The Witch's Isle

Simple and fun atmospheric puzzle game

This is one of the pixel graphics games I played when I was much younger, so I had to revisit this one because it stuck with me how gorgeous it looked and how interesting the story was. After playing it again, I can confirm that it's exactly as I remember and I loved completing it once again. Kind of, actually, because I couldn't get the 3 secret ending achievements, which is such a bummer since I was determined to get 100% completion. Apparently every past guide on the interent doesn't apply to the current updated version of the game, and I couldn't find any new ones either. Either way, I'm glad I experienced most of it.

Good game, especially for how cheap it is. I did have some struggles with navigating with the foreground constantly in the way and some small parts of the story didn't make a lot of sense to me.

This is a fascinating and elaborate puzzle adventure game. The pixel art looks sharp, and what really makes it shine is the distinct layered approach taken with it. The environments of the isle are shown in a sort of 2.5D style, with the foreground often taking up the lower portion of the screen, the focal area (main play area), and the distant background in the mid to upper portion of the screen. In certain parts of the isle, you can see distant areas as part of the background and a fun little detail is, when other people begin roaming about and visiting those areas, you can see them there. In fact, if you notice this, it can help you in one of the game's puzzles. Overall the game's puzzles are mostly well done, but there are a few where it begins to feel like they may have relied on the built-in hint system a little too much, as I'm not sure how you would figure them out otherwise. Others have that unfortunate element of the game's visual design and lack of interactive details to guide one colliding, where you can overlook certain areas existing at all as they're a little too well-hidden. Finally there's one step where, and thankfully this is tucked in the game's hidden…

Not bad.

A small but really good game. This is probably my third or fourth time playing it (after playing in Android before) and it feels just as good trying to collect all achievements and everything. Definitely would recommend.