Witchy Workshop
A downloadable game for Windows
Deep in the forest lives a spooky sorceress known only to the nearby townsfolk as the “Red Bean Witch”. Feared by many, she is believed to be summoning great dark magic when the occasional boom rattles the windows and eardrums of anyone nearby. In an attempt to spare themselves, the villagers venture into the woods to scatter bones as an offering.
What the town doesn’t know is that these terrible explosions are necessary to realising the Red Bean Witch’s true desire: to construct the most elaborate magical puzzles this world has ever known! Also, her loyal dog, Choco, sometimes runs out of bones.
Witchy Workshop is a physics-based puzzle game where you help solve the Red Bean Witch’s puzzles as her dog, Choco. This Windows release features a limited number of parts and premade puzzles, similar to a demo. However, typical completion time is 2-4 hours, so it's a very big demo.
Subsequent releases could include sandbox puzzle building and sharing, improved elemental simulation, more types of magic, animals, additional magical and non-magical parts, and the “Ultimate Woof Power”, Choco’s secret weapon.
Features
- A variety of parts magical, alchemical, and mechanical! Conveyor belts and crossbows mingle with gemstones and crystal balls. Setting off fireworks with a candle might normally be a bad idea, but in the Workshop's noble pursuit of puzzle-solving, there's no such thing as a bad idea!
- Lots of puzzles!
- Learn about parts with the Codex The Codex has a descriptive page for every part in the game, alongside the Red Bean Witch's comments. Don't know what mandrake juice could possibly be useful for? Me either, but she knows!
- Accessibility and performance in mind Witchy Workshop supports resolutions all the way down to 640x480, runs well on old machines, and has performance and accessibility options, such as disabling animated elements and toggling piece outlines. An accessibility report is available on our website (also linked below, under "More Information").
- You can be a dog that solves puzzles Most games don't do this!
Donations
This release of Witchy Workshop is free, but donations received will go toward recouping two years' worth of late-night-programming snack runs, ongoing website and development costs, and supporting future updates and other games by Deerbell. The suggested donation price is $4 to reflect the game's length being similar to many paid games.
Bugs/Feedback/Support
Please note that you can press F12 or PrtScr to take a screenshot. It will be saved in the Local directory described below.
If you want to report a bug or have feedback about Witchy Workshop:
- Fill out the Player Survey - top-left button on the main menu (please only once!)
- Deerbell Twitter: @DeerbellGames
- Deerbell Discord: https://discord.gg/KTURFnz
- Email: bugs@deerbell.games
If you’re reporting a bug, *please* attach debuglog.txt, log.txt, and wwsettings.ini. We may not be able to track the issue down otherwise! You can find these files in C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME HERE\AppData\Local\WitchyWorkshop. An easy shortcut is to press Windows Key + R, type %localappdata%\WitchyWorkshop, then press Enter.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Witchy Workshop 1.1.1 - Release NotesApr 28, 2019
- Witchy Workshop 1.1.0 - Release NotesFeb 03, 2019
- Witchy Workshop Postmortem - Tips to Keep Your GM:S Project From Scaring YouDec 16, 2018
- Witchy Workshop 1.0.1 - Release NotesDec 01, 2018
- Witchy Workshop 1.0 has been released!Nov 24, 2018
Comments
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I love the Incredible Machine series so this one is a treat :)
I'm playing on wine and having problems with some shader compilation:
I could only play the first levels, seemingly those without magic... I hope you can fix this! I'd really like to continue playing
Honestly I really don't know enough about how GMS handles shader compilation or how Wine works to be able to say I can fix this (it is a super basic shader). At the very least I can add a setting to disable the shader in a future patch, but in the meantime if you'd like to drop an email address, email me at kemonologic@deerbell.games, or DM me on Twitter, I'd be happy to send you a quick build with the effect removed!
We're looking into native Mac/Linux ports but testing has shown that the physics simulations differ enough from the Windows version that they need their own new set of tweaked puzzles (and the associated testing), so that will probably be a while.
Hello there! Your game seems quite promising for me since i love some physcal puzzles. Some feedback:
1. Some levels look like almost direct quotes from The Incredible Machine series.
2. Many levels teach you how to use obvious mechanisms, and then the 'magical' levels abruptly appear with different spells and so on. And it is not that obvious! I mean that probably you have to add more simple 'tutorial' puzzles on magical features, since the mechanical things are clearer.
3. The hand-written font is REALLY hard to read. REALLY.
4. The transformation interface is inconvenient in my mind. Even in old 'The Incredible Machine' games you are able to transform parts 'ad hoc' without using some side menu, as far as i remember.
5. Maybe you have to try more 'obvious' and 'self-explayning' button for starting the simulation. Current 'moon' button is really small and its placement doesn't seem to be 'logical' for such an important button. IMHO.
I hope this feedback may be useful for you.
Hi there! Thanks for the feedback.
I also have a hard time with the cursive font, & there's a toggle for it in Settings. With that turned off, anything that uses it (codex, etc) will be switched to the block font automatically.
Every part transformation has a keyboard equivalent - the panel is intended to be a point of reference for learning those keys (or a backup if you don't want to touch the keyboard). Each of the transform buttons' tooltips lists its key, and they're all clustered around WASD for easy access. It should be pretty easy to add a menu with a keyboard/mouse diagram to show the currently mapped controls too.
We actually meant to redesign the moon icon before release and/or highlight it with the same effect we use for the puzzle description button for the first puzzle. I definitely agree that it doesn't really tell you anything about what it does and we'll be changing it for the next patch.
If you've had any fun playing physics/machine kinds of puzzles, I'd strongly recommend this game-at the very least checking it out.
It shares some of the problems of the genre like levels being too obvious as a result of what items you have to use, and others taking too long just because the object interactions take a certain amount of time and you have to wait to see the result/tweak it.
However it's a lot of fun and is just as strong as any of the games that inspired it, but also has a lot of charm and some of the interactive objects like the spells and globes/books that can pass off/cancel those effects make for some cool puzzle options. I also really like it when how quickly an object can brake becomes part of the puzzle.
Really a lot of things to like about this game.
Also this 'demo' is basically a small game, which as the dev's mention is a result of this kind of game being difficult to intro without having a lot of the fun interactions already existing. And you want to see how everything can interact.
So definitely if you had fun with it I'd also recommend sending some money their way too. I'm hoping they'll be able to keep working on this, expanding what exists, refining and adding puzzles, and making a whole lot more fun content to tinker with :D.
Thanks for your feedback and we're glad you enjoyed the game! The genre issues you noted are things I personally really dislike and would like to actively address. We're definitely trying to move away from finicky "find the perfect solution" puzzles toward allowing for more flexible ways of completing objectives. Additional parts/magic/systems so you can approach goals in different ways, as well as more goals that aren't 'move X to area Y' (preventing things from breaking or moving, moving one thing but not others, etc) should hopefully help. We want to make sure the game feels tight and challenging, but seeing all the creative ways people have completed existing puzzles has been really fun.
Cool to hear all that :). Yeah I too got to have a few levels where I was like 'wow I solved it like that :D' feeling it surely couldn't be the logical method and I'm sure that'll only increase as you expand/evolve the game with the ideas present and you've mentioned wanting to add, so I'm really looking forward to it.
One suggestion I have at the moment that wouldn't affect gameplay but I'd appreciate as a way to smooth out the pace some more, is a more immediate end to the levels that have a foolproof end. E.G. when a skull needs to be destroyed, once it is destroyed the slow building sound effect to the levels completion just feels drawn out - there's no way for the solution to be 'unsolved'. It's certainly relevant for things like get x in x box in-case it comes out of the box, but those skulls aren't coming back. Likewise anything that falls off the screen.
At the very least it should be quicker for those events. Playing through many puzzles in one session made that feel super tedious over time.
(Granted that might tie in to your levels general logic and goals for puzzle creation but it would be good if different objectives could have different end level timers like that).
Yeah, it's kind of silly that those types of goals aren't instant, especially because all the win triggers already have their own logic and timers (WW is based on our other game's level editor, so that part of the dev tools is super overengineered). We'll be putting out a small patch shortly and want to avoid making puzzle changes to avoid a lot of QA work, but for the subsequent bigger patch where we're revamping some puzzles and adding some new part functionality we'll definitely be cutting out that extra goal time!