A witch trapped in a cursed shop. Sounds interesting?
On Nintendo Switch, we have a chaotic yet very entertaining game Tiny Witch from the publisher Creative Hand.
In the game, you take on the role of the mute witch Sophie, who loves crafting her minions more than anything and dreams of opening her own shop where she can sell them to interested customers.
One day, a mysterious cat named Whisker Hermes appears, offering her exactly what she wants - her own shop. Like many entrepreneurs, Sophie signs a contract without reading it, but it turns out that the shop is cursed, and she cannot leave until she earns a certain amount of money for 10 consecutive days. And that's where the game begins.
The tutorial will explain the basics of the game: the amount you need to earn that day in the following way: collect ingredients, cook them in the witch's pot, transfer them to the table, and turn them into a minion. Since customers tell you exactly which minion they want when they enter the shop and the recipe showing which ingredients you need is displayed, it sounds very simple. But it is not at all, as you will spend most of your time running from one end of the shop to the other, mixing ingredients, crushing them, combining them, and crafting ghosts, zombies, skeletons, and similar creatures. If customers are satisfied with your speed, they will leave you a tip. However, customers can also get very angry quickly, and some will just leave offended, while others will throw things at you, disrupting your work. If you add to that the fact that you need to empty the pots quickly, otherwise the contents will spill on the floor and slow you down, forcing you to use a broom to clean up, while constantly watching customers lose their patience at the bottom of the screen, and glancing at the clock showing how much time you have left to meet your daily earnings, the recipe for chaos is guaranteed.
But definitely a fun chaos.
After you finish your daily shift, night customers come in who are much more demanding and lose their patience more quickly. At the end of each day, you can use the money earned to buy additional pots and equipment that you can place in some of the designated spots to optimize service speed and pets.
The music is dynamic and drives you to rush around the shop, and the pixelated effects are detailed, allowing you to see characters moving to the rhythm, which adds extra charm. The controls are simple; you move in four directions and perform all actions with the A button, while the B button interrupts the current action. And that's it.
The game offers Casual mode and Challenge mode, which differ in that in Challenge mode customers arrive faster than you can serve them, so you have to assess which ones are more worth serving while simultaneously preventing the others from causing problems and disrupting your tasks. There is no multiplayer, which is definitely a drawback because it would be fun to try to bring some order to the chaos with a friend.
In the end, Tiny Witch is a beautiful, charming, very challenging but also damn fun game! There is no time for too much thinking, no rest while chaos is about to begin. If you enjoy this type of games and liked Plate Up!, you definitely have to try Tiny Witch!
A copy of the game for review purposes was provided by the development studio Creative Hand
