It’s the age old question: what would happen if World War Two involved supernatural powers, witches and of course aliens. Well, finally we have an answer thanks to Nine Witches: Family Disruption.
Nine Witches: Family Disruption throws many things into the cauldron, a historical moment in time (WW2), sci -fi (aliens), fantasy (witches) and a plot involving 2 unlikely heroes, a genius professor, Professor Krakovitz, and his Japanese butler-come-carer Akiro, trying to decipher what the heck is happening in a small Norwegian town of Sundae. It’s clear from the prologue that evil is the name of the game, as a couple of nasty Nazis, along with a witch and several albinos are dealing with the occult, and open a dark portal containing a curse that will supposedly help them beat their enemies and take over the world. The Prime Minister gets wind of this though and ropes in the help of Krakovitz and Akiro. Why these two? Really I couldn’t figure that one out. It might be because Professor Krakovitz is an expert in the occult, but it’s a flimsy reason. Regardless, our heroes head off to this small town to try to infiltrate the Nazi’s, discover what’s going on, and save the day.
Krakovitz is a bit cranky, in a mad scientist kind of way, whilst Akiro is mostly passive and submissive. Most of the time you’ll be playing as Akiro. Krakovitz is in a wheelchair throughout but can project his soul into the afterlife to speak with dead people, which is also handy for floating through locked doors, but apart from that thing, he’s pretty redundant. Akiro is the one who does the majority of the work. Except for a short sequence at the start and one at the end, the pair are always together, which seems like it’s a missed opportunity. They never work simultaneously, you just press a button to change who you’d like to take control of. Both have very similar dialogue too so it doesn’t make a difference which character talks to someone. Again, I think the striking differing personalities should make people react differently to each of them, but it doesn’t.
The big bad evil guys of the game are full on cartoon crazy, with maniacal laughs and mad eyes and with names like Von Darka and Captain Sauerkraut. This comedy is where the game will sink or swim with you. It starts off fairly mild, with some pretty funny dialogue, but it starts to wade into deeper waters with some fart jokes and animations and ends up knee deep in juvenile playground japes about bodily functions and the like. Honestly, the interesting and wild plot was what got me through until the end as the jokes made me cringe every time, and they got worse.
The puzzles are mainly straightforward using a hefty amount of inventory, but a few logic jumps are needed at certain points. Alongside the inventory puzzles, there’s also a few collection quests. Finding and catching chickens for one, and trying to find tiny coins a few pixels wide amongst the grass. These didn’t seem to serve the game anymore, and merely padded extra time into it. We're served all of these puzzles on a large map where we enter and exit different locations in the village like the town centre, a farm, a prison and more. So we could be on the hunt for a few coins and have to go to several different places to search for them, with no clear direction or clue where to go, you kind of have to stumble upon the coins. If ever you’re not sure what to do next, we do have a notebook that lists all our tasks which is something that all adventure games should implement and it handily ticks them off once completed.
Action sequences popped up every now and again. This consisted of Akiro firing his selection of guns at whatever enemies he faced, whilst either being shot at by Nazis, bitten by dogs, or eaten by zombies. The further into the game you got the harder this became, and I’m not afraid to say action sequences in adventure games should be optional. If you plough so much time into puzzles and story, only to be stopped in your tracks by some action piece, normally I’d close the game for good. They suck. Maybe it’s my inability to play any sort of action game, but then I thought I was playing an adventure game not action game so why should I be punished so! Maybe that’s my problem.
I should also mention that technically it’s not a point and click, in any way. You can use a gamepad or the keyboard to move these guys around the screen. But there’s not the option of the mouse. As a bonus there’s tonnes of save spots so for me who saves every 4 minutes, it’s got you covered.
Now normally I love pixel art, like, properly adore it, but there is something slightly ‘too’ pixelly about Nine Witches. The backgrounds and locations are brilliant, as is the fairly large map we inhibit. Really loved them, but the characters are all too small and spindly. They all have a slight hunch to them too, like they’re not standing upright. They’re not bad in anyway, and again, maybe it’s because I love the art form so much, but they just seemed slightly odd. It’s soundtracked by a pretty hefty score of strings and brass which does give some weight behind it. It’s not a big explosive score by any means, it’s more of a subtle nuance. The game isn’t voiced but for a pixel art game in this vein, I’ve no problem with that.
It's a ludicrous game, in plot and humour. A lot of it doesn’t make sense and there’s far too much toing and froing for no reason. However, there is a certain charm to it. Akiro is a humble lead with lofty ambitions so even when that around him piles up into bewilderment, he remains an enjoyable character.
Nine Witches: Family Disruption is fun for about half the time, with just too much crude humour for my tastes. The plot goes completely off the rails, but has some truly funny moments. It took me around 7 hours which is just the amount I could bare. If you like your humour on the blue side though then you’re gonna love it.
Get your copy of Nine Witches: Family Disruption from GOG for PC. It's also available for PlayStation, X Box and Switch.
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