When I was a child, horror movies terrified me; especially anything done by Stephen King. It had me in such a state that I refused to go into my grandmother’s restroom because it reminded me of the one in the movie and I had these horrible visuals of blood pouring up from the bathroom sink. Pet Cemetery had me watching, on the look-out for pets long since passed.
Eventually, though, I grew up and such things stopped scaring me. Don’t get me wrong; things still creeped me out; spiders, porcelain dolls, clowns and these stuffed animals that my youngest sibling had from a show he was obsessed with for a time.
Imagine my surprise when I was interviewing David Jennings, the creator of Witchkin from Coven Games at RTX and discovered that he typically didn’t even care for playing horror games himself, though he did like the same genre in books and older movies.
His inspiration for making such a game”¦his children’s’ reactions to Teletubbies; the same stuffed animals that my sibling had from that slightly creepy show he watched as a child.
After chatting with David and his wife, Rachel, for a while amidst watching other people’s reactions as they played, I got a chance to sit down and demo what all the fuss was about myself. (There was definitely a tad bit of screaming and some very horrified facial reactions.)
First off; the game is CREEPY. Everything about it screams of things that would have terrified child-me; from the menacing atmosphere right on down to the eerie music. (Note that in spite of this, these summon happy childhood memories.) This is way more of a compliment than any sort of me bashing the game, which I adore in a masochistic way.
You start off in a Victorian-style mansion. David mentioned that the setting inspiration stemmed from his fascination with Victorian-corpse photographs. I have to admit that Coven Games seems to have hit this aspect head on as well.
The mansion is littered with old toys and locked doors and such. Your goal seems to be some sort of hide and seek (more hide than seek) with a doll named Marcy, that when she appears suddenly, is disturbing enough that she could almost put Chuckie from Child’s Play to shame. (Only because this is another series that terrified me as a child.)
I must admit that horror games are generally not my style, but WItchkin is one that I’m keeping on my radar. According to the creators, the story-line is based on an old legend, The Candy Lady, and I have a fascination with most legends, even more so when it comes to morbid ones such as this one, so I cannot wait to see where they take this.
As always, thanks for stopping by and reading!