Witch Wood

Witch Wood is an action adventure game featuring unique combat mechanics in which the player must navigate and fight their way out of a cursed forest. Defeat the witch deep within the forest to escape!

In this top-down action game you can expect a few particularly distinct features that sets itself apart from other games in its genre. Instead of every attack or ability being bound to a single button press, almost every combat element in the game requires precise and unique inputs, drastically altering how the player interacts with the game and its controls.

Even the most basic "sword slash" attack has its own distinct controls where precise timing causes the slash effect to grown in size, providing safety with its range and making it easier to land a multi-hit attack. The remaining combat elements have even more unique control schemes (some of which are shown below) and all of them were designed from the perspective of player & enemy interactivity.

This style of controls creates a "skill check" for the player to make in many more instances than what would have existed with more standard control designs. Difficulty aside, this strange control scheme also enables a unique and fun way for the player to interact with the enemies and environment. The combat was by far my main focus when working on this project and even small game elements like the bow ammo system were implemented to force the player to engage in combat rather than hide at a distance and un-interactively kill all the enemies with projectiles.

The Team:

Will Sarazin - Producer, Level Designer, and Environment Artist

Nick Johnson - Creative Director, Lead Programmer

Ronald DeSilva - Sound Designer, Asst. Programmer

Shawn Flynn - Lead Artist, Lead Animator

Alex Dinsdale - Asst, Animator, UI Designer

Made in under 4 months for Fitchburg State Universities' "Adv. Game Design Workshop" course.