The Haunted Hoard: The Witch’s House MV (PC)

The Witch’s House was released in 2012 as a free downloadable game and that version is still available online too, but in 2018 an enhanced version was released on Steam that helps this indie horror game further evolve what seems like it’s main appeal. In The Witch’s House MV part of the appeal comes from lovely environments and the soft and cutesy characters juxtaposed alongside awful deaths and the more macabre areas of the mansion. While you do slip more and more into the supernatural as you go, there is beauty between the bloodshed with the horror taking hold much better because it can lurk in both the dark and quiet hallway or in the lush and colorful garden.

 

The Witch’s House MV begins with a young girl named Viola unable to leave the forest and forced to enter a witch’s house for answers. While a talking black cat provides some guidance, when you enter you have very little idea of who you are or what manner of witch owns the unusual residence. Over the course of the adventure though you’ll start to uncover diaries that give you a picture of a figure more pitiable than detestable. She’s certainly no saint, but very quickly you realize her life colors her awful behavior before you’ve even really read much about her. The adventure on the whole is short, somewhere around two hours in length, so it’s a tale that must be told rather quickly while still slipping in plenty of horror setpieces and clever puzzles to keep the player onboard and entertained. However, what really makes the tale more interesting than what seems like a predictable course is the two different endings you can receive. If you get the true ending the tale is given a lot more texture and packs a much harder emotional punch, and while the regular ending might still please some players not looking for something so heavy, the true ending brings the kind of finale that really cements this game as something hard to get out of your mind.

Exploring the witch’s house is mostly about avoiding danger and figuring out the different puzzles required to safely make it to the next floor. However, the game immediately colors how perilous it will be with a pretty smartly placed first trap. You’re practically bound to fall for it and it’s easy to quickly realize how you messed up and activated it, and it provides an introduction to how the game pays as much attention to vividly realizing areas as it does its deaths. A bit of gore right off that doesn’t skimp on the details contextualizes what lies ahead and how sudden death can come if you don’t use your mind or end up becoming complacent. This moment also teaches you that death isn’t much of a punishment though, save points fairly frequent so you don’t lose too much progress so long as you embrace them and an Easy mode even existing where you can immediately respawn after a death. The low penalty for dying and the clear attention those kills are given actually encourages a sort of macabre interest in how Viola can meet her unfortunate end, the lethal creativity similar to the thrill of a particularly violent move in the Mortal Kombat series of games.

 

Throwing yourself into danger deliberately to see how a death manifests ends up almost a side amusement to indulge in during your adventure, the act of surviving a trap sometimes a little disappointing since you know messing up probably had the more intriguing animation. However, while the game definitely encourages seeking out death, the creative ones are counterbalanced by ones that seem to take little shortcuts. These tend to most often crop up when encountering some sort of creature, a giant spider or snake attacking Viola and the game quickly cutting to the Game Over text. Perhaps it was out of some fear of not pulling off the more complex deaths well that it hard cuts away so quickly, but on some level it is more about finding out all the different ways you can die rather than actually seeing the bloody outcome. Despite how easy it usually is to recover from them too, they do a good job of still tapping into that mortal terror of something deadly suddenly appearing, the game not afraid to use sudden jolts of activity to catch you off guard.

Those abrupt frights also make regular play in The Witch’s House MV more tense. As you’re walking around the mansion there are little objects that will lightly move or you’ll spot something just out of the corner of your eye as you leave a room. An object suddenly out of place is effectively eerie even before the game starts adding more gruesome elements like blood and viscera to the environmental design, and it can still catch you off guard as it throws in other little moments of unease like when you realize an unfortunate solution to a puzzle. For a couple puzzles though the atmosphere certainly carries it more than the actual material actions taken to execute the solution, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re weak and being able to survive doing all the actions in order is sometimes what makes it a bit of a trial. The music definitely goes hand in hand with the horrors, unsettling tracks building up moments but other seemingly serene ones almost putting you on edge as you know you can’t quite trust the calm atmosphere. The game will sometimes prey on your curiosity in interesting ways as well, so The Witch’s House MV does truly feel like it’s toying with the player to some degree.

 

There are definitely some complex puzzles to be found as well that require a lot more though than following simple clues. In particular the puzzle where you need to make noise in four different rooms and the puzzle involving riddles about different flower types stand out for having you navigate a decently sized range of connected areas to piece together all the elements you need. These give you a strong focus on interconnected tasks that the horror can leak into to disrupt or hold back to put you on edge, but actually puzzling out the full solution is still satisfying rather than it being just a framework to slip scares into.

 

The Witch’s House MV actually packs in an Extra Mode that is unlocked on completion of the game, this difficulty offering a few more details about the witch but mostly bringing with it even more involved and complex puzzles to really test your problem solving skills. However, while this mode does improve on the already impressive flower and noise puzzles, Extra Mode also is designed to practically prank the player for attempting to repeat solutions from the regular game and is far more cruel in killing you for being curious. Rather than deliberate traps it can sometimes just feel like the game ripping the rug out from under you, but at the same time Extra Mode is essentially there to provide a whole new batch of unexpected deaths to find. It does truly feel like an extra because of that, not really the best way to experience the game but a nice addition for people who found the experience compelling enough to want to see a new twist to the adventure.

THE VERDICT: I find myself with very little to fault in The Witch’s House MV. It’s story could have more substance to latch onto but it still pulls off a powerful ending despite it, and while some puzzles are simple its stronger ones are well constructed despite their many moving parts. It’s a compact experience that still has a lot of attention given to music and visuals that can both impress with their lovely artistry or unnerve you with their embrace of the macabre, and the death system invites curiosity while the game is structured around embracing that urge to see how it chose to animate them. It’s a clever and effective little horror game where being little is probably the only thing keeping it from shining even brighter, Extra Mode a nice step to get more out of it but the main adventure aching for more room to spread its wings.

 

And so, I give The Witch’s House MV for PC…

A GOOD rating. I can see the True Ending really swinging this game higher in some people’s estimations with how much it adds to the experience, but that dramatic finale is mostly the big hit of a story that could have used more substance. However, that hardly feels like it wounds the game all that much, the actual exploration of the witch’s mansion carried by its visual and aural atmosphere, creative deaths and puzzles, and various forms of horror. It can lean on pop scares at times but others it will build up dread or play with your emotions. It’s built to put you on edge but you can’t be sure how the next scare will manifest. It can be moody or it can be in your face with its horror and that helps the little adventure continue to stay fresh and interesting as you push through it. I can understand not wanting to stretch the main experience much longer but rolling in some ideas from Extra Mode could have made for a heartier original playthrough, and Extra Mode also seems rather indulgent with kills and tricks that can possibly frustrate. The Witch’s House MV does mostly leave me asking for more rather than faulting any areas too heavily though, so perhaps it does truly work best in its current form even if does feel like the creator could do a lot more with a bigger canvas.

 

The Witch’s House MV may not be the best horror game, but it casts a wide net and brings in many different ideas that it handles effectively. A short experience that dips into many types of dangers and preys on different fears makes it a wonderfully spooky experience for a dark and quiet October night, this tour of many terrors lovely and grotesque in the right ways to make it easy to recommend even though it might leave you asking for more after it’s over.