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!
