The Knight Witch

Seems to me this was clearly a passion project of hardcore gamers who are themselves passionate about gaming (and, I would suspect, who took many cues and influence from SNES era gameplay, challenge, and style). The charm, the details, the music, the art and level design - just, the attention to all of it is very impressive and inspiring. It's a mashup of metroidvania and bullethell/schmup, the latter of which I'm generally less a fan of playing, but I felt the balance was just right to really allow it to work (and in fact, had me hooked). It's FULL of secrets and fun little details for those willing to look and find them. It can be a HARD game, but for those that want less of a brutal challenge, or to keep the story moving along they offer increased accessibility options in the form of a menu of cheat codes, which can be fairly easily guessed (or even more easily looked up, obviously) and then toggled on/off at any time (bonus points to the devs for not taking anything away from the experience of the player for it). For my liking, I found the cheat of having enemies sometimes drop health to be just right for some of the more punishing parts of the bullet hell insanity. The characters and their relationships are charming and adorable and had the perfect, endearing balance of being goofy in a fun "video game" way, while also feeling genuine and relatable. The story to real-life parallels are not especially subtle if you're engaged and paying attention, which goes along with how intelligent the game is, despite looking like a fun and cuddly cartoon. In my experience this both added to the immersion while also being at odds with the escapism that I wanted from it (though this is merely an observation and not a complaint, as think it's an important commentary on certain social issues). Thank you so much to the devs for Knight Witch and for putting it on GOG. I truly hope we can retain this integrity and imagination in games for generations to come!

This is a great looking game that won't allow itself to be enjoyed for 5 minutes without interrupting the player, or putting up a artificial wall to stop your progress for story bits. Then there is the special ability card system, you've got these special abilities that you use that cost energy, in the UI these are displayed on cards in the bottom right of your screen and the energy meter is located there as well, this is a rather annoying design choice because this game is a bullet hell shooter so your attention needs to be on your character at all times. But it gets worse, you can equip whatever cards you want but you are not allowed to leave open slots, this means you always have to have 6 cards equipped, which means that the 3 cards displayed in the UI are always randomly mixed. You never know what you are gonna get without having to check the corner of the screen, it will get you killed over and over. Then there are the abilities that will get you killed. There is a shield special ability, it will create a temporary shield where you are that will block bullets, but the shield does not indicate when it stops working and it will keep displayed on your screen for a while while not blocking bullets. It is a defensive ability that tricks you into getting shot. Also the shield blocks your own bullets as well, which isn't bad per say but it doesn't help with making the ability worthwhile. Then there is the case of forced movement into boss rooms where you get placed in the middle of a bunch of enemies which will obviously get you hurt/killed, but only the first time you enter the boss room, all subsequent times you won't be forcefully moved in the middle and can just deal the the enemies normally, why? Who knows. All in all this is a disappointing game, there are so many little things that just suck the joy out of it that I just don't want to play it anymore. Which is a real shame, because it is a great looking game that could have been a lot of fun.

The art style and the animations are very pretty, and while the gameplay itself doesn't really reinvent the wheel, it has really sick combos with the card system, just a very solid bullet hell type of game. Even though the controls are weird at times and the story is just mediocre, it's more than worth the discounted price, i would say even the full price for sure.

Combines Bullet Hell with Metroidvania Quite Challenging Also Good Music