Witch Hunt
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Witch Hunt is a challenging horror themed hunting game that takes place in the 18th century. Main focus of the game is on exploration, non-linearity, and atmosphere. Witch Hunt features lite RPG elements in form of a financial system and a skill system. You play as a witch hunter who took the task of eliminating all evil that settled in the woods near the town of Bellville. To achieve your goals, you'll be able to use weapons, magic, and other tools that can be found and bought. Warning: Hunting requires patience and perseverance. If it's not your strongest qualities you may find this game to be very frustrating.
Steam User 29
This game is secretly Worm Odyssey
Steam User 26
Witch Huntwhere you can channel your inner Van Helsing, hunt down the monsters terrorizing a small village, and uncover something much more sinister.
Do you want to be a true hunter of the occult and deadly creatures of the night, almost like a demon hunter (minus the bows/crossbows and super reflexes)? Well, Witch Hunt offers you the opportunity to do just that! You just don’t get to be as handsome as Hugh Jackman (...) Taking place in the 18th century, armed with nothing but a flintlock pistol, musket, and saber, you venture to a small town being attacked by evil creatures that are settled in the nearby woods. This is no walk in the park, as this will test your patience and perseverance. There is no hand-holding here, do you have what it takes to become a true hunter?
Welcome to Bellville
Witch Hunt was created by a single person, Andrii Vintsevych, and I will say for a single developer game, it is very well made! The game may use pre-made assets, but it was put together with attention to detail, and it is no simple asset flip. You can tell there was a lot of love and hard work put into it, and it shows! Everything feels like they belong here, and everything feels like part of the world. The world feels dark and grim, and the performance is quite stable! Keep in mind if u have an older PC, so u had to lower the graphics a bit and surprisingly u still have 40-50 fps. Sadly the graphical settings are limited to a single slider, and the only audio you can change is the music. There is an FOV slider that ranges from 65 to 90. Other than that the game is dripping with atmosphere, and combine that with some great ambience, it really sets the mood perfectly!
Right off the bat, let’s get one of my biggest complaints out of the way: the storytelling. The story being told is simply text on a blank screen. There is no dialogue of the player explaining the story, and I feel the game really could have benefited from this. It just feels sort of lazy to have some white text on a black screen telling you what the story is. However, there is dialogue from NPCs in the game! It is not a whole lot, but you’ll find a few lines from the merchant in the town, the doctor, and the mayor who has the most lines in the game. The town that acts as your hub area is pretty small, with just a few buildings you can actually explore, but you will want to search around as there are items that you can collect for money which you are going to need. At the start of the game, you are attacked by a beast just outside of town which took most of your equipment, but you still have your guns and sword. Even with that, though, you still only have some ammo and low health, so explore the town to get some money, and maybe get some upgrades. It is quite cool that when you defeat a boss, there will be slight changes to the town, such as new items to find!
In the game, you will find chests/doors that are locked and require a lockpick to open them. At the start of the game, you will only have one and will get a 20% chance of success at a lockpick. There are no mini-game or luck based situations, it’s purely RNG if you get it or not. Failing to pick it will cause your lockpick to break. You can’t buy lockpicks and they can only be found in bundles. There is a skill book that will increase the chance of picking to 45%, though it still seems like a very low number. I have to note that in the end I still had 20 lockpicks left and had opened everything in the game.
Saving in this game is done in a few different ways. You save from either going to a new area (town or to forest,) or spending mana on the yellow rocks in certain areas around the map. Trust me when I say you will have to save quite often, as dying will lose all progress up to the last save, and it can be brutal if you have been wandering around the forest collecting items and getting kills. Still not hard enough? There is a “Perma” mode, that disables all saving, and only saves when you complete killing one of the bosses. Sounds like a really fun time doesn’t it?
Enter the Woods
The real meat of the game is in the forest, where you are alone, left to hunt down the beast and other evil creatures lurking in the area. The main objective is to kill the werewolf. From the very start, you have the ability to know if it’s nearby, as a small symbol in the top left will indicate that the monster is within 500 meters of you. It might not seem like much, but that is quite far! There will also be a heartbeat, and it will speed up when you get closer to the monster. You also have an ability called “Evil Sight” that, at a cost of mana, lets you see through the creature’s sight, giving you a rough idea about where it creature might be. For the most part, this can be kind of useless if you have no idea what the layout of the forest is as 90% of the time everything looks with trees everywhere. Very rarely will the creature decide to be on top of a hill or beside a landmark, but I guess that’s part of the hunting experience.
The forest is quite big and has some interesting landmarks hidden throughout it. The first thing you want to get is a map, as you are going to need this to get around. It is located at the cabin in the middle of the map, which also serves as a quick travel point between town. You can explore and find various landmarks strung across the map, like corpses with loot, a tree house, tents, statues, skeletons, a dog locked in a cage, spider cave, etc. For the most part, though, it’s mostly trees and rocks with some fog in some areas, but oh boy is it dripping with atmosphere.
Everything Hurts
As you’re exploring the forest, monsters will slowly start to spawn into the forest. Each monster has their own sound which you can hear from a distance. You are able to sneak around most monsters if you wish, but you will want to get as many kills as possible. Each time you kill a monster, they will give you some mana, and possibly even drop some loot! Every monster is pretty simple and will run up to you to hit you, and will die within a few hits or just one hit in the head. At first,
Tanky Bosses
From what I’ve seen, there are a total of four bosses. The first boss you have to hunt is the werewolf, which isn’t a terribly hard boss and quite fun to hunt. It’s only when you start going after the second boss that it becomes annoying. The second boss is the Sacrificial Tree, which you have to kill before you can hurt the Witch. This Witch also follows you the second you enter the forest.
Verdict
For the price, it’s a pretty decent Indie game, that with some more improvements could be even better! There are just those few issues I noted that stop it from being perfect, which is why I was kind of on the fence about if I should recommend this game or not. The first time exploring the forest is definitely nerve-wracking, and keeps you on your toes! but is a very good game! on of the best who i palyed in this genre.
Steam User 23
Oneyplays Send me here.
Great game, great atmosphere.
Steam User 14
Good game, but too easy. The OneyPlays video has tons more health on the bosses, and heartbeating drained mana — that all seems to be gone now. Wish there was an option to enable the original difficulty.
EDIT: Neverrmind, found out you can revert the game to a previous update. 10/10 game. I don't understand why some of you are fussing over the tree boss, it's very easy to keep your distance and dodge projectiles.
Steam User 11
Fun, short indie title. Exploration was enjoyable. Can get bland after a while, and it doesn't take long to get all the perks, but that wasn't much of an issue for me due to the price. Solid for an indie survival horror.
Steam User 7
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.
Steam User 7
I wish this game was longer.
You can finish it in about 5 hours give or take (which in writing moment ive finished the game twice), but the experience is amazing, the weapons you use are not of the conventional variety, you use flint locks, which means you have to reload after each shot, but you get 1 pistol and 1 rifle with you, so you technically have 2 shots before reload and then there is also your sword, which you can use to save ammo with or use in a pinch incase you miss 2 shots.
The game doesnt hold your hand at all pretty much, you get very little information from the village of the few villagers you can talk to, this is nice though, cause it adds to the atmosphere, of which you can cut with a knife.
The upgrade system has some interesting perks, here i would personally recommend getting the one that gives money per kill first, since that perk just keeps on giving passively.
Some of these perks i both like and dislike, and one of them is the ammo increase, you start out with like 20 shots, but with the perk you have too much imo, because you lose a bit of the dread from "having just enough bullets" to "i can now shoot everything i see", still, its good its there.
As far as bosses, i think the werewolf is by far the best, it just is, makes you feel like you are on a hunt and when it gets closer to you, you dont really know where its gonna come and get ya!
I was about to write about the other bosses, but i realized its more fun to discover what they do on your own, But i can say that i think the last boss is a bit of a disappointment compared to all the others.
Enjoyment score on this one im gonna put at 84%
Very atmospheric horror with a rough difficulty, dogs and zombies can almost 1 shot you and there are many of them, keep a steady hand when shooting.
I think the biggest drawback is that there is only 1 map, large, sure, but it's only one, could defintely have benefitted from some Diablo inspiration; more levels below, crypt, catacomb, caves, deep caves, outskirts of hell and then litteral hell.
And there are only 3 weapons, could have been expanded upon.