The Haunted Hoard: Witch It (PC)

In Team Fortress 2, a fan mod known as Prop Hunt turned the multiplayer first person shooter into a game of hide and seek. One team of players would run around a map and disguise themselves as some of the objects laying around, doing their best to blend in as the other team scours the map trying to find them. This interesting mod concept had its moments, but it was limited by the game it found itself in, Team Fortress 2’s maps designed for gun fights first and so it was easy to learn where props should be on a map. A game based around the concept though would be able to design the areas, props, and abilities around this style of play, and that’s where Witch It comes in.

Witch It is an online multiplayer game that plays pretty similarly to that Prop Hunt mod. In the game’s Hide & Seek mode, the witches are released first into a level, given a small amount of time to find the object they want to disguise themselves as and then settling into place to wait and see if they’ll be found. After that opening phase, the hunter team is released, the goofy-looking burly men now free to throw potatoes at any object they consider suspicious, hoping to hear the telltale cry of a witch in pain to know they’ve guessed right. During a round, the witch players can change their disguises and try to flee if they like, it not always a death sentence if someone has figured out where they’re hiding. The round will end if every witch is found and successfully killed, but if the witch team can last until time runs out, they’ll earn the win instead.

This simple premise does add a fanciful twist to the game of hide and seek, players able to take on unusual shapes and try to guess what the hunters might consider suspicious. A witch might find a bunch of barrels and become one as well to blend in with them, but maybe the hunter will think such a spot is a good hiding place as well and thus hurl a potato at each barrel to check them. A crafty witch might take on the form of something like a starfish and lay out on the beach in the open, a hunter maybe passing them over since it’s so brazen a placement that surely a witch wouldn’t be so bold. Different levels feature different props, but more importantly, the prop placement within a map will change between rounds and the props themselves come in such high numbers that it’s not likely a player will remember exactly how many items were in a spot. There is some logic to where many are placed though, the Twin Mask Theater for example having a popcorn bucket prop to disguise as but it will mostly be found at the concession stand or near the audience seats rather than in the back stage areas you can also explore.

Witch It ends up being a game about trying to predict how the other team will react or approach their goal for a round, but being based around hide and seek does mean it’s often a fairly passive form of interaction between both teams. Witches will watch and hope they don’t get found, maybe letting out a cheeky laugh to taunt the other team, and the hunters will keep throwing potatoes at things to check them. A brief moment of excitement can happen when a witch is discovered and tries to make a break for it, but things settle back to that pretty calm hunting period afterwards as they look for the remaining witches. Thankfully, some thought was put into making sure there is a little more to the process. Witches and hunters can both have a pair of abilities set for a round they can activate with a good degree of regularity, both skill sets appropriately tailored to the objective of the character. A witch has a flight ability they can use to reach high hiding spots with ease, they can outright transfer their soul into an object so they can take an unexpected form like the swinging lamps hanging from houses, and they have a few more attack oriented powers like shooting out disorienting mushrooms that give them a chance to flee and turn into something new if they’re discovered. The hunters thankfully don’t need to hurl a potato at every object they want to check thanks to some of their abilities. Hurl a chicken instead and it will start crowing if there’s a witch hidden in the nearby area, toss a vacuum trap and all nearby props will be pulled into a cluster and a purple spark is released if a witch is among them, or use a grappling hook if you want to reach a high up area to get a lay of the land. Both witches and hunters have a few more abilities with their own use cases, the hunter definitely getting more mileage out of theirs since checking huge maps filled with tons of props would be tedious without things like the chicken to check a group all at once, but the witches are still allowed to be a little crafty with their bag of tricks.

Witch It has technically been around for over five years with it leaving Early Access in 2020, meaning it was able to build up a good amount of maps in that time. Over 20 unique locations exist thanks to the official set being joined by approved fan-made levels created in the game’s level building Creative mode, and there is quite a range of locations that feel distinct and offer new props and layout concepts. The Twisted Mansion is an otherworldly space where the different rooms will have you standing on the walls and ceilings or moving through swirling halls, but you can also visit the wide open tropical beaches of Loakiki Paradise. A medieval fantasy look is common in the stage design, a few levels based on the idea of the streets of a village, but a large library, pirate port, and cemetery all fit the aesthetic while having different building types, different routes to explore, and varying sight lines. Some levels can be so huge a hunter may never even enter the area a witch is hiding in while others are cramped enough that the hunters have the advantage, some can be so vertically focused it’s almost a detriment while others provide so many side areas to explore that different parts of the map feel entirely different. With newer maps like a few Egyptian desert stages and one with a prehistoric caveman flair, Witch It isn’t lacking in distinct levels that can help ease the repetition from spending so much time looking at every part of them as you play.

While the map variety means there are many hiding spots to find and a good variety of props, it doesn’t quite assuage the simplicity of the game being played. Sure, props vary in how easy it is to hide at them, the game even setting a witch’s health in that prop differently proportionally to the expected risk in disguising as it, but for the witch it is still a game of waiting to see if you were clever enough and the hunters are often just checking everything nearby with the light guiding hand of noticing a spot that looks good to search. Some modes do attempt to rectify this with different ways to play though, Mobification actually being a superior version of Hide & Seek since it can speed up rounds and ensure no one is left waiting after they’ve been found. In Mobification, once a witch has been uncovered and killed, that player will now be a hunter as well, rounds often starting with many witches and few hunters only to invert as they grow their ranks with each successfully hunted witch. It’s not a drastic change away from Hide & Seek’s core, but it makes for a more interesting flow as a witch will come to fear for their life more as they see the announcements that their allies have fallen. Conversely, Hunt A Hag is pretty awful, turning it more into tag as hunters try to chase down a witch with everyone now reduced to only fists. It really is just chasing witches around a map trying to smack them and the witches can easily outrun hunters, requiring coordinated pincer strategies or else it’s just a lot of running around.

Two more ambitious modes exist, although one is a bare-faced copy of Among Us with its social deduction focused play. A game of Imposturous begins with everyone seemingly a hunter, a few actually witches in disguise who try to find their moments to kill other hunters without being detected. Hunters can convene meetings to try and vote on a suspected witch to kill and they can win either by eliminating every witch or doing all the tasks around the level before too many hunters die, but funnily enough Witch It ends up in a spot where Team Fortress 2’s Prop Hunt was, its game design not meant for this style of play and thus only offering a somewhat decent execution of the concept. Fill a Pot is a more unique way to play that is more active as well. Cauldrons are stationed around levels that need certain props delivered to them, witches needing to find and turn into them and then head to the cauldron to try and deliver them all. Hunters are meant to catch the witches and prevent them from doing so within the time limit, multiple cauldrons preventing it from just boiling down to guarding the goal and witches can still try to blend in if they’re worried a hunter is nearby. Witches have limited lives so they can’t play sloppily either, this mode having the most potential for consistent excitement to the point it possibly should have been the main mode of play so it could have been designed around in terms of prop placement and ability concepts.

To try and keep you playing Witch It for longer the game also has an incredibly high amount of unlockable costume pieces for witches and hunters, the player getting some for leveling up just through playing matches or performing certain actions and others come from a crafting system where some level up rewards can be turned into somewhat randomly created outfit pieces. Gradually trying to make your character have a more interesting appearance is a nice little mark of progress without there being pressure to play beyond what you enjoy, although outside the terrible Hunt a Hag mode your witch’s new look probably won’t be seen by other players that much. Witch It is certainly silly overall, the outfits often getting goofier the better quality crafting materials you use for your random reward, and while there is definitely a rather low level of resolution to textures on items when you get in close, maps can look good at a distance and props you can disguise as sometimes have extra touches like reacting reasonably to wind and movement.

THE VERDICT: Witch It’s main modes are designed around well in terms of prop placement and variety, both witches and hunters also given an appropriate set of skills to try and spice up their part in this advanced game of hide and seek. Levels change the way the search for hiding players unfolds and there is a touch of trying to think like the enemy that makes up some for the fact the two teams don’t interact much outside of flashes of action, but the game style ends up holding it back some. Waiting around to possibly be found or hurling things at every object and hoping it is a hidden witch is rather plain for most of the round, the extra modes varying in how well they can break away from this rather passive core. Hunt a Hag is constantly interactive but a boring chase while Fill a Pot has a structure more conducive to frequent fights between teams, but the low energy of the search modes does make Witch It feel a bit tame most of the time.

And so, I give Witch It for PC…

An OKAY rating. Witch It does execute the Prop Hunt concept well, but the question arises of how far that core idea can go. Hide and Seek in real life isn’t something you’ll find yourself playing back to back for the thrill of the game, and while Witch It can offer a far more elaborate form of hiding and more tools for seeking, it is still encouraging one side to practically not play unless they’ve been found, and more than once I won a round as a witch without touching the keyboard after finding a good spot. The hunters can sometimes have such a wide variety of props to check that the psychological aspect of trying to consider where a witch might actually be is often more an idle thought than a clever deduction. Still, there is some excitement that moment when potato meets disguise and suddenly a hunter is trying to land enough spuds to kill the witch while the witch is trying to worm their way out of this tight spot. As an online multiplayer game you will sometimes be limited in what can be played by the available players and since Witch It puts the object hiding front and center it’s less likely you’ll get to indulge in the more energetic Fill a Pot mode, but even then the witches and hunters were designed first for a calmer kind of play with abilities that can sometimes guard too well or get around a guard easily depending on which one is activated first. Hide and seek is a game that discourages anything too advanced as both sides have simple goals, and while the game will sometimes put power-ups around to tempt a witch to leave their hiding spot, it’s not really worth the danger. If some of the cosmetic rewards were like bait then witches might instead get to try a bit of stealth and hunters could decide if they want to guard such things or search elsewhere, this middle ground between the main modes and Fill a Pot perhaps something that could take shape into something exciting but in the spirit of the Prop Hunt inspiration, but Witch It does still at least consider the important elements of the baseline Prop Hunt concept with its design and you get about what you ask for if you came expecting that type of play.

Abilities really were a smart touch for making sure Witch It isn’t a boring search that rarely leads to actual found witches, but unfortunately waiting around disguised as a gunpowder barrel or orange seashell isn’t riveting gameplay and the hunters looking for those objects don’t need to think too hard to succeed. A checklist for items you’ve disguised yourself as exists in the game as a neat touch and weaving it into the actual design of a game mode could have possibly spiced things up, but Witch It went for the mildly interesting idea people would be familiar with rather than trying to evolve the game style into something with more energy and engaging play.