A pesky knight has stolen away all of your ingredients and valuables, and you — as the titular Witch — must fight against hordes of enemies to recover them. Your goal in Witcheye, however, is much more challenging than one might think.
You see, as a magical witch, you have decided to half your travel time by turning yourself into an eye. This eye can move wherever you swipe and you can also tap to stop, but you’ll probably forget that last bit. Screen by screen you will be trying to get your stolen artifacts back. The challenge comes in that each level in Witcheye introduces a new enemy — there are a lot of new enemies and new areas.
Your only way to attack is through swiping your eye into an enemy, but if the enemy has spikes, you will need to avoid those. Many of the enemies within each level do not need to be destroyed — you can simply fly by them, moving to the next area. But, if you do kill enemies then you are sometimes rewarded with Gems or with life restoring hearts. Gems are cool to collect, but they don’t seem to do anything aside from giving you bragging rights.
Because the gems didn’t actually reward me I didn’t go for them in Witcheye. Instead, I rushed through levels hoping to get to bosses, giving zero cares about completing things 100%. Enemies stayed behind, shooting or moving as before I entered their lives. Witcheye did seem to accommodate people that didn’t care about fighting all the enemies, and that was through mini-bosses and large bosses.
Locked on a single-screen, versus the normal scrolling levels, you’ll need to take on one or more enemies to gather a key. The screen has two locked areas, waiting for you to destroy whatever enemy is there. Some of these are mini-bosses where the enemy is just three of a new enemy you’ve found recently, or one slightly more challenging version of an enemy you’ve seen before. Other times, before getting an artifact normally, you’ll face a completely new, huge enemy that’s full of challenges. These enemies were really fun; breaking bulbs on a snake, hitting the back of a skeleton head, and avoiding a seagull — Witcheye‘s bosses are really fun and easily the highlight.
Along with the bosses, the environmental challenges of the game really surprised me. Specifically in the sea levels there were a few different bits of the world that went on to hinder my gameplay. Getting stuck in sand or trapped in a bubble meant that I needed to swipe a lot to get back out. There were a lot of enemies that I only saw in one or two levels, which was interesting as I never felt like I got acquainted with the different attack modes.
Witcheye also features some lovely pixel art graphics, that are complete with various cutscenes after you collect a new artifact. The movement within the game is also worth mentioning again, as this is the main thing that makes Witcheye so unique. Being a moving eyeball, and forgetting to stop, often has you trying to avoid walls and attempt to kill everyone in your path through bashing.
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