Stardew Valley showcased this when it released back in 2016 and would later go on to become one of the most popular indie titles on the market. And last year, Animal Crossing released its Switch installment New Horizons, which added many crafting elements to a franchise that was already about collecting and selling resources. While Wytchwood isn’t an exceptionally long one, it should interest gamers who enjoy titles like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley for likewise elements.
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What is Wytchwood?
Wytchwood is a crafting adventure game set in a gothic fantasy world pieced together with stunning storybook art. After losing her memories and speaking with a talking goat, the witch needs to awaken the sleeping maiden by collecting a series of souls from nearby beings like a snake, a bear, and a leech. Crafting is presented as puzzles, which are also the quests in Wytchwood. After getting the initial tasks from the goat, the witch ventures out into nearby areas like a swamp, forest, and fields to find the souls.
One task leads to the next, and it typically involves a request to craft or fetch an item from someone else who also needs some item crafted or returned to them. The world of Wytchwood is filled with ingredients, from mushrooms, grasses, and other plants lying around to items obtained by catching creatures, like pixie dust from fairies and frog slime from frogs. There are also many interactable objects, like clay mounds or fireplaces, that drop items needed for recipes when activated.
Like Animal Crossing, there isn’t any combat in Wytchwood, but the witch can still take damage from hostile creatures, though many beings are generally friendly. Each enemy has an item, typically a craftable one, that they’re weak against, such as unveiling powders or sleeping potions. When it’s used on them, they can drop items used in other recipes, which is part of the puzzle and crafting process that players need to figure out on their journies.
What Makes Wytchwood Similar to Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley?
For a long time, Animal Crossing has largely been about collecting resources. In the early days, the only ways to make bells were to collect fruit, catch bugs and fish, dig up fossils, and sell them to Tom Nook to pay off that pesky mortgage. And while Stardew Valley isn’t as much about foraging, crafting facilities for the farm is. And generally speaking, folks who enjoy Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley tend to be on the lookout for more quiet crafting games with meditative gameplay, and Wytchwood is likely to scratch that itch.
But Wytchwood is a little bit more on the storytelling aspect than either Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, both of which feature open-ended gameplay and allow players free reign of whatever they please, at their core. Players can still progress in various ways throughout Stardew Valley such as courtship and marriage, while Animal Crossing really isn’t about progressing so much as decorating, though crafting is still a major part of the game. Wytchwood, on the other hand, ties its crafting and puzzles into its quests, meaning it’s the main premise of the game culminating in a lighthearted gothic fairy tale.
Wytchwood releases December 9, 2021 for PC, PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox.
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