Quantum Witch has re-solidified my belief that, in many aspects, gaming is still in its infancy. It’s still relying on cues from other media, particularly when it comes to the plot. In non-interactive media, the plot needs to unfold in a linear way; a fixed beginning and end. They can swap the individual pages around, but it still flows from beginning to end. Games, conversely, are interactive. The plot can change based on an unpredictable element: us.
That gives video game plots a chance to sprawl, but this requires a whole different approach to writing. You don’t want to just diverge a little in the middle, before tying it all back together so that it can end in the exact same way anyway. Quantum Witch isn’t quite that. There are quite a lot of different endings, with different options available based on your actions. It’s something of a pocket-sized game, but it’s a nice example of what you can do when you let your story sprawl a bit.
Season of the Witch
A lot of my time with Quantum Witch was spent bumbling around, poking into corners. That seems very much intended. After all, the first quest that Ren, our protagonist, is given is to find a bunch of escaped sheep, while her partner, Tyra, fixes the gate. Through some slight meandering, that led me to kicking apart a stack of boxes and stumbling on an archaic ritual involving a woman wrapped in vines. I went back to town for advice, and came back to find her trapped in a weird beam of light. I proceeded to punch it. Not my smartest move.
On my second run, I managed to save her, which then changed what was at stake in the overall plot. The broad strokes of the writing are good. The world gets plunged into a catastrophe, which is allegedly Ren’s fault. But she’s just trying to go about her day. She’s got some connection with the Gods, but she just wants to live peacefully with her girlfriend. There’s a strong theme of being pulled into things beyond your control; a sense of being blamed for things that you ultimately have no power over. Ren gets pulled from her world and into a slew of other ones. It’s an apocalypse that won’t just piss off and leave you alone.
Quantum Witch‘s overall presentation fits the theme well, too. The town of Hus (which my brain kept mentally switching to ‘Hull’), is bright, colourful and wacky. There’s a lovely crunchiness to the pixel art that’s reminiscent of the Sierra adventure games of old, with some nice animation work to boot. Soundtrack isn’t bad too, and there are neat touches throughout. If you idle for a while, Ren starts playing a flute in time to the background music. A nice touch, that helps the passion for the project show through.
Witch Quest
The line-by-line writing isn’t too bad, though the tone does rather wobble around a bit. The endings are, generally, quite serious in tone. Lots of talk of old Gods and the futility of existence. But pretty much every other line is a quip. A lot of the jokes do land (I enjoyed the not-a-cult lampshade people), but the sheer volume makes it more of a scattergun approach to comedy, which starts to seriously grate on subsequent playthroughs. Some of the jokes are just other video game characters existing in this world, which is fairly bottom-shelf stuff. I appreciated the puns a lot more, but the jokes began to bounce right off me after a while. Maybe I’m just fast-tracking into being a grumpy old man.
In terms of actual gameplay, Quantum Witch is deliberately pared back. The Sierra comparison is somewhat apropos – it plays like a light point’n’clicker. In truth, it’s more dialogue and choice focused, with a few inventory puzzles here and there. Which is fine; it’s all it needed, really. Though I do have some quibbles. The camera, for one, has a habit of lurching drunkenly around. I was on the verge of seasickness. The jumping also feels a bit sticky, as there’s a delay before you change direction, but as it’s not really a platformer, that’s not a deal breaker.
No, my biggest issue is one that’s likely subjective: Quantum Witch is a bit too short for its story to really hit home. It’s very much going for wide over long. There’s a lot to do in the world, and a lot of things we can change, but it rushes through to the end before anything sinks in. Some of the endings seem to cut to credits almost immediately after the last choice. It feels like I’m being hurried back to the intro for my next run. As a result, while I didn’t dislike the characters, it felt like I was just pushing plastic pieces about a game board to see what happens, rather than actually connecting with anything.
Quantum Witch – Pocket-Sized IF
It might be churlish to harp on that point, though. I can only imagine the size of the Gordian Knot of writing that Quantum Witch required. While the endings did leave me feeling a touch cold, there were a plethora of things along the way that changed between runs. Take the lampshade people. I refused to join their cult, exposed their ‘leader’, then posited myself as their new God. I know for a fact there’s more to do with them that I’ve not done yet. It’s a game whose scope you only appreciate on your third or fourth run-through.
Which brings me back to my original point: video game stories need to start sprawling more. There’s tons of good potential in there. As long as you have interesting characters to underpin it, you can go where you want. Imagine a horror game where the specific horrors unfold off your choices, while retaining the emotional weight of the characters. Quantum Witch is a good step in the right direction, giving us a world to muck about in as we please. It may be a touch on the small side, but it’s a lovely example of what can be done with a branching story and a book of puns.
