Game: Nine Witches: Family Disruption
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle, Action
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam, Xbox One)
Developers | Publishers: Indiesruption | Blowfish Studios
Age Rating: EU 12 | US Teen
Price: EU €17.99 | USD $19.99 | UK £15.99
Release Date: December 4th, 2020
Review code used, with many thanks to Blowfish Studios
Nine Witches: Family Disruption is a graphic adventure by developers Indiesruption and published by Blowfish Studios.
October 1944
It’s October 1944 and something strange is happening in the rustic Norwegian town of Sundäe. A mysterious dark moon hangs over the sky, generating uncertainty among its inhabitants. As World War II continues, the Okkulte-55, a secret division of the Third Reich, arrives in Sundäe to unleash an ancient curse, in a desperate act to change the course of the war.
The village is celebrating the end of the world with a party called Eklipse Fest. Your mission is to steal the identity of German filmmaker Otto Von Celluloid and infiltrate the Okkulte-SS.
The Professor and his Assistant
You play as both Alexei Krakovitz, a quadriplegic expatriate professor of occult science and his side-kick assistant, Akiro Kagasawa. The Professor is known for his research in the occult sciences and he can speak with the dead.
The pair are sent to Norway on a secret mission to unravel the mystery and save the world from the Okkulte-55 clutches. It falls to you to return the world to some kind of normality.
It is a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Nine Witches is full of dry humor and it even knows that it’s a video game. Not all of the jokes will land for everyone but it’s a pretty enjoyable story.
Use Unique Abilities
At its core, Nine Witches is an adventure game. You talk to people, find items, use items, and solve puzzles with very unique abilities. The game does not hold your hand at all, it’s up to you to work it all out!
This is a five to six-hour adventure featuring a variety of quirky characters ranging from a dead priest’s ghost to a former bartender who has had his bar stolen from him and is forced to clean up after the drunk German soldiers. They may not sound to interesting, but each character has their own nuances that will make them stand out one way or another.
Alexei and Akiro are a Team
Alexei Krakovitz and Akiro Kagasawa work as a team. Alexei is in a wheelchair and cannot move his limbs which makes interacting with the environment pretty impossible for him. Instead, Alexei can go into a trance and enter the spirit realm.
This makes him float around similar to a ghost. It allows him to do some espionage work, float through doors, talk to other ghosts to get hints from them and see all interactable item. This is a nice little handy hint which helps you to see if you missed anything in the rooms you’re in and it is a welcome addition.
There are times where stairs may inhibit Alexei from getting somewhere or you need to interact with an object to continue the game. This is where Akiro comes into play. Akiro is the brawn to Alexei’s brain and they help each other out! You can change from each character with a quick press of the ZL button.
Switch Characters
Knowing when to use Alexei or Akiro is one of Nine Witches’ tricks. You start to see each scene through their two different perspectives. At the start of Nine Witches, I did have to remind myself to use both characters. The more you play you do get into the habit of looking for interactions and items with Akiro. Then switching over to Alexei to see the environment in the spirit realm, you will probably even find something you missed.
Throws a Curve Ball
Nine Witches throws a curve ball at times and changes from an adventure point-and-click to a shoot ‘em-up. These sections of the game felt imprecise to me. You have to move your characters into line with the enemy, shoot, move out of the firing line (in case you get hit). Then you hope the enemy stays in place and the bullet meets its mark.
Thankfully the first few shootouts are a doddle. But towards the end of the game, the difficulty spike goes up in the shoot-em-up section. This means you end up feeling frustrated when your bullet doesn’t hit the intended target. I could have done without the shoot-em-up sections entirely as they don’t work as well as the rest of the game does.
There is quite a bit of humour in the story and the fourth-wall is regularly broken by the characters. At times the humour brought a smile to my face, with puns and wordplay thrown in for good measure. The game pokes fun at its retro look when your told in a hint the some puzzle solutions are solved by looking for a couple of pixels nearby!
Visuals and Controls
As you can see the games has a retro look with pixelated graphics. It gives off a great atmosphere for the storyline. And it’s worth your while to stop every so often and take a look around. With lights twinkling at night and the sound effects, it does give off a spooky atmosphere very fitting the story of the game.
Controls work really well, you use the joystick to control the characters movements, which is so much easier then click- to -move in other games. The only other controls are three button presses, one to open your inventory, one to look and one to use an item. It’s simple and it all works seamlessly.
Conclusion
Nine Witches: Family Disruption is a humorous spooky story adventure game which is a lot of fun to play. I had an entertaining time while playing Nine Witches which at times made me smile.
Fans of the genre should find it just as enjoyable as I did.
Final Verdict: I Like It A Lot