Quantum Witch review

• Reviews by Johnny Nys
• Published:

Enchanting narrative fantasy adventure is good for several short replays before the charm begins to wear off

While it may sound like another Marvel Television production, Quantum Witch is in fact a charming fantasy adventure game with branching storylines that is meant to be replayed over and over again. Each choice you make might influence another part of this retro-styled, side-scrolling fictional world, and solo developer NikkiJay promises that all playthroughs are like snowflakes: no two are alike. And indeed it is very much an adventure game with high replay value, through open-world exploring, conversations with other characters and all kinds of (hidden) achievements to unlock. I quite enjoyed playing through it several times – something I rarely do with games – and stopped only at the point where I had no idea anymore which different choices there were left to make.

One morning, a shepherd named Ren – a wide-eyed young woman living in the medieval-styled island town of Hus – awakens from her tutorial-like dream explaining the basic controls to find all her faer (sheep) have escaped. The pasture’s fence has mysteriously broken down, and Ren’s “bonded one” Tyra is already on repairing duty. As Ren roams around looking for her wooly darlings, she encounters many people to talk to, and even stumbles upon a mysterious presence that will change her world and perhaps even her very existence forever.

You explore Hus by moving Ren left and right with the directional keys or a controller, and by jumping to go up hills or climb buildings. When you pass by something interesting, an eye icon will appear and Ren will comment on it when you hit the action button. If the hotspot can be manipulated, you will see a hand icon. For other characters, a speech bubble floats above their heads if they have anything new to say; not everyone is talkative, and once you have played through a conversation, you can’t repeat it.

Usually you can switch locations by walking to the left or right side of the screen, except when the road is blocked by a body of water or a cliff. Sometimes there are stone archways through which you can pass into another area. And of course you can enter buildings through their doors when possible and/or allowed. There is no in-game map, so it took me a while to get my bearings in Hus. I would often wind up in a totally different location when I was aiming for another, sometimes even running in circles until I realized I kept missing the same archway.

A constant day-night cycle changes which buildings you can enter and where you can find other characters, but there’s no clock to help you keep track of time. The name of the current area is displayed at the bottom of the screen, like “Riverhome Orchard,” “The Crossroads” or “The Helgrind Path.” There are quite a lot of locations to visit: along with a couple of shops and a meeting hall there is Ren and Tyra’s home, the church of a religious group called the Shadies (“they’re NOT a cult!”), the laboratory of quantum scientist Lev, the marketplace with recognizable characters from classic video game franchises selling their merchandise, and the Pool Temple where the all-female inhabitants of Hus retreat to when they want to “arrange” their progeny through “creation magic” (Ren is always a bit embarrassed when she goes there).

Quantum Witch is full of small animations: grazing sheep and cows, cats running around, clouds drifting by, the wind blowing in Ren’s auburn hair and her long sleeveless red dress. The outdoor pixel art settings have very bright colors, featuring lots of summery greens and yellows. But when day turns into night, the palette changes into bluish tones, stars start to twinkle and a moon rises in the distance. Moths fly around at night and campfires crackle. In some locations the surrounding water ripplingly reflects what’s visible on shore.

A happy synthesized tune accompanies your excursions, like the mellow background music of a beach episode with steel drums and a ukulele. You will discover some darker places as well, though, where the music takes on a haunting melody, with a spooky flute, fast organ, slow drums and bass guitar, all in an arrangement suitable for a supernatural television show. Ren herself will even start playing a flute when you haven’t moved her in a while, completely in tune with the soundtrack’s own.

Hus has a combat dojo where you can get some fight lessons, and the accompanying soundtrack, filled with epic electric guitars, seems to come straight out of a JRPG, effectively raising the excitement. It even features a victory march once you’ve successfully completed your training. But don’t worry, the “combat” only involves striking huge crates so they disappear and reveal an exit. It’s all very playful and silly, as evidenced by the Monty Python-esque dojo master, of whom you only ever see one giant boot and leg, and part of a cape.

In contrast to the excellent music, the sound effects are very old-school, with bleeps and boops straight out of an Atari console, such as when the faer bounce around. The game isn’t voiced, but what’s worse is that the dialogue is accompanied by an annoying beeping very much like Morse code, with different versions for different characters. Thankfully, after launch the developer added the option to turn it off in the menu settings. The dialogue is printed in text balloons letter by letter, but you can fast-click through it so the whole block of text appears at once, after which you have to click again to advance.

The writing is very funny and delights in poking fun at pop cultures. At the start of the game, being confronted with the break-out of her faer, Ren sighs and says to herself, “Ugh, a fetch quest this early in the morning. Should be illegal.” At the market, one of the merchants is a certain Princess Nectarine selling turtle shells and boasting about her awesome mustachioed boyfriend. And when Ren tries to talk to one of the Shadies (“they’re NOT a cult!”) the woman will constantly interrupt with her spiel to get Ren to join, forcing a pamphlet on her in the belief that Ren is very interested, when it was just the flashy colors of the brochure drawing her attention.

Quantum Witch

Genre:	Drama, Fantasy
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D, Side-scroller
Theme:	Magical
Perspective:	Third-Person
Graphic Style:	Pixel art
Gameplay:	Quest, Choices matter
Game Length:	Short (1-5 hours)
Difficulty:	Low

However, underlying all the jokes is a deeper message about religious doctrine and people blindly following their “leaders” and “gods,” seemingly without being able to think for themselves. That’s exactly why NikkiJay, who in interviews has stated that she once lived in a dominant religious community where thinking for oneself was strictly taboo, made a game where choices are very important: one where the player doesn’t simply follow a fixed set of rules across a linear path, but can decide for themselves which direction the story will go.

There’s nothing in the way of traditional puzzles in Quantum Witch, but at one point you will gain the magical power to solidify objects that are parallax-scrolling in either the foreground or background, like hills or towers. A press of a button shoots out a rainbow-colored force field, enabling you to use these objects as platforms on your own plane so you can reach places you couldn’t get to earlier. Ren also has the ability to cling to some walls and jump higher that way. But don’t let all this platforming fool you, as it doesn’t take much dexterity and in the end it’s just a means to navigate this world in a more interesting way. The focus lies on the adventuring: exploring, talking to people, discovering secrets, and making choices both in actions and dialogue replies. You could almost consider it a condensed 2D pixel art version of a Life Is Strange story.

Eventually Ren’s journey will see her come face to face with an ancient presence in a volcanic mountain just offshore, which starts trembling after it is accidentally awakened through Ren’s actions and threatens to destroy the island. With some help, Ren must then travel beyond Hus and discover that her world – nay, her universe – is a whole lot larger than she ever imagined. After all, you can’t put the word “quantum” in your game’s title and not reference the multiverse. Here it’s called the QVerse, a series of realms existing next to each other, only reachable through special portals. These realms are governed by godlike creatures that can change reality at will. There are several ways to deal with them, leading to a bunch of different endings.

I finished my first playthrough in two hours. I got a good ending, but I had only “collapsed” 17 of 50 “waveforms.” These are all the different optional quests or achievements you can complete in Quantum Witch, which will require at least one replay and probably several more. They range from just petting a cat to becoming a leader of the Shadies (“they’re NOT a cult!”). You can find a list of these waveforms in the game’s menu, and their bullet points get colored in when you have fulfilled their goals. Even though you can check up on them whenever you want, I did wish for an on-screen alert notifying me that I had completed a waveform. It wasn’t until I finished my playthrough and returned to the main title screen that I saw which ones I had unlocked and which were still left to find. Because of this, I had no idea which of my choices was responsible for a particular waveform.

Your behavior towards other characters really does change how the story develops. For instance, at one point I traveled to another realm governed by a mermaid god. During my first playthrough I didn’t spend much time there and quickly found my way back. The next time, however, I succeeded in making the mermaid mad enough that she froze the entire land and all the people suffered because of my choices. As bad as that was in the moment, it also led to a completely different ending of the game.

While I’m usually not into replays, I enjoyed my trip through Hus very much. And so, with such a clear task list to guide me along, and with a real feeling that I had only scratched the surface of what I was able to do, I gladly played through the game again. While there were many similarities the second time through, I was now able to skip through the already familiar dialogue. This shortcut wasn’t always as handy as it sounds, though, because I sometimes missed being reminded of important information needed to make a choice. It’s hard to reply to someone when you have no idea anymore what they just asked you.

That wasn’t often an issue, however, as most of my replay was completely different, and I discovered many new scenes and dialogue. Starting a new game does deprive you of your magical power to solidify objects until it’s once again granted to you at the appropriate point in the story. But you do get another “magical” ability in the form of five save slots you can use to save your progress manually, which isn’t available the first time through. This allows you to easily jump back to a point before you made a certain decision and do things differently straight away, and thankfully the waveforms are saved instantly and permanently.

Another addition to the game that wasn’t originally included is Ren’s journal, in which she notes what has already happened and what she is supposed to do. This makes it much handier to keep track of your choices and utilize save points more efficiently, because you no longer have to remember everything yourself. You get an on-screen alert when Ren has jotted something down, usually containing a clue as to where to go and what to do.

After my second playthrough, I had completed half of the available quests and achievements. So I went through the game a third and fourth time to see if perhaps I could still do some things differently. While I was able to unlock a few more scenes, the majority of the game by that point was pretty much a clone of my first two playthroughs. I put my total playing time of Quantum Witch at six and a half hours, and I had still only completed 36 of the 50 waveforms. After that, I didn’t feel the urge to start another run and comb through the details to find the 14 that were left. Even with the amusing and often absurd writing – one of the QVerse realms Ren can find is a kitchen filled with talking appliances – too many things started to repeat themselves, and I was running out of inspiration for where to go and do things differently. 

Final Verdict

Like most narrative adventures, this game features freedom of choice as its most important aspect, though I loved the fun retro art and catchy music as well, and totally appreciated the main character standing up to religious doctrine (if I wanted). A lot of supernatural – or quantum-sciencey – things happen in the story that I didn’t really understand, possibly because I didn’t see all possible scenes. But I went with the flow, laughed at the jokes, and tried to give Ren the best ending I could. And then the worst. And then something in between. The game might still hold more secrets for me, but I’m totally fine to leave the rest for completionists. It’s definitely worth playing, though, and playing more than once, as it’s a challenge to unlock the various alternative versions of the story, and often a joy to experiment. Go in with the right expectations and you’re sure to be charmed by Quantum Witch.

Johnny played Quantum Witch on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.