Pocket Witch Review

The developers over at Naoka Studio serve up some casual but challenging platforming with their indie title Pocket Witch. Offering a very familiar feel to the studios other titles Saomi and Hat up, Pocket Witch is not an easy game by any means, but you won’t find yourself pulling your hair out from fits of rage whilst playing it, either. The premise is simple, make your way from one side of the level to the other in order to progress.

Usually these kind of smaller titles offer up a handsome 1000 gamerscore (this time from publisher EastAsiaSoft) for a very measly effort that would take you no longer than 5 minutes, delete it off your hard drive and move on to the next challenge. Pocket Witch however, whilst boasting simple achievements, will not grant you a quick two minute completion as they are all tied to level progression, with the difficulty ramping up the further into the game you find yourself.

You start with only the ability to jump and relatively basic levels and as they ramp up the challenge, you will be granted new abilities along the way, including a double-jump and even a dash but these are obviously obtained for good reason as you would not be able to complete some levels without them. The challenge comes in when you realise you need to dash to reach a platform, but some platforms don’t allow a lot of leeway, meaning you will need some precision with your moves.

There are some intricate and interesting jumps you will have to make but aside from that, it felt very much the same throughout my time with the game. Pocket Witch does try to keep it fresh, adding in platforms with spikes, or enemies that move around and block platforms but that is as far as it goes in that department.

The pixel art style on display is a welcomed one, as you will be staring at it for the duration of possibly an hour that it may take you to complete. Accompanied by some nice sound effects and a pretty catchy soundtrack that manages not to make your ears bleed unlike some others.

There is not much here different from other titles within the space, and I felt like I had to put a lot of effort in for a lack of reward. There is nothing to collect and very little sense of reward, especially when you are left feeling you have spent far too long on one level and your reward is another level you will again feel like you’ve spent far too long on. This is only exacerbated within levels that require you collect a key, only to die and have to backtrack to retrieve said key and repeatedly perform annoying manoeuvres.

Pocket Witch sits at the very low price of £1.69 on Steam and is included within bundle containing 3 of the studios games for as little as £4.11 which might be enticing if you’re looking to pick up multiple titles to pass the time. As for the Xbox side of things, Pocket Witch is available for £4.19 but is currently on sale for £3.35.

Overall the first few levels offer little to no challenge whilst the latter levels might induce some frustration but again, not enough that you will feel the need to pull your hair out. If you are chasing those easy scores for Xbox, this one might be worth a look. It’s a decent little precision platforming game that just feels a little lacking and could use few more obstacles and abilities but a massive positive is that death is swift and respawning is instant so it does well here to keep the flow of the game going. So even if you tend to get aggravated with a certain manoeuvre you are back tackling it instantly, for better or worse.

A nice little arty style accompanied by a decent soundtrack and some hit or miss gameplay, this one won’t be for everyone but I would recommend this only if you are on the hunt for a cheap little platforming title.