The Witch's House
17-02-2025
Currently Eating: Hot chocolate
Currently Reading: Mountain Girl River Girl, by Ting-xing Ye; Monkey King, by Wu Cheng'en
Currently Watching: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, part 6; MLP:FiM, season 2
Currently Playing: The Witch's House
Currently Listening to: if i were a fish, by corook, feat. Olivia Barton
My husband, sister-in-law, and I are talking about making an RPG Maker horror game. My SiL is doing the art and writing, my husband is assisting with the writing and horror elements, and I'll be doing the actual programming, since I've been wanting to learn Ruby and use RPG Maker for - geez - about ten years now.
But, while we're still in the brainstorming phase, we've decided we're going to play a bunch of pixel RPG games for inspiration, to see what sort of elements and ludonarrative techniques we like, especially since this is a medium none of us have ever expressed ourselves through before.
The way we play games together is Game Grumps-style; one person plays while the others watch, and we talk about it as we go along.
Last night, I got to play the first one, since I'm the pixel RPG veteran of the three of us. I played a ton of them in middle school, so I picked one that's short and very nostalgic for me - The Witch's House.
It is simultaneously spooky and hilarious. There are a lot of little jumpscares, many of which elicited some very funny sounds from me. However, some of the scares and death scenes are so over the top, we couldn't help but crack up at them. Also the cat is just the best - "rascally" is an apt word.
I first took them through the normal ending, then the true ending. Without spoiling anything in case you haven't played the game, I'll just say that I got really into voicing the dialogue at the end, only to trail off as the main character's father enters the scene. All three of us fell silent. The storytelling is so minimalist throughout the game, but it's just enough to make that ending really intense. I'm not gonna lie, even though I already knew what was going to happen, I still choked up. (I'm a pretty big crybaby in general.)
I still really love this game. It's honestly a lot more well done than I remember, and I'd be happy to replay it again. If you'd like to play it yourself, you can either buy the remastered version on Steam, or you can download the original for free here.
