![Witching Stone](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzEzOTEzNjI0LnBuZw==/original/94Snya.png)
Witching Stone
Witching Stone combines elements of puzzle games, roguelites and deckbuilders! Incrementally improve your spellbook, and find patterns on a unique puzzle grid, to battle deeper and deeper into the dungeon!
Streaming, YouTube, Vine, etc.
Do whatever you want! For thumbnails you can find the logo, characters cutouts and key art here...
Credits
- Alexander Taylor: Code/design/art
- Sam Miller: Key art
- Noelle Amelie Aman: Music
- Yukie Taylor: Japanese Translation
- Wu Panhui: Chinese Translation
- Ma Mofan: Chinese Translation
Asset Packs
- uta_vit999: Additional sprites
- Ansimuz: VFX
- BDragon1727: VFX
- Pimen: VFX
- castpixel: Heroine Sword font
- GGBot: Pixeloid font
- Kenney: UI prompts
Steam Key?
It's included! Hot damn! Although both builds save to the same place and Steam Cloud may try to "manage" your save. Be careful!
Updated | 1 day ago |
Status | Released |
Platforms | HTML5, Windows |
Rating | Rated 4.6 out of 5 stars (115 total ratings) |
Author | Alexander Taylor |
Genre | Puzzle, Strategy |
Made with | Tilemancer, Unity, Aseprite |
Tags | 2D, Anime, Cute, Deck Building, Female Protagonist, Pixel Art, Retro, Roguelike, Tactical |
Average session | About a half-hour |
Languages | English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified) |
Inputs | Mouse, Gamepad (any) |
Links | Steam |
Purchase
Get this game and 2 more for $22.90 USD
Buy Now$17.99 $15.29 USD or more
On Sale!
15% Off
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15.29 USD. Your purchase comes with a Steam key. You will get access to the following files:
Win64 (itch Full 05-10-2024).zip 105 MB
Download demo
Download
Win64 (itch Demo 05-10-2024).zip 105 MB
Development log
- Update! Challenges And Characters1 day ago
- Witching Stone OST Available15 days ago
- Hotfix: Scry Crash17 days ago
- Witching Stone v1 Launched19 days ago
- August Update!48 days ago
- July Update!84 days ago
- Third Update!May 12, 2024
- Second Update!Apr 30, 2024
Comments
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Hey!
Good job with the game, it's neat and polished and the gameplay is very clever. I spend hours on the demo last summer and I'm enjoying the full version since yesterday. Quite addicting!
I just ran into two minor issues so far.
That being said, I'm having a lot fun playing the game anyway, so thanks for giving life to such an original idea!
Hello, sorry for the late response. Glad you are/were having fun!
Resolution options are just monitor-supported resolutions in 16:9 ratio and perhaps that was naive of me. Like a 16:10 laptop probably has nothing valid there. I'll see if there is something easy I can do, like a launch option to just list everything or let you scale the window manually.
Yeah, there is a limit to the amount of summons. I have added a tooltip in the update that will clarify that before you find out the hard way.
Hello!
Thanks a lot for the update, no worries about the delay. :)
Regarding the window size, being able to set it manually would be enough. But as I said this is just a minor issue, absolutely no big deal. At the moment I can resize the window with my cursor when in windowed mode, it's just that the change gets reverted everytime I open the options menu (e.g. to adjust sound) or close the game. So I was just wondering if there was an easy fix to this. No problem if there's not.
As for the summon limit, finding things out the hard way is also part of the Rogue-lite genre :D Even if it was a tad frustrating at the moment, it didn't have me stop playing. Quite the opposite actually: I had to see what that Imp looked like!
Thanks again for taking the time to reply and for taking players feedback into account!
Cheers!
Witching Stone Gameplay
Dumped tons of hours into this, ready to dump even more. Super Epic
I love this game. REally cool artstyle, splendid music and good to play. Altough I struggled first playthrough but that's just a skill issue. Man can't wait to see how the full game will look (and play with the catgirl)
Actually waut are the 5 dots at the bottom of chara select
They are other starting spells! You'll need to unlock them first, though (or just bypass unlocks in the options)
Really fun! I love seeing all stages of the dev process on itch, but it's nice to play a game/demo where the mechanics are already this well developed. I couldn't believe there were multiple bosses and so many different buffs and enemy abilities.
That was super fun! Always sorta delighted when new mechanics would pop up. I also liked how you could combo spells and get good synergy in your spells. Thanks much!!
Cool Game!
I really like the way it works and the sprites are really cool! :D
Kinda hard tho but then Again that's prob my stupidity getting the best of me :/
great game! I really love everything about Ceridwen, but Gwen feels a teensy bit weak compared to her. I think if you gave Gwen's spells more color overlap (like how most of Ceri's spells contain purple), it would let her do more things and feel a lot better to play.
I just finished getting all the badges and quests and stuff and I have many opinions if you want to hear them :3 (don't want to be the girl that barges in and tells you how to balance your game unsolicited)
I'm happy for any constructive feedback!
Ok so firstly these are my qualifications (I've gotten a +5 with Ceri but I didn't ss it so you'll just have to trust me)![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzE3NDkxMzU0LnBuZw==/original/mGaZTg.png)
![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzE3NDkxMjk2LnBuZw==/original/1wrNI5.png)
First thing is with the modifier, the "halved health but heal after every battle" is imo one of the strongest modifiers in the game, and definitely at least a -1 if not stronger, especially since the halved health only applies to the starting health and not the health buffs you get from blessings. Not needing to care about the health you end up with at the end of a battle makes every fight except the final boss like 10x earlier, and bc of the halving not applying to blessings, after factoring in the expected health loss if you didn't have the modifier, you're only missing out on like 5 health most of the time. And this modifier is only gonna get better in future acts.
Secondly, scrying is really not worth the 3 health cost in 3/4 runs, and is definitely not worth 3 acorns if you're using that modifier. I'd recommend reducing the price to 2 life and 1-2 acorns. This might not be necessary depending on later bosses, but there's very few situations in which knowing the boss ahead of time would change whether you win or lose
In terms of starting builds, there are a few that I think need slight buffs for one reason or another:
1. Spark/Water Shield
I know that this is the tutorial build, so it's understandable that it's not doing anything fancy, but I think it just needs a small stat buff. The main problem with it is that because casting both spells requires 5 non-overlapping mana across only 3 colors, it's very difficult to scale it into casting more spells (because like, if you want to add another spell to your arsenal, to cast it you'll have to not cast either spark or water shield, which makes adding spells to your spell book much less of the power spike that it is in other builds. My suggestion for this would be to slightly tweak the stats of spark to make it red/yellow and do 3 damage, putting on the same level as frost shards, but Idk what cost/damage ratio would work both stylistically and in practice so I'd suggest playing around with the numbers.
2. Catalyst/Magic Dismissal
I love the idea behind this build, but I often find that in practice it just doesn't pan out. I am almost never able to cast more than 1 magic dismissal, and so the damage ends up being incredibly lacking, and this build is often just strictly worse than Ceri's similar bewitch/shiver build. My suggestion would be to replace magic dismissal with double cast, or if you don't want a cooldown spell in the starting build, give magic dismissal a secondary effect like frost 1 to make up for the lackluster dpt.
3. Channel/Crimson Bell
The problem with this build is that after turn 2, the only thing you can do is cast channel for 2 health every other turn and wait which, in addition to being very weak, is also quite boring. Idk if you're willing to put 3 spells in a build, but my first idea would be to add steel bell to the build, giving you things to do until turn 4 and massively speeding up the dpt afterwards. alternatively, you could make channel 3 mana and give it another effect like giving it 1 shield or applying 1 hex or smth, and make a second spell that's 1 mana and makes 1 soul gem without cooldown. Or you could swap the hp and atk of the crimson imp, or smth else that I haven't thought of idk.
And now bc I don't want to come off as a hater, here are my 3 favorite things abt the game (not ordered)
1. The art is genuinely incredible, especially the pixel art
2. The badge system is super neat and allows for a ton of hilariously strong combos
3. The enemies are really well designed and all feel very fair (yet challenging) to fight against
Holy shit I accidentally wrote an essay. I do want to stress that I think the game rn is really good, and all of these are really just small nitpicks. Hope this wasn't too painful to read lol, and good luck on the game moving forward, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it!
also I couldn't tell what the "enemies can appear anywhere" modifier does?
Thanks for your feedback.
To be honest, the goal with the starting sets is to give some variety when you’re replaying act 1. They are not made to be equal nor viable until the end of the game, but just give you other things to experiment with so going through act 1 is more interesting.
One of Gwen’s locked spell sets gives her Dragon Slave, a 4 gem spell you have to cast 3 times before it nukes everyone. It’s probably not as reliable as the ice start, but It’s fun to play around with having an alternative win condition so I made it a set. I figure if they're not your thing you'll just go with something else.
Something I don’t think is obvious in the demo is that later acts have their own spells and badges and the base power is higher. They’re not always straight upgrades, especially if you've got some synergies going on, but there is an expectation you won’t be too precious about shedding them.
I have done “get powered up and cast lots of things” much better on Aerfen and maybe Magic Dismissal needs a reevaluation. Some badges are amazing on it though, like you can reduce the stone count and have a 1-stone spell with Repeat and, for reasons I can’t get into, that’s not too rare.
The Channel starter having at least one fight where you wait for your imp to do everything can be a bit boring, you can x3 speed or take the skip modifier but it’s still fundamentally alternating empty turns. And given Channel is a reliable generator, I could see people sitting through that…
I think 3 health is a good number for Scry tbh. It is often useful to know who you’re fighting when picking spells or placing badges (ex: remove prism for mushroom). I do agree 3 acorns is way too much, you’re basically picking that with the same mentality as “no scrying nodes” and I don’t think I need two of those.
Anyway, I don’t want to come across as defensive, I appreciate the feedback. It is interesting to hear your thoughts and I appreciate you have put sooo much time into the demo!
For random encounters what enemies you fight is determined by budget, act and battle level (orb colour, basically!). “Enemies can appear anywhere” means only the budget is checked, so you can see enemies from any act (and summons). It’s more pronounced later on when the budgets are higher!
Tysm for responding! It makes a lot of sense that most of the stuff is balanced more for later game, which is smth I definitely didn't take into account in my feedback, and kinda addresses like 90% of my concerns lol. I'm assuming the -1 stone badge is smth that appears in later acts as I don't think I've seen that? either way I'm super excited for more of the game to come out! If you ever need another playtester feel free to hmu!
I saw that ldshadowlady reference ;)
Haha, I'm glad someone noticed!
I don't understand the meaning of the effect pristine
So, to cast spark you need to go red yellow yellow. But it doesn't matter if you pass other stones. So red yellow blue blue yellow still works. It only matters that the gems are in order. Pristine says no, you need to go red yellow yellow exactly.
thanks
I need to double-check the tutorial. The game plays different to what I understand.
Another game that relies on random chance (in gem placement) while also needing to strategise RPG battles. I don't see my surviving one run and it's definitely not fun. Maybe a bigger gem field would help or less useless gems. It needs an overhaul imo.that's kinda what roguelikes are all about
playing around the randomness is a big part of rogue likes as a genre
Vert neat concept, but unused stones get too stale, and sometimes you have to waste your turns just to burn stones not used in your spells just so you get a chance of useful stone to get spawned. Having something like "spend all your energy on full board reroll" could be useful.
Grate!
I can't do steam, but could be waiting continue..
I will drop the full version here as well ^^
adorable👍
that was a really great game, thanks for sharing :)
Do you need extra help in the art department? Game feels really nice to play. I'd love to help you out!
Fun game, wishlisted!
I love the game. The concept is great and the gameplay's very fun. my only problem is there are just no defensive spells so if you could fix that it would be great.
Love the feel of the mechanics, it feels like a solid base for something that'd really blow up. Can't wait to see what new stuff ends up in the final. Also would appreciate if there was clearer info on the interactions between keywords. Idk if it was on purpose, but trying to add repeat to a cooldown spell just crosses out the repeat. Kinda sucked not knowing it was gonna do that. But yeah, fun game, I wish you the best of luck!
Dang, good work, I'm still working on it, but I keep dying with Ceridwen
Loved the demo!!! Great mechanics and envolving gameplay, very challenging though.
The art is stunning, inspiring for sure! Waiting for the full release.
Cooooooooool! ^^
For a full release of this game I would pay at least 30$-50$ USD. Vary fun, and vary rare game type, (for me to see anyway). I really love these gem strategy games, keep doing what you're doing and good fortune shall come your way, once I get my card fixed.
Really like this demo, but I have no clue how to heal so I just got beat to death by the boss :'(
We may be able to fund your development work on Witching Stone. Can we contact you by email?
My email is: lilurx80@163.com
Looks like it crashes out when the user has a joystick plugged in. "Could not create device.... yadda yadda" then cites the HOTAS arrangement.
Ah, that sucks. I don't have any code for joysticks so I assume the unity "new" input system is doing something weird.
Looking on the internet I didn't find anything too promising, unresolved tickets about the thrustmaster specifically. Some posts suggest its the users drivers (probably not) or could be fixed by upgrading Unity to 2022.
I'll have another look tomorrow and see if I can find what's happening.
Yeah, I feel yah. It's not a thrustmaster specifically- but I don't think that's the issue. It's not terribly uncommon for games to twig out on the multiple peripherals. Turning them off is usually the first thing to be done just to make the game playable. Good luck!
Hi! We played your game on stream and really enjoyed it!
hehe, i watched it from the post on cohost! 😇
thank you very much, glad you had fun!
Fun game! It's interesting to think about how to use symbols and dispose of garbage.
+6 Rank win
Wow, congratulations!
you can complete the demo?!
I keep forgetting which symbol is what in terms of non combat, help
Really fun to play!
W game, beat demo in first try
Really loved this game! Reminds me a little of Puzzles & Dragons in all the best ways, where you feel so good for unleashing several spells at once. Really makes you want to replay the stage, getting a new build every time! Your addition of different starting spell sets is a genius idea for exactly this reason! My favourite is the hex build of course, really enjoyable to pull off.
All in all, great demo, wish you all the best on developing it to the end!
Thank you!
very fun
I like the game but cannot beat it for the life of me. Ive been trying for DAYS.
Try finding the most optimal path! Even when I had 5 spells, there would sometimes be a path which allowed me to hit all of the spells, triggering all of the effects! It might also help to get a good build. (by any chance, I beat this game on the first try ;-;)
Pretty great founding concept, with a nicely charming style (includes the OST), my personal complaints would be that the board fills with not-so-useful gems and the fact that defensive spells are very weak in comparison to enemy attacks (for eg: shields can reflect with damage, only two heal and shield points per the run I had, and one time I healed a whopping 0 HP).
But overall, good and promising, good luck with the Steam release!
The second character's healing is much, much better. You can heal 20+hp per fight.
Thanks! But I feel like a healing spell should work for all characters maybe.
FWIW I am trying to be careful with healing because unlike Block you take it out of the fight. I don't want a situation where optimal play is to get one enemy left and spam heals, because some players will end up doing something I know isn't fun...
This means most heals have some restrictions like being exhaustible, dealing damage at the same time, or just being weak enough an enemy would outpace them.
Gwen's Rejuvenation spell heals 3 but has Decay so it goes 3, 2, 1, 0. But that's still 15-30% of her default maximum hp every fight (the same as the camp). It also has a short, double-green cast sequence that exists inside lots of other spells. So, as an example, if you were to pick up Rejuvenation + Leaf Cutter x Sling then on turn one, for three stones, you do a 15% heal and 6 damage because you cast them together...
Well, that's my thought process anyway!
(Also on Ceridwen Pact + Death Coil is broken and I'll probably change it, heh)
Yeah I absolutely understand, I sort of forgot it had decay.
I think this failed to account, though, to the fact that enemies tend to collectively deal more damage than you can heal.
Maybe Decay can be given a set amount of turns before it starts? Or the Rejuvenation spell can count on how many enemies are on the field?
Additionally, the camp in my playthroughs also felt pretty weak, when I saw it, I expected it to be a full or half heal, but :boowomp:
And yeah, I personally don't like luck to decide a run or not (rather than just how well it goes), so that's extremely subjective and with it being a Rogue it'll definitely be way more in favor of its audience.
In my experience, this game isn't terribly luck dependent. I nearly 100%ed the game prior to the update deleting my save file, and I didn't actually ever lose a run. The camp doesn't heal much, but Ceridwen doesn't even use the camp ever unless she gets really bad luck right before the boss fight, and Gwen can use the extra 6 hp usually but there were only a handful of times I was going into the boss with sub-10 hp. Post-update the new spells being mostly worse does make Gwen runs harder, but I still haven't lost one yet (though I have twice finished on turns mushroom man would have otherwise killed me had I not finished him first).
You're right, though, that the difference between runs is rediculously rng dependent-- getting +mana/turn makes the game a LOT easier, and you get that at least once ~60% of the time it feels like. Gwen runs where you don't get plus mana are HARD, and one of the two almost-deaths was a Gwen run where I got no mana and only 4 spells (the shop was trash and I was dumb and didn't check first). And then a run where Air Blast gets Barrage+Giantslayer, for example, makes Gwen look better even than a bad Ceridwen run. If the game were extended so that the weaker runs didn't all win anyhow, that would be pretty annoying.
If block was ever decent this would make sense, but Gwen gets like 2 block sometimes I guess where Ceridwen gets health for every soul stone which is generally part of casting powerful spells anyway. Death coil + hex is crazy, of course, but even without that channel + starting spell can produce 3 soul stones in a turn, and those stones also let you cast powerful spells like the 4 damage 1 weaken starting one, or other better options. Gwen getting three block on a turn usually comes with almost no upside-- probably some thorns, which are lost at end of turn and usually do 2 damage-- and then all that block is lost. That's not to say Gwen is unplayable-- she's great and her starting spells are better defensively than Ceridwen's starting spells because block+weaken means you do effectively have 3 block almost every turn as long as you get moderately lucky, and you can put up with damage on the runs where you don't get lucky. But her main advantage is that not having soul stone spells in the drawing pool makes getting certain other useful spells-- most importantly high-damage spells like Air Blast-- more likely. So Gwen needs to kill all the enemies before they can attack, mostly, managing health as a resource to deal with bad luck while Ceridwen can comfortably coast and do whatever, relying on her mid-late game defensive power to overwhelm anything the enemies can dish out.
If you want block to be relevant, we need better defensive spells, or block on offensive spells. Right now defensive spells that are utility (like channel) are the only ones I ever take. Block doesn't feel like it makes progress, and there's rarely spare mana for things that don't make progress. Maybe a Toughen+block spell where toughen is like the opposite of strengthen (but presumably wears off because its a player thing) would change up how I play Gwen, but it would probably be kinda overpowered. Fundamentally, a defensive spell good enough to be slated into a build is kinda overpowered since it's pretty anti-synergistic with hyper offense and if it's good enough to overcome that, then its good enough you'd want it in every deck. I think if you gave defense more mechanics so that they could synergize together the way different offensive spells can complement each other that would be the best option, but since weaken is classified as an offensive effect the design space is pretty limited-- offensive spells have lots of possible targets to mix things up with but defensive spells can only target and be based off of the player, and the only defensive effects currently in the game are heal and block (other defense cards are really doing some kind of utility feature helping you make progress in an unusual way at the cost of not doing anything else, like channel and that board-wipe spell).
-edit- Turns out I was misremembering the default attack spell for Gwen. No weaken. Man she sucks XD
This is a wonderfully difficult game, with cute art, lots of planning, and a ton of fun to play and play again
Witching Stone Gameplay
it was a nice little moment realizing that the end of a spell can be the start of another!