of it. I haven't found any online portfolio (beyond twitter) or anything but would hope someday you make more games or have someone commission your work!
Thank you for a nice 10-12 hour Tower Defense Experience!!

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This is a unique tower defense game with shoot'em up element. As Tia, an apprentice witch, embark on the fantasy world and get treasures. Very cute anime girls!
TDとSTGの融合ゲーム。キャラも非常に可愛い！

Well, i played the prologue and was really looking forward to seeing the continuation from the last one and so far its really fun^^ big fan of the story and characters and I hope this hidden gem of a game has installments in the future, theres a lot of stuff to build on, and i hope this game gets more traffic!