In this spooky mystery, darkness is spreading across a quiet valley village. Find the source of the darkness before its to late for you and the village.

John's out here looking for answers!

Darkness is spreading and John doesn't give a H*@K.

WitchDoctor is a casual mystery game with a pinch of Lovecraftian horror.

This game was written for the Pirate Jam 14. The theme of the jam was its spreading.

What you play here represents just the first night of your adventure. We will see where it goes. If you enjoyed the game please leave a comment and a review. If you have any feedback or suggestions I'd love to hear it!

Web support for this game is currently experimental. If you are having performance issues please use one of the download options below. From my testing it works much better in Chrome than Firefox.

Talk to the locals to find the source of the spreading darkness

Controls

  • Movement [WASD] and [Up/Left/Right/Down]
  • Interacting [Space]
  • Menu [TAB]
  • Mute [CTRL]-[M]
  • Toggle Full screen [F11]
  • Dialog Option [1]-[8]
  • Exit Dialog [Escape]
Speaking to the locals to get clues.

This game was built using Love2D, Tiled, Aseprite and the Fennel programming language.

Stay Safe, Stay out of the dark

Stay Safe, Stay out of the dark

Tips / Tricks

  • Everyone with an exclamation mark over their head has something new you can ask them.
  • Asking questions of one NPC may unlock dialog options for others.
  • Don't stray into the darkness without your torch.
  • You can light your torch by standing next to a fire.
  • Make sure you make it indoors when you see the lights going out.

A devlog exploring the development of WitchDoctor is coming soon to itchio.

A path to nowhere cast in darkness.

Attribution

  • Game Code - Alexander Griffith (GPL3+)
  • Character Art - Alexander Griffith (CCBY 4)
  • Tile Art - Play Don't Tell (Proprietary)
  • Music - Ivan Dutch (CCBY 3)
  • Font (Not Jam UI)
  • Sounds Effects - NeadSimic, Nicole Marie, InspectorJ, Blender Foundation, MentalSanityOff (CCBY 3/4)
  • Library (lume, flux, json) - RXI (MIT/X11)
  • Library (anim8,bump) - Enrique Cota (MIT)
  • Engine (Lร–VE) - Lร–VE Dev Team (Zlib)
  • Language (Fennel) - Calvin Rose (MIT/X11)
  • Web Support (Love.js) - Davidobot
Path to nowhere cast in darkness.

The tilesets were developed from Sunny by Play Don't Tell.

The music is by Ivan Dutch, released under a CC-BY 3.0 Licence

Built for the web using https://github.com/Davidobot/love.js

Download

Download
witchdoctor-windows.zip 9.8 MB
Version 0.2.1 Mar 27, 2024
Download
witchdoctor-0.2.1-x86_64.AppImage 11 MB
Version 0.2.1 Mar 27, 2024
Download
witchdoctor-0.2.1.love 6 MB
Version 0.2.1 Mar 27, 2024
Download
WitchDoctor - Game Design Document 61 kB
Version 0.2.1 Mar 10, 2024

Comments

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(+1)

lenard did it. cast him into the shadows.

(+1)

love the art and vibe of the game. it's not my kind of genre but I enjoyed running around and exploring the world. I had no issues on the web version btw.

(+1)

Hi, I played a little bit. And I really didn't understand what I needed to do. I asked the residents what they thought of each other.

Of the bugs I found, the only thing is that the characters could partially pass through the tables when they were moving. And when I left the house, the camera wouldn't move with me, sometimes.

Played the web version, had issues with text overlapping as has been mentioned, maybe have the speaker on the right and the choices stay on the left or vice versa? I'm sure this is intentional but I had a hard time finding people because it was so dark and your light doesn't stay lit very long or wide. The music and audio are fantastic. I didn't figure out who did it but I still enjoyed trying. Good work!

Thanks for giving it a go and for the feedback! I realized finding NPCs might be an issue so I made them glow in the dark last minute. I also had them all come through town eventually to chill at the inn or the fire by the inn.

I was consumed by the darkness but this is such a gripping tale and the music fits the tone and setting so perfectly. Can't wait to give it another try.

I had some issue with text overlapping but that also maybe just firefox. [see image below]

(+1)

Glad you enjoyed it! Iโ€™m working on a rewrite for the questions text to make them more concise. It should fix these long string issues

Looking forward to it :)