The Haunted Hoard: Wendy: Every Witch Way (Game Boy Color)
Similar to other Harvey Comics characters like Casper the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich, Wendy the Good Little Witch’s star has faded as her old-fashioned cartoons and comics drift further away from the public consciousness, but at least those two had theatrical films in the 1990s and crop up in small revival efforts from time to time. Wendy getting a game at all is certainly surprising when she was mostly getting by on cameos in Casper at the time, but it seems this 2001 Game Boy Color game isn’t built off some inexplicable whim. Wendy: Every Witch Way is the the remnant of an abandoned attempt to revive the character with her own animated series, and while those plans fell through, Wayforward Technologies apparently wasn’t going to let the game based on her go to waste, putting in a surprising amount of effort for a game that was almost primed to go unnoticed.
The action in Wendy: Every Witch Way kicks off without words, the player getting their first look at Wendy as she traipses into her aunt’s attic and futzes around with a large chest. Immediately, Wendy’s sprite stands out as being lively and expressive despite its simplicity, the little witch having quite the spring in her step and a huge smile that comes out most any time she does anything of interest. However, her first act in the game is accidentally releasing a set of magic stones, the rocks flying out of the chest and up to a floating castle that was lingering over her aunt’s house. The castle comes crashing down, and to help get it airborne again, Wendy heads into its halls to collect all the floating stones and put them back where they belong.
Perhaps related to the upset gravity of the castle, Wendy finds that her trip through the castle involves a special sort of magic. What at first seems like a fairly typical platformer soon reveals itself to be one with gravity flipping mechanics. Levels involve routinely flipping Wendy’s perspective on things, holding up or down plus your jump button causing the castle to switch appropriately. Walking on the ceiling can allow Wendy to skip past spike pits, avoid enemy monsters, and get around sets of platforms that couldn’t be navigated otherwise, and because you’re constantly turning the world upside-down to get around problems, Wendy: Every Witch Way manages to avoid the trap of being a straightforward unexceptional platformer. Rather than getting past enemies and obstacles with a timed jump or attack, the player is constantly considering where Wendy will land when things get turned upside down, and while much of the game is fairly simple and easy to keep its younger players from being overwhelmed, the final levels do begin to ask for quick mid-air gravity shifts and more intelligent use of the mechanic rather than just activating it when the way onward requires it.
The enemies are one reason why Wendy: Every Witch Way manages to stay fresh even as it doesn’t innovate too much on how the level design is impacted by gravity. Little hooded characters get faster after every gravity switch, meaning you want to take them out before they’re too swift to safely attack. Skeletons will try and resist the change, hanging from above and hurling bones down to pester you. Some enemies will even trigger gravity changes themselves, meaning you have to be careful about when you move and whether or not you activate your power yourself, and later levels even feature block enemies who either fall like a deadly weight to guard long shafts or have platforms atop them that you need to ride to safely navigate over deadly terrain. There is a creative yet small bunch of foes featured here that help the game avoid growing stale, but the only boss fight isn’t exactly a tough one and tops off one of the less exciting gimmicks of the game: the flying levels.
Wendy: Every Witch Way is already an immensely short game and one that’s so easy that you’ll likely not struggle to complete it, but while the gravity-flipping stages overcome short attention spans with the involved mechanic and special enemy types, each subset of levels is capped off with a rather cut and dry flying portion. Wendy makes her way between the towers of the castle by flying through open sky, and while enemies will try to fly into her path to damage her here, you have such a free range of movement that they’re not much to worry about. You can invert gravity to make them move up instead of down or vice versa, but it’s only necessary for the rather plain final boss of the game. For the most part these are at least quick and unexceptional, not really harming the game with their presence but feeling like filler since they struggle to engage the player or threaten them.
Both the flight sections and the regular levels give Wendy a magic wand she can attack with, and another way the game keeps you from being too turned off by its simplicity is with how your health ties to your attack power. Little stars are scattered around the levels, collecting these upgrading your magic from a dinky little shot to a powerful split blast that can handle most trouble ahead of you. It resets with each level, meaning each new stage asks you to build yourself up again and sometimes side areas exist solely so you can risk some danger to get up to your max power, but if you do take damage, you’ll lose a star. Not only does that mean you’re closer to death, but it also weakens Wendy and incentivizes you to look around for the power-ups again. If a section looks troublesome you can always push through and take the hits, but you’ll take the hit to your power as well. Not much asks for Wendy to be all that strong really, but it is certainly more convenient to have the power and back-up health, especially when the game does start asking for a deft hand at midair gravity inversion.
The extra levels available on the Game Boy Advance are an odd quirk of Wendy: Every Witch Way, mostly because they don’t seem to have a clear reason for existing. Wendy wasn’t going to help Nintendo push their new system with three tiny levels in a tiny game and they aren’t that much better than the main game’s stages, just a little tougher and with more colorful visuals. There are points in Wendy: Every Witch Way where you are asked to flip gravity without any idea what lies on the floor or ceiling you’ll be falling towards, and while the game usually makes it a bit clear where to be, the levels specific to the Game Boy Advance are a bit more punishing if you don’t line things up just right. Still, despite the potential of the mechanic, it’s not doing anything unique or new in these extra stages, simply just adding a bit more time to an experience that moves along at a brisk pace that means it doesn’t have the chance to get stale.
THE VERDICT: Wendy: Every Witch Way staves off being a boring platformer by making its incredibly short adventure a somewhat interesting one. Flipping gravity to get around asks for more involvement than just jumping around, and the health and power systems being intertwined is a decent motivator to keep you careful or push you to do the mild exploration that sometimes crops up. The flying stages are dull but negligible and most of the action is merely interesting rather than a real test of your skill, but the enemies play with the gravity flipping in unique fashions to keep you on board despite the low difficulty. It doesn’t have the space or gumption to really draw out the best from its mechanics, but it’s a short and breezy romp with just enough going on that you won’t feel like your short time with it was wasted.
And so, I give Wendy: Every Witch Way for Game Boy Color…
An OKAY rating. While the flying segments are pretty much a complete loss for failing to engage the player in almost any way, these tiny segments come and go quickly enough that the gravity-flipping platforming stages get to strut their stuff and dominate the show. It’s surprising how simple turning the main method of navigation from jumping to inverting gravity can do to a game’s flow, and Wendy: Every Witch Way manages to integrate it in a few interesting ways without going overboard. Usually some enemy or complication necessitates the inversion and asks for you to do a touch more than just turn things on their head, and while it never gets too complex with it, it does cook up some ways to mess with how you play. Enemies and their unique interactions with your main power are the stars for sure even if spikes do get their time in the sun when they’re part of the harder midair shifts in the last few levels. Your attack has a nifty concept as well, and perhaps if Wendy: Every Witch Way wasn’t afraid of losing a younger audience it could have really made balancing your power and health a more meaningful consideration. Mainly, the brand that already was going to doom it to low sales due to limited recognizability also meant that Wayforward couldn’t justify digging in as deep as necessary to really help the ideas on show shine, but a remarkable job was done with something that could have been completely forgettable otherwise.
Wendy: Every Witch Way still has a way to go before it can get a full solid recommendation, its concepts a good starting point but lacking the punch and complexity that would really make this short adventure properly exciting. It’s not lacking in ideas, it’s lacking in the room to develop them into something engaging enough to make searching out a mildly expensive old Game Boy Color game about a mostly obscure cartoon witch worth doing. Still, it deserves some praise for not just churning out something that would be completely forgettable, and considering WayForward drew some inspiration from it in later titles like Mighty Flip Champs!, it at least left behind a legacy greater than simply languishing on game store shelves.