REVIEW: My Aunt is a Witch

It's surprising to me that I haven't actively sought out visual novels that combine my two greatest passions, video games and books, until now. I was excited to try My Aunt's a Witch from developers Sometimes You. It is a whimsical visual novel with a playful look. It turned out to be one of my worst gaming experiences in the last few months.

My Aunt Is a Witchis a interactive visual novel that promises "adventures, quests and magic in a world where everything is possible." It follows Thomas, a twelve year old boy who moves to the country to live with Aunt Alice to escape his horrible stepmother. His aunt happens to be a witch, and she takes her nephew along as her new student.

The writing was terrible from the beginning. It is so heavy-handed, too descriptive, and general at the same. My interest in the story began to fade immediately. It was tedious and tiring. Thomas mentioned five times how much he hated the step-mother, in a matter of paragraphs.

The game's clunky writing continues throughout, and is made worse by the amount of prose required to complete. It was the most frustrating introduction I've ever seen. I thought it was the end. I had accepted the fact that I would be spending hours reading this boring story, pressing the circle button endlessly. Fortunately, I was able do something else after twenty minutes.

I was exhausted with boredom by the time I reached the interactive portion of the game. I wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing. The next thing you know, I had not read the correct information and made the wrong decision, which led me to my death. This was a sweet and innocent-looking game. I didn't know this was possible so I never even considered saving my progress. To my complete dismay, I had no choice but to restart the whole thing.

After tapping the circle button furiously for several minutes, I finally got back to where I was. After making a terrible decision that led to my death, I saved my progress. This was the only saved file I had, so I had to do it again. At this point my patience was waning and I felt like I was going to die trying to make it through the seemingly endless introduction to the game. It seemed that each step of the way got longer.

The game became more difficult to play because of the unintentional perma death I was inflicting on myself. While I don't blame the game for my incompetence, I feel there should have been something about saving my progress. This is because I noticed my attention drifting very quickly very early on.

My Aunt Is a Witch was mind-numbingly boring in parts. However, I found the interactive part fun because it was the most stimulating aspect of the game... however, they can also get repetitive. It felt almost like I was doing Thomas' chores. Due to the excessively long dialogue, the fun was sucked out from the tasks quickly. Because I wanted to get the entire thing over with, I found myself racing through text.

This game's art style is the best thing about it. The backgrounds are extremely detailed and creative. They can even be used as narratives by themselves without the need for dialogue. The character design was also very inspiring. Each character had many beautiful details. The characters I found so boring were not only in the way they were written but also in how little they changed visually in each scene. One example is a scene in which Alice watered her greenhouse, and was soaked. As if nothing has happened, she returns to the scene looking the same as always. This makes it seem like the characters were given only the most basic of lives, which is disappointing considering the many possibilities.

The music started to grate on my system, in addition to everything else. This could be because I had to play the beginning three times. But even so, it felt flat to me. The sound effects were also jarring to me. I was glad that there was an option to turn them down. They took me out of the game instead of immersing in it.

My Aunt Is a Witch seems like an appealing game. It promises a compelling story and thrilling gameplay. However, it's quite the opposite. It felt so uninspired that it was a chore to play. This is even before I made any serious errors. Although the concept is strong, it lacks the charm that would make it appealing.