Witch Strandings

I feel like I've been scammed into buying this game. The overblown live-action trailer and steam store description gave me the impression that there was something more to this game than meets the eye, but there really isn't. The core gameplay is doing fetch quests over and over for a bunch of cardboard NPCs. Every NPC has a 1-paragraph sob story to make you want to help them, but that's all there is to them. They seem flawed enough to make you think that something about them might change for the better if you help them enough, but they never do. At the start of each new day they're exactly as crippled as they were the previous day, except their quest tally counter will have gone up by one. Once you've done enough fetch quests, the game pats you on the back for being such a nice guy and lets the credits roll. There's also a genocide option that seems like it was tacked on as an afterthought (because there HAS to be an alternative to the nice guy option).

I thought this was gonna be an interesting game to play but as soon as the game started, my curiousness for it was replaced with frustration with its gameplay. It's an interesting concept, you are a small light in a dark forest, in charge of making it better and helping the animals in it. But sadly this just means you are on a long fetch quest to give each animal you discover, the items they need. This could seem like an easy thing to do, except the controls of this game must be some of the most annoying things in a videogame. You are just moving your mouse over and over (and lifting it to reposition it to move it again) to go from point A to B while avoiding the obstacles the map has. A lot of times you are dragging your way to tiles that kill you and because of the sensibility cap you have on the game, you end up dying. Another really big issue it has is with the design of the HUD. When you are moving up, your character goes behind the banner that pops up every time you enter a new zone (which happens a lot) and you cannot see where you are going. The same happens when you are moving down, except it's the health bar the new obstacle you have in the middle, and that one stays there. They have to change the bounds in which the character makes the map move with it. The idea is cute and interesting, but they need to improve the gameplay, because that's what makes this game a chore to experience, more like a fun one and, sadly, that aspect will make a lot of people not experience this game. I wouldn't recommend this game in the state as it is now, maybe when they improve it.

I don't usually write reviews but i think its worth warning people that this game is actively painful to play and you should absolutely stay away from this game if you have any type of joint pain while playing PC games. The game itself is fine albeit a little underdeveloped. You explore a forest by moving items around to allow you to travel faster/safer so you can make deliveries to forest animals. It has the same hypnotic effect as tidying up or untangling wires. Helping the animals never feels worth it but moving stuff around to help you explore is almost fun enough on its on. The problem is the character you play is basically your mouse cursor and every move you have to make seems almost purposely designed to trigger tendinitis. Almost every action in this game requires huge mouse movements that require you to pick up and move your mouse back to center. Want to explore? Huge painful mouse moves. Want to escape danger? Huge painful mouse move. Did you die? Well you have to do huge painful mouse moves to re-spawn. I played the game less than an hour but still feel it in my wrists hours later and i don't even normally have joint pain while playing games.

i wish i could give the game a positive review, because i like the gameplay (although i agree with some other reviews that the trailer oversells the game), but the controls are absolutely abysmal. [b]this is tendonitis the game.[/b] even at the highest mouse sensitivity you have to move the mouse a lot and constantly pick it up and reposition it. it's a nightmare. i actually had to stop playing because my wrist was hurting more and more. on top of that the camera only moves when you are almost at the edge of the screen so you can't properly see where you are going. to make this worse the bottom part of the screen is covered by the healthbar and on the top you constantly get a (super annoying) popup telling you that you switched areas further obscuring your view. should they fix the controls i will change my review to positive, since i like the style of the game and enjoy the mechanic of placing specific items to remove obstacles blocking the way. right now however you should stay away from it if you tend to have issues with your wrist.

Enjoyable but not for everyone. If you want deep gameplay features and hate fetch quests, you should give it a pass. If you want a short narrative experience in a surrealist environment with novelty mouse controls, this is a good one. The moral choices are too shallow though, and disabling two-way fast travel during the end game felt unnecessary.

This is a hard "maybe" from me, essentially it's a mouse moving cursor game about carving paths to help various woodland animals. The story is very basic and told entirely through text, and the game is only about 1-2 hours long at most. This is the kind of game I'd expect to be around $5, not $15. It's concept is interesting and unique, there just isn't enough here to justify the price tag. My Curator Link: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42605704-Three-Minute-Gaming/

Awful, sluggish controls. My hand started hurting in minutes clicking and dragging inches from the viewable screen.

I saw loads of people talking about Witch Strandings and tried not to spoil any of it for myself but so far I am loving it! It is a really unique and quirky game that makes you really want to care for the creatures and find where the witch is hidden, my boyfriend said he would kill the creatures so looks like I might be single LOL Would really recommend to anyone who has been thinking about playing! Mothmans pad is banging.

So, somehow you've found your way to this Witch's Forest, and there's a strange claim that this is a "Strand-type" game, but what does that mean here? Unlike Death Stranding, from which this game takes inspiration, there's no asynchronous multiplayer collaboration, but ultimately that was just a side to the point of the game anyway. Death Stranding was about helping people, and forging paths through an unyielding environment, and in that respect, this game absolutely nails being a "Strand-type" game. The whole aim of the game is to restore the Heart of the Forest, which is achieved through helping the folks you find in the Forest while making paths through the various obstacles the Forest presents. Although the game does offer an option to instead kill the inhabitants of the Forest, you can find yourself playing for awhile before ever finding how, and as I didn't pursue that end, I can't say how/if it changes all that much about the Forest. Unfortunately there are some shortcomings to the game, such as the control scheme feeling rather awkward, even at higher sensitivity settings, but this can be remedied by using Steam's controller configuration tools to play the game using a controller, which I would recommend. Besides that, the characters you're helping don't have much of any characterization to them, so there's not much motivation to help any one of them over another, nor to harm them, which simply undermines the help/harm choice presented. They each have a description, and some status text that gives a little more sense of how they are, and that's it as far as I could tell. Despite that, given the game's simplicity it's never too difficult to help folks out, so even lacking much character, it's easy enough to explore and help enough of them out enough times to restore the Forest's Heart and make your way to confront the Witch. If you're the helpful sort, you'll find the game to have a rather sweet ending, but if not...Well, as I already said, I didn't pursue that, so I can't say. Altogether the game does a pretty good job of emulating the "Strand-type" on a simpler level, even if it falls a little short in some respects. So, if you're after a lofi supernatural "Strand-type", well, this is it, and it's an alright little game. [b]Addendum:[/b] I would also note that while the criticisms of this being a simple fetch quest game are generally accurate, it's important to note that that [i]is[/i] essentially what Death Stranding was as well if one wants to put it in simplest terms, so I have fewer qualms with that than the lacking characterization. Also as I note, you can breeze through that side of the game simply by helping as exploring, which I found reduced the fetch feel, as I typically was dragging or hauling relevant items about anyway, or they were very nearby.

This is a mysterious and tactile wonder. Definitely recommend to anyone who fancies great atmosphere and animals with names like Chad Shakespeare. Amazing.