Mixing in item collecting from a Adventure game into a 2D action game doesn't quite work that well
In the age of monthly releases of 16 bit like indie games I feel like developers have to try to stand out more than ever before. Which is very hard to do these days and in this situation I don’t even see 1% of all of them since they usually have to have some oomph behind them before I even think about picking them up. Yet in this case I just bought this because Wayforward was publishing it and the whimsical cartoon like pixel art looked nice. As the game title implies we play a witch apprentice named Belle who has accidentally been blamed for ruining a very important brew that must be completed before the night ends. So it is up to her to make her way around the school and beyond to get all the ingredients to complete the witches brew.
Her main offensive weapons consist of her wand that can launch five fireballs at enemies. It can also be upgrade along with her health bar just by defeating enemies. Which works on a simple XP bar system that makes attacks slightly better although honestly until Belle hits level 8 it is barely even noticeable other than more health. She does have a few other tricks up her sleeves since new abilities are acquired via boss battles. As a game in the ever popular Metroidvania genre it doesn’t have anything new to offer. The ever useful double jump and a dash are apart of a standard set of upgrades. They are all useful even if they don’t offer anything new.
Other than jumping around shooting fire at enemies the main motif of the game is collecting a bunch of random items that are then used to solve the next problem that shows up. For example a kitchen cook is preventing Belle from getting some foil so obviously you would need to get a rotten fruit to drag a bunch of flies over to distract her. Some of the item use is a bit vague and I’m not sure I would have figured them out without a little bit of help.
The general design of everything looks great. The super deformed cartoon look makes the visuals look nice. If only the moment to moment gameplay offered a bit more I would say this game would be better than average. Yet it very much gets bogged down in a never ending fetch quest till the credits roll. If the world had a bit more to explore it would break up the general tedium of finding new items all the time. After a bit I got used to it since the game keeps up a fairly brisk pace it doesn’t stick around long enough to get boring since my final time clocked just over 3 hours.
As a full package this doesn’t offer anything different from the myriad of similar games. Making it a hard game to recommend. If the art style or the music speaks to you then it might be worth picking up. Otherwise it might be best to save your money for something else.