Review for A Witches Heart
The game takes place in a dungeon called the Witchbringers Keep. Your task, it seems, is to clear the puzzles on the two sides of the dungeon, ultimately ridding the land of evil coming from the rift (if I remember this correctly, sorry but I tend to quickly read introductions). After beginning the game you are greeted with instructions on how to play the game, which is always good for newcomers. However, I'd probably move the information on the two crystals to the next screen where they reside to help with the info dump in the beginning. Perhaps this could be considered for the future versions?
The game features custom graphics and music. I am, however, disappointed in the title screen music as it feels like it is cut off from the beginning, the start of that song doesn't feel... natural, for the lack of a better word.
There are some slight mapping and eventing errors in the game, but they are not major. It is possible to teleport on top of an enemy at some points. You can also walk one tile deep into some northern walls, but if nothing else it feels inconsistent. As I mentioned earlier, there is a focus on puzzles, and that is good. While the game features custom skill building, it is done somewhat clunkily and is inconsistent. More on this later, as I will first focus on the puzzle part.
There are your typical "push box to move them" types of puzzles on the right side. While somewhat easy, they are more complex than usually seen on games made in a month, so props to you on that. However, what I would have enjoyed would have been a large puzzle with multiple correct routes to complete. The puzzles, at their current form, take only a few moments to figure out, possibly because of lack of possible solutions and where to push the boxes (or statues as they are). The puzzles on the left side, well... I did not manage to complete the firebird puzzle after thinking about it for a while, so it sadly left me unable to progress. Perhaps I will try again later on.
As for what comes to the combat, well, it feels unfinished. On one hand, the normal enemies are really easy and pose little threat at all, but there was this one enemy with life drain that wiped me out in two hits. When I had all passive defense boosts, normal attacks (Dancing Claw was the attack name) did around 15 to 20 damage. But I wasn't prepared for that Life Drain to hit for about 260 points of damage. Also, why is Attack on the list of skills to learn? Imagine that the player did not learn Attack, I think fighting would be rather difficult in that state. Also having it cost MP was a mistake in my opinion.
The skills, too, are inconsistent. Some attacks I could never use (they were greyed out, without any explanation as to why) and there was this issue with the Evade boost skill that both the Level 1 and Level 2 versions appeared in my skill list, while every other skill that had more than one level only showed the highest in my skills.
There are some spelling mistakes in the game, but they can be easily fixed. My suggestion would be to rethink about the combat and concentrate on the puzzles. With that in mind, and more polish, I could foresee this becoming a nice little game to play in rather small bursts.