Trigger Witch – Review

If you’re anything like us, there is a good chance that at one point in your life, you asked yourself the age-old question “What if witches had guns?”. Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore, because developer Rainbite’s new title Trigger Witch finally provides the answer to that mystery. Naturally, the follow-up question is whether or not Trigger Witch is any good. We’ve got you covered on that one with this review, so read on if you want to know the answer.

Story

As the title not-so-subtly implies, the story of Trigger Witch revolves around a coven of gun-wielding witches. Central to the narrative is Colette, a young witch that is eager to join The Clip, a group of witches that is designated to protect the realm. At the start of Trigger Witch, Colette must complete the Gauntlet, a series of tests to see if aspiring witches are ready to join The Clip (which conveniently also serves as the game’s tutorial). Although she succeeds in doing so, things quickly go south afterwards, when a mysterious Man in Black appears through a dimensional rift. With her friends and family in danger, it is now up to Colette and her newfound standing with The Clip to save the world from the Man in Black’s dark intentions.

Graphics

Trigger Witch attempts to emulate the retro aesthetics of the 16-bit era, and for the most part, this works, although we should add that we could’ve done with a little more depth when it comes to the shading. That said, what’s present here looks good enough, with character portraits that bring the cast to life and a surprisingly varied amount of environments and enemies. The sprite-based nature of the game means that Trigger Witch isn’t too taxing on your hardware, although we did notice a fair amount of stuttering when the camera moved during cutscenes. That’s only a minor gripe, however, as the frame rate was consistent while actually playing the game, even when there is a lot of on-screen action or when weather effects are in play.

Of course, we have to address the elephant in the room and that’s the enemies’ blood. Trigger Witch isn’t subtle when it comes to splattering blood all over the screen, taking delight in the visceral carnage that comes with wiping out hordes of enemies using a varied arsenal of weaponry. We’d go as far as to say that the blood splatters are an essential part of the Trigger Witch experience and these effects elevate the visuals to a new level. If you’re faint of heart or if you want to introduce Trigger Witch to a younger audience, you can turn off the blood effects, but in practice, you’re removing a lot of the visual appeal by doing so.

Sound

The game juggles fast-paced arcade action and more traditional RPG elements and the music follows suit, with two distinct soundtracks. Composed by New Zealander Finneganeganegan, Trigger Witch’s OST comprises not one, but two albums. Trigger Witch Vol. 1: Light focuses on the narrative fantasy-themed music, which wouldn’t feel out of place in a generic fantasy RPG, but the far superior tunes come in the form of Trigger Witch Vol. 2: Heavy, which features the fast-paced rock tunes that play while you’re busy delivering carnage. We found ourselves returning to these tunes after we played the game, which is a testament to just how good and catchy this music is. With no voice acting present and fairly simple sound effects, it’s clear that the OST, and in particular Heavy, is the star of the auditory show.

Gameplay

If you were to take a roguelike twin-stick shooter and the original Legend of Zelda, and then throw them into a blender, the end result would probably look a lot like Trigger Witch. It’s an odd mix of two genres but the end result is a unique arcade title that is surprisingly fun and engaging, although it feels a bit slower than you’d expect given the amount of gun-blazing action that is happening on-screen at any given time. The core experience is still that of a roguelike twin-stick shooter, with hordes of enemies that you’ll need to mow down using a growing arsenal of guns, but the way the game is presented makes it feel different from pretty much every other title in the genre.

You start out with a basic handgun with infinite ammo. As a witch, you also have a few magic tricks at your disposal, such as being able to teleport out of reach from your enemies as well as bypass stage hazards like spikes that cover the ground. You’ll come across bigger and badder weapons as you progress through the game, with things like a grenade launcher or a sniper rifle making welcome appearances here. Using these more powerful weapons requires you to have the right ammunition, of course, and the game encourages you to regularly swap between weapons so that you can rebuild your ammo stash with one gun while continuing your non-stop onslaught with another. Trying out new weapons is fun, although we did feel that the overall selection of guns was fairly limited.

Controls are fairly smooth, and you’re able to map your preferred weapons to the D-pad. Moving Colette is done with the left stick and you can aim with the right stick. This part of the Trigger Witch experience should be nothing new to anyone that has ever played a top-down twin-stick shooter. The game tries to shake things up with its broomstick sections, which see Colette take to the skies, shifting the camera to a third-person view rather than top-down. The broomstick sections take on the form of scrolling shmups and although these do make for a nice change of pace, this is not enough to cover for Trigger Witch’s biggest gameplay issue: it lacks variety. It’s odd to say that a game featuring murderous witches that bring bloody mayhem on a menagerie of monsters can end up feeling repetitive, but unfortunately, this is the case here. The issue mainly lies in the design of the dungeons. These usually require you to wipe out every single enemy but it’s easy to miss a room or two, leading you to have to backtrack and aimlessly wander around until you stumble upon the final enemies that you need to kill in order to reach a boss and beat the level.

It’s a minor gripe overall and there is a lot of fun to be had here, but it does mean that Trigger Witch is best suited for short pick-up-and-play sessions of a single level before returning to play something else rather than attempt to blaze through the entire game in a single weekend. It’s a fairly short game anyway, which should take you roughly 10 hours to complete. As such, we recommend taking things slow, savoring the experience. Given the number of customization options, there is a ton of replayability here as you can tinker with the game’s difficulty to your heart’s content. Additionally, the game has a co-op mode where you can team up with a fellow witch, though we did feel like the game was geared to single-player and we imagine that playing the game in co-op could cause some balance issues. You’ll probably be able to expand the game’s lifespan far beyond the aforementioned 10 hours if you tinker with different settings or attempt a co-op run. So, even though the core experience is fairly short, rest assured you’ll get your money’s worth.

Conclusion

Trigger Witch is a game that is best enjoyed one level at a time rather than in lengthy sessions, allowing the action to shine without becoming too repetitive. Thanks to clever genre-blending the game feels unique, even if the core experience isn’t all that special. Still, a game doesn’t necessarily need to be special in order to be fun, and Trigger Witch certainly delivers on that front. This is definitely a title worth checking out, if only for the Heavy OST.

SebastiaanRaats

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