The Witch's Yarn Reviews

I was expecting something wholly different than what I got. So, I exited stage left and uninstalled it.

Poorly written. Really wish I'd read the reviews prior. I don't mind visual novel games, rally, but this one just made no sense. People don't talk like this or act this way, so why am I being asked to believe they do? Don't bother with this one, true waste of money.

This game has a cool idea, but it's too slow and it's a bit hard to keep interested in it. Very story based, gameplay is almost non-existent , I know it's a visual novel- like game but even so I struggled to read all the dialogue. You basically gotta keep clicking on the options on your screen until you pick the right one and the story progresses. The repetitive song nearly drove me mad. Cool idea, but falls flat.

I wanted to like this game because it had such an interesting concept, but unfortunately. . . I thought it would be something akin to a visual novel, and it sort of is. The major flaw is that the story is just not that engaging--you're a witch opening a yarn store. Okay, so it says that in the game info, but I expected lots of humor, absurdity, etc. given the concept. Those aspects do not exist, and what story there is is very dry. The game is set up to play like you are creating a movie, but you're really not. Instead, as the other reviewer mentioned, you are just tediously clicking little icons of each character at the top of the screen. Then you wait for them to pop in at odd places in your yarn store, a cartoon-like bubble of their speech pops up, you read it, and then repeat. Over and over again. In the screen shots, it looks like you get different settings, but I never made it out of the yarn store before uninstalling.

[b]- Endora: Samantha, I will not stand here and be insulted by something which is 94 percent water. - Darrin Stephens: Oh, yeah! Well, what about something which is a hundred percent hot air? Bewitched (1964 - 1972)[/b] Well... This is the first of Mousechief's games that I've tried, and... I am bored out of my wits. First and foremost, the game doesn't deliver anything it says in the store description: no, it is not a delightful reading - the narrative is boorish and the humor is forced; it has nothing to do with any kind of theatre experience aside the usage of the word "cue", and as a game that claims to be a hybrid between a P&C adventure and a visual novel, it fails at both genres! Okay, let's begin with the story. Here we have a middle-aged witch who has foresworn magic to live happily with her chosen mortal. She gets married, has three kids and lives happily ever after until she loses her husband to cancer. Wednesday is now alone and apparently on a full-blown midlife crisis, since she opens a yarn shop to become a productive and independent woman of the 21st century, alongside her familiar, Greta - who is a mushroom in a pot. Her mother and most her other relatives belittle her choice and wish for her to come back to her magical ways, but Wednesday persists. She'll run this yarn shop with success, to prove that she is and always will be more than what her relatives deemed her to be. As you can see, this is, more or less, the ever after part for [i]Bewitched[/i]: what happens after the happily ever after, right? The idea itself is nice, and if it were not to bear deep rooted execution mistakes, it might have been fun even. But as it is, it is one of the most boring games I've ever played; and I'm claiming this as a long standing visual novel gamer. No, I don’t have any problems with either a static/slow progressing gameplay or reading blocks of texts for the sake of story; as long as the narrative is interesting, characters are endearing and realistic; and the interaction is somewhat enjoyable. Heck, it is none of the above for this game. Let's start with the display. I am aware for this to be a low budget indie game anyhow; but who in their right minds would use full static clip arts for character avatars? That is plain ridiculous. The screen size is stuck in a small window, in which reading hurts your eyes and gives you a headache immediately. Environment art is neither esthetic, nor sensible; and the same 2 jazz tracks loop on the background with appalling audio quality. Thus, even if the narrative would be interesting enough, you'd give in after your first 10 minutes, and get done with this thing. Still, I have persisted for nearly 2 hours, and all that I have managed to discover at the end of 3rd chapter is... that characters are not relatable since they bear the depth of a rainy day sidewalk puddle, the humor is the driest I've ever seen - like it's been taken out of a 50s infomercial - and the gameplay is insufferable. At every scene, you are given the option to click one of the topics - people, things, events etc. - from the bar to initiate some kind of scene for them. They are called cues. You keep clicking them in the right order in hopes of reaching for your goal and make the story progress. But these interactions are deadly repetitive, and it takes time for you to go through various options since you'd have no idea what a positive cue for Wednesday would be, and what would be a negative cue. You keep going through cues until you magically solve the current scene - which apparently counts as a "puzzle" for this game - and you carry on through another block of insufferable dialogue. There you go: picking cues counts as P&C, and reading texts counts as VN, huh? But the game erases the enjoyable part of both of those genres: a VN asks for character and narrative depth first and foremost; and a P&C adventure needs that "aha!" moment when you finally arrange the right combination for an actual puzzle to progress the story. Since you can only use given cues here, no "aha!" moment for you. You just play through some probabilities. Should this be called a revolutionary combination of two genres? Nope, nope, nope. I cannot take this anymore. Thank you. As a lover of stories in games, this is one of those rare moments that I'll leave a game unfinished. I simply cannot handle the bore. It might come as a harsh judgement, but please, stay away from this game. Both for a VN or a P&C adventure, you can do thousands of times better than this. Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/11672469/]here[/url] - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!