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5 things I demand from Witchbrook, Chucklefish’s new magical Stardew-likeNay, humbly request
Nay, humbly request
This is exciting to me. I like games like this, and am also a HP fan (Hufflepuff; unofficial merch only). Witchbrook doesn’t have a release date yet, as Chucklefish are operating on an it’s-done-when-it’s-done-and-no-crunch policy, but the new screenshots show off a very detailed, very beautiful world. And having no set release date means they have plenty of time to put in all the features that I, their number one customer, insist upon! Which I will now list for you here.
Commitment to the school setting
I’m the sort of person who really benefits from structure in their day. I’m having to be really strict with myself currently, making sure I have a shower as soon as I get up and before I start work, because otherwise the option is there to just not have a shower or get dressed all day. And for me, that’s a very slippery slope.
Point is, I can’t think of any game I’ve played that’s either wholly or partially set in a school that has the actual structure a school day provides. Even the actual Harry Potter games - which, as we all know, are and were excellent - only gestured in the most cursory way at the idea of a timetable of lessons.
(School houses are a bonus, of course. And as an aside, they’re not only features of punishingly posh boarding schools. In primary school I was in Raleigh, out of Cook, Scott, Raleigh and Drake. Secondary school I was in Avon, from Avon, Kennet, Silbury and Martinsell. The latter were named after local geographical landmarks, which at least made for a less colonial naming scheme than the former).
Flying broomsticks
I will not explain this one further. It should be obvious that if this game does not have some kind of functional broomstick it is a 0/10. I will institute scores on RPS for the first time, specifically to punish this game if it does not have flying broomsticks.
New and imaginative activities
Slice o' life sims like Stardew Valley are great, but I’m starting to feel a kind of grinding inevitability whenever I see a new one crop up. You already know you’re going to be farming stuff, and there’ll be a dungeon full of monsters to optionally crawl. Yawnarama, am I right? But different settings offer a lot of scope that these games don’t always take advantage of.
It’s why I really enjoyGraveyard Keeper. In that, you are a grotty little weirdo living adjacent to a graveyard and maintaining it. You farm dead bodies, amongst other things, and make sandwiches out of them. Unique! Interesting! A good way to get sick! You do also farm vegetables, but only to add other ingredients to your human-meat sandwiches, and to give carrots to the donkey that pulls the body cart (because it has unionised with itself and demands vegetable payment. Play Graveyard Keeper.).
So I expect that I will be farming in Witchbrook. But I want to be farming things like frogspawn, lizard tails, and possibly even weirder things for spells, like “joy” or “the smell you get after rain”. Let’s really play with the concept in front of us here!
Ran out of Witchbrook screens, so here is me secretly disposing of a body in Graveyard Keeper
A variety of pet choices
I’m making an assumption, but what I think is a fair one, that we’ll be allowed to have pets in Witchbrook. After all, if this really is Harry Potter meets Stardew Valley, then it’s a blend of two things where pets feature heavily. If that is presumably the case, then now is an ideal time to expand our thinking on what constitutes a good and useful animal companion.
For too long we have laboured under the yoke of being told that the only pets worth having fall into two categories: dog and cat. [slams fist arrhythmically on table] No more! Witches have always known that the animal kingdom has a real breadth of useful and interesting pets, many of which can be made into familiars*. A black cat is only the least imaginative option out there. Sure, a reptile isn’t as cuddly, but reptiles do loads of cool stuff that dogs can’t. Dogs don’t have rocket propelled tongues, do they? No they do not. Give me frogs and toads! Give me corvids! Tarantulas! Insects! Snakes! Give me a pet goat, you cowards!
Varied and magical romances
I would especially like to draw your attention to the last option, since traditionally witches were accused of fucking the actual devil. So if you can’t do that in Witchbrook, it is ahistorical and inaccurate. I will not be taking more questions at this time, thank you.
