The witch and the bottle of concept Steam Charts & Stats

I'm rather suprised there are no other english reviews at the moment, so despite being fairly early on in the game I guess I'll write one. The game is a pretty good pseudo-metroidvania pseudo-rougelike, and I use pseudo for both because while it has some elements of both genres, it still lacks a lot of the core elements of both. That isn't to say it's a bad thing, but if you come in wanting "a metroidvania", you likely won't be satisfied by the game, and same for wanting "a rougelike". Though despite that, if you just want a fun game, it's definitely worth picking up, especially given how cheap it is. It has a somewhat rough start, as the controls and combat take a bit to get used to, but once you are familiar with it, zipping around levels thanks to the somewhat floaty movement is actually quite fun. You play as... a witch, she doesn't remember anything about herself, but everyone keeps saying she is Alice, the most powerful witch on this island. Since she's lost her memory, she can't remember how to use any magic, so combat involves bashing enemies over the head with her broom. But you have a companion who can cast magic, which is hit-reliant, as you have 3 spells. A magic bullet, a single-enemy time freeze, and a heal, all of which recharge by attacking enemies, so the more you hit things, the more magic your companion casts for you. You quickly learn Alice is in some sort of simulation, or something of the sort, as despite being 100% a fantasy setting with magic fountains of immortality and witches, there's a lot of strange "glitches", such as Alice's face always being covered by a black pixelated smear, or how the meta-currency you collect to permanently upgrade yourself has a garbled name as if it were corrupted. Your companion convinces you to help her defeat the demon king, only when you inevitably die, she reveals she has the "permissions" and "access" to reset time back to before you started, as though she has admin access to this world. Despite that though, while the levels never change their layout, NPCs remember past interactions, and any upgrades purchased via those strange corrupted gems and prisms, what enemies are found where might change, meaning there's not a lot of variety between runs outside of the run-specific upgrades you get. The combat is fairly simple, like I mentioned you can attack, and dash, and later unlock up to 4 special abilities, so aside from movement keys you only have 3 other buttons to use. Some enemies have shields, which you need to jump and downsmash them to break through, others have hats which prevent downsmashing so you need to face them head on, and much later on some enemies might have both, so you need to rely on magic to kill or freeze them so you can hit their backside. Killing an enemy gives coins, which can be spent on upgrades for that run, rarely drop corrupted gems which can be spent on permanent upgrades that last between runs, while special chests around each zone give corrupted prisms which also give permanent upgrades. But that brings up I think the biggest issue the game has, technically there are a ton of coin upgrades to pick from during a run, however there's really only 3 that are actually effective. Crit, heal on crit, and time freeze. There are a lot of other upgrades, ranging from movement speed, to missing HP buffs, to summoning magic orbs to attack nearby enemies, however the ones that do damage do pathetically little damage, and the ones that don't often aren't worth getting compared to stacking crit, HP regen on crit, and extended time freeze duration. Those 3 upgrades allow you to just face tank every boss in the game, as you outheal their damage, and even if you don't, they aren't immune to time freeze so you can just freeze and get some heals during that time. The second big issue is that there isn't much reason to explore levels once you go through them. The chests with prisms vanish once collected, and while there are some puzzles that require later abilities, while you're working towards getting that ability, there's no reason other than wanting more coins to get more upgrades to not just bee-line straight to the boss. Add onto that how the 3 upgrades I mentioned before are so OP, the lack of enemy variety and unchanging map layouts, and there isn't much variety between "runs". The invisible walls preventing you from backtracking don't help either, as after beating a new boss, if you don't go exactly to the zone the game told you to go to and try to explore any other path, you'll likely end up locked into a different set of levels than intended, meaning you can only progress the story and find more abilities if you give up, or slog out the rest of that run. The low drop rate of gems, and non-respawning nature of prisms mean that there's generally little, if any, incentive to not just obediently follow the big red marker telling you where the next boss is. Regardless though, the game is rather enjoyable. It has elements of metroidvanias and rouge-likes, but honestly if you play it hoping for either of those two genres, you'll be dissapointed. Try to treat it as it's own unique experience, not by the standards of those two genres, and it's a lot more fun to play through.