Witch Hunt

This game is beyond amazing. It reminds me of back in the day, when I would have a few friends over, we would get some pizza & a 12 pack of soda, & we'd stay up all night passing the controller back & forth, trying to complete Resident Evil or Silent Hill. While not similar in game style, this is a nostalgic experience that I highly recommend.
You play as an unnamed man who rides into the town of Bellville, as he is destined by birthright to protect these people from the monsters that roam the Bellville Woods outside of town. The town is used as a sort of base, where you're not only safe from monsters, but you can heal, purchase perks & ammunition from the Trader, & explore around the town to find hidden Gold & other treasures. As you find more Gold in town & around the Woods, you can purchase perks that range from faster reloading to being able to sneak more silently to recovering health twice as fast.
There are 3 main monsters (no spoilers here), & the game sort of works in phases. In phase 1, for example, the town will have a certain state with certain Gold spots & certain NPC interactions, then after you defeat the 1st monster, the town will shift to a 2nd state, with different Gold spots, different doors are open/shut, & there are different NPC interactions. So on & so forth for the next phases. It's very highly recommended that you explore the town IN FULL between killing each beast, as some of the treasure can be missed permanently. The treasure in the Wood, however, seems to be available throughout the entire game.
Beginner Tips:
- The game autosaves EVERY TIME you warp, meaning when you unlock a certain sign at a certain cabin, that can/will act as an emergency save & simultaneously allow you to "visit home base" while still out & about. I call it the "Town Save Loop", as it allows you to use a sort of "save state" between each run for each treasure. I highly recommend you save Mana for other uses than saving, as there are only a handful of save spots in the world, 3/5 of them are right next to town warps, & as for the other 2, you really don't want to have your character saved while out in the dangerous Woods.
- Buy the Skilled Merchant perk FIRST & AS SOON AS YOU HAVE ENOUGH GOLD. This will give you 20% more Gold for every treasure you pick up, & if you play your cards right, you can leave your first town visit with more than 1 perk.
- Following the above mentioned perk, SAVE UP & BUY THE BOUNTY HUNTER LICENSE AS SOON AS YOU CAN. This will allow you to collect Gold from the Mayor for EVERY MONSTER YOU KILL in the Woods, which will quickly add up & allow you to purchase more perks/ammo, in addition to the fact that monsters will sometimes drop Gold upon defeat. So you get double Gold for those! All in all, you can end up getting around 30-40 Gold per monster when adding the Gold drop & the what the Mayor gives you, good RNG luck being considered of course.
- Most people will probably disagree, but I recommend looking up a map that has the treasure spots marked, saving it into Microsoft Paint, & making "risk runs" to each treasure, one at a time, while visiting the town in between to heal & autosave, & doing all your treasure hunting BEFORE YOU KILL THE 1ST BEAST. I wont say anything more in regards to the game itself other than the overworld becomes much more difficult to safely navigate after the 1st beast is killed. It's really in your best interest to find all the treasure & fully load up on every perk before you move on to the next Beasts. I know that sort of kills the natural progression of the game, but believe me when I say, you'll be considering restarting when you realize you've locked your game into a more difficult state.
- Don't waste your Silver Bullets on regular monsters in the Woods, as they die in 1-2 hits, & once you start upgrading more perks, navigating without having monsters bothering you becomes much easier.
- Shoot down the Night Flyer as soon as you see him! He's a giant flying "bat man" & lets just say he's got a blessed tongue.
- Consider checking out Andrii's other games, there are 2 of them that are very similar to Witch Hunt in gameplay style, those 2 being Shadow's Peak & Skinwalker Hunt. Shadow's Peak is a sort of spiritual predecessor to Witch Hunt, while Skinwalker Hunt is a spiritual sequel. His other game is excellent too, that being Gynophobia, but isn't very similar to Witch Hunt.
All in all, Witch Hunt goes into my must-play list of games. High replay value, very fun alone or with friends, very smooth & intuitive gameplay, light but very engaging & rewarding RPG elements, just enough story to give players a clear view of what's going on without losing the atmosphere the game is going for, & a challenging, yet rewarding combat system that's a classic FPS shooter style with period-accurate weapons & reloading animations. The only thing that I don't like about the takeaway is that now, I wish there was either more clones of Witch Hunt, or some way to un-learn the entire game from my memory so I could re-experience the entire thing, fresh. I just wish we could somehow get a sequel to this exact gameplay, & yes, Skinwalker Hunt is another very similar hunting game, the additions of things like a Home Base, a solid story & location structure, & the upgrade system really make Witch Hunt stand out to me. Skinwalker Hunt is just a little too stripped down to be quite at the level Witch Hunt has achieved. Anyways, enough of my tangents.
10/10 I could not recommend this game any higher. PLAY THIS GAME RIGHT NOW.

A must have if you like indie horror games that are actually good.
I loved the well-done, spooky atmosphere and how ominous the hunts were. There was always some supernatural creature to look out for, but also plenty of interesting landmarks to discover along the way. And that witch, she will send shivers down your spine....

Playing this gem again around Halloween 3 years later, it's still a nice little horror game. Not recommended for zoomers with ADHD, this is a slow-paced game.

By far my favorite indie horror game. This story driven open world hunting game comes with countless twists interactive world building opportunities in the environment that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The 18th century setting with muskets adds a nice twist to the usual hunting game genre, making every shot count. Get your washer ready when you play this game. Your bloomers are going to need it.

Have to say gua yall are the best making this game i havent finshed it yet but im enjoying every bit of it. by far the best horror game i played i really recommend trying it out! 10/10

I have had hard time to find enjoyable horror game as most are just walking sims with jumpscares. And while this game didn't spook me i enjoyed it as an adventure game a lot.
Dev (it was done mainly by one person) put so much effort in attention to detail. For example you can interact with rocking chairs and in town there is a sign that can span owl or crow on top of it. Dev didn't have to add these but yet he did - and it helps building the world and atmosphere.
Also normally map of this size and this open would feel boring. But there are so many little secrets AND the gameplay loop of hunting big target (along with dark night time atmosphere and randomly spawning smaller enemies) work really well. All this makes the map have purpose even if its mostly just trees and hills.
And while most enemies will just run towards you to do melee damage there are few enemies that perform their attacks differently. The bosses and enemies add just enough variation that you won't get bored. Only downside i really saw was with Whisperers as their damage to hp is way too low that most of the time you don't care about tanking a hit. There are some situations where you don't want them to reach you but im not gonna spoil why exactly.
Bosses are pretty tanky and kinda simple but knowing this was made by one person and they wanted to increase playtime somehow i fully understand this aspect.
One of the best games of this type i have played and i hope any (solo) indie game dev will look at least bit of gameplay to understand how to make map of right size for their game - as imo this game perfected it. If it was any other genre the map would be way too big and feel like boring walking sim. And for bigger studio there should had been more maps or make it larger. But for small team (or solo) if they wanna make large map they need either to fill it with something or have large map to have some purpose (in this game it is to make hunting part feeling like hunting).
Great game. Enjoyed it fully.

If you're thinking about buying this game just do it. It's well worth the price for any horror fan. It has an incredibly eerie atmosphere, surprisingly large map with a good amount of secrets and surprises scattered about to reward exploration. Those are just a few things I love about this game but I'll let you discover everything else that it does so well!