WitchHand

Суперская и очень милая компактная игра про ведьмочку, которая строит свою микро-цивилизацию на картах. В игре есть явно выраженная исследовательская компонента, экономическая модель (без длинных производственных цепочек), научная ветка, оборона от монстров (их можно выключить в настройках), но основной геймплей — это менеджмент: ресурсов, места на столе, эффективное упорядочивание локаций, процессов, сундуков, времени. Игра сама регулярно подкидывает то, что облегчает жизнь, даёт постоянное ощущение прогресса. Главный плюс — игровой процесс получается крайне увлекательный. Каждые пару секунд что-то происходит, только успевай ставить на паузу и тасовать новые приказы. Главный минус — игровой процесс настолько увлекательный, что невозможно оторваться. Цив-синдром "ещё одного хода" тут превращается в "ещё 10 секунд", и дальше до полуночи. Ещё радует, что тут нет никакого рогализма, на полную партию у меня ушло 16 часов (если по сейву; можно было закончить и раньше, мне было интересно дождаться пары событий). В игре вообще нет поддержки геймпада, но дековские трекпады с задачей справились отлично (разве что скролл экрана хотелось чуть ускорить). Один раз игра меня неожиданно убила (выпал случайный монстр незадолго до окончания дня, а ночью все живые монстры бьют ведьму), но благодаря автосейву начинать заново не пришлось (дальше появляется и защита от таких ваншотов). В целом же сложность лайтовая, геймплей умиротворяющий. Рекомендую!

I want to preface my review by saying that the game does not have replayabilty after beating the first main boss a few times. My review will say that I have over 100 hours playing this game, but I assure you that I got very bored a long time before that - Even uninstalled the game and said I was done with it, reinstalled it recently to give the celestial witch another go and didn't finish the run because I really am done with this game. I feel like it's not rude to say that Jon saw Stacklands (made by Sokpop) and was immediately inspired to make his own Stacklands, with his own original systems and balance, and I think both implications really show: Some of the core mechanics come straight from Stacklands, like the act of buying card packs, digging through the packs for value, selling the chaff and building your economy around the more fortunate draws. Then there are areas that could be Stacklands inspired but it really doesn't make sense to make a big deal of it, like how the combat system is quite similar to much earlier combat from Stacklands, with the barest of metrics: each card has a health and an attack value (and in Witch Hand an armour value too, which stacks with health much like a temp-hp mechanic). These similarities could be a cause for concern if you think that it's lazy game design to copy a recent success story, but personally I think that it's a celebration of what could have emerged as a new genre, and serves to emphasize the unique qualities of Witch Hand. On the other hand, I'd argue that every other system in Witch Hand is entirely its own, and doesn't feel remotely inspired by Stacklands, and so it's at this point I'm going to stop talking about that game. It would be a mistake to assume Witch Hand is a survival game, because the player's access to resources and their power to affect the game only steadily go up as you interact with the mechanics, and the only resisting force is the consistent threat of combat to test your spells and familiars' readiness. Spells are learned at somewhat predictable points in the run, while the resources you need to amass to cast them tends to have less to do with strategy and more to do with meeting necessary milestones. Most spells produce a building, which represents a permanent increase of your abilities or economy, but sadly there isn't much in the way of player expression here, as all resources are necessary for addressing certain challenges, all spells are somewhat necessary for meeting the increasing demands of combat, and the design of each resource and spell is rather straight forward, so it's not often that you are presented with multiple ways of solving a problem. That last section ended quite negative, but Lastly I'd like to say that while game design is quite straight forward in many areas, there are 4 witches to play as, and each does have a notably different playstyle, even if ultimately they must all overcome the exact same hurdle - that is combat. For this reason alone, I can say that it's worth playing through the game multiple times, though I'd only play through to the true final boss perhaps once, and indeed I have only done this 2 or 3 times myself across 5 successful runs and many more unsuccessful runs. The end game just feels pretty bad and needlessly repetitive, so I'd recommend against comitting to it every time. I really liked the theming of this game. The art and music are cute, the familiars are cute. I'm not totally a fan of the passive economy (buildings slot into villages and produce indefinitely) as opposed to the active economy of Stacklands (tribe members are assigned a job and which role they need to fill has to be evaluated often), but it's nice to see a game with its own ideas, and this game is rather unique in many of its ideas. I just wish there was a workshop so that players could develop their own content and expand the shelf life of Witch Hand forever, because I wish the base game had more to do, and more scenarios to play.

It's not a deckbuilding game, but a stacking cards game. I really don't get the appeal of that genre. Moving the cards is clunky and tedious and ultimately not fun at all. The tutorial is bad, it doesn't tell you how to mitigate the god awful RNG. Resources needed to create essential buildings and spells are RNG dependent. AWFUL. I really wanted to like it. The artstyle is gorgeous but the gameplay is boring and tedious.

The game is OK, I would give a mixed review if I could. I played about 3 hours, and the game just seems very bland. You just spend 90% of your time split between creating cards and putting your workers to either explore or generate some resource. When a resource gets generated, the card flails around and you have to position them where you want. There are no big decisions to make, when an enemy appears, you kill it. If there's an "explore" card, you explore it. If there's a building that you don't have, then make it. There are no ways of doing something wrong, no big objective, just positive feedback loops. I feel like I'm making cards just because. There's also some needed QoL features, because I feel like most of my time playing this is spent making sure that my board doesn't look like a mess. Is it really needed to generate so many cards? Even with using the chest, things are only put there if it's generated nearby. If you're into this type of game, no punishment, just creating stuff, then you're probably going to like it. I prefer playing Cultist Simulator over this.

This is an addicting 4x game with card stacking mechanics, but issues with progression and a lack of an ending mean I don't recommend this game. The game revolves around stacking cards to do actions and craft more cards. As you continue to stack more cards, more types of cards are revealed. This cards let you make cities, fight enemies, cast spells, etc. which is a neat take on abstracting the 4x genre. The art and music are also very nice. They have a cute witchy feel to them I haven't seen for 4Xs either. Progress is a bit too slow, but fairly steady for most of the game. The main issues I have to do with progression. Like many 4Xs the late game is a slog(though admittedly it is still challenging). The game feels like it ends once before the actual end game and it had no indication of it so I had to look through the discussions to confirm I had even hit an ending. I also frequently ran into space issues in the mid game because of how the map is expanded and performance issues in the late game because my production chains and the spoils of combat where causing hundreds of cards to spawn, move, and collide. I had fun with the game, and I don't regret buying it on a discount, but I don't think I'll be recommending it to others.

It has a pretty decent start, but the resource management quickly becomes unbearable. There is almost no automation, you just constantly engulfed in manual labor. Also asking to pay the price for increasing the size of a playable zone is outrageous.

Cult Sim if it was cute and less stressful. I liked that stress, but I like this too.

The negative reviews are right. There is no resource balancing act here like stacklands. Both growth and progression are tied to resources that come at fixed intervals. There is nothing to do but wait; enemies are weak and can only pose a threat if your boredom drives you to explore too much.

A cute and fairly simple card/resource management game that I had a pretty good time with!! It doesn't really have a ton of replayability once you've tried all the witches and beaten the final boss a few times, and I think automation is pretty rough near the end of the game when you just feel a bit inundated with everything you have to keep track of. That being said, I picked it up on a 50% sale and had a fun enough time to feel it was worth the price. Art style is charming, and gameplay was fairly relaxing once I knew how it all worked and was going for achievements prior to uninstalling. I managed a 100% completion with my 11.5 hrs and feel I've seen everything there is to see. Worth it if you like games like Cultist Sim or Stacklands, but with a much more casual feel.

[h3]Cuteness overload![/h3] WitchHand is a chill card game with simple, but addictive gameplay and fairly easy achievements. The art style is adorable and each of the 4 witches has unique familiars and mechanics to try out. If the game gets overwhelming or too easy, you can customize the difficulty with advanced settings. Grabbed it at a discount, and it was [b]totally[/b] worth the price for me^^