Witch Hazel

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Witch Hazel


Witch Hazel was originally created 2 weeks for Xavier Ekkel’s Meta Game Jam and tied for 3rd place.

The first week Jason was at GDC and we were just talking about ideas mostly. I started messing around with a concept and we went into super crunch mode as soon as he got back! It was intense, stressful, hilarious and overall a great experience.

Since then we have been occasionally making updates to the game. We have a lot that we didn’t have time to include in the jam version! The concept is much, much bigger and full of a lot of neat stuff. The ending of the jam version may as well have said, ‘to be continued…’ as it is so far from complete and was thrown together during the hours of the crunch to submit by the deadline.

We have had an amazing amount of support from some amazing people and are grateful for all the kind comments and messages we’ve received (and still receive a year later lol) about Witch Hazel. Thank you everyone so much for your support!

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Team Witch Hazel

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Chase of Bass

Creative Director
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Jason Tom Lee

Action Director, VFX
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Dan Kim

Sound Design, Musical Score
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Fallon Braddy

Secret of Liana Theme

Making of

Anything is possible with a good team!

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I had so much fun with the art to this game -kind of got lost in it. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time to waste on art but got carried away and lost in the art for a moment or two.

Which left me a lot less time to build and code. Fortunately, my amazing co-developer Jason was there to swoop in and help -a lot! And I mean a lot! I get hyper focused on minutia, subtleties, and polish -and he has the same tendency -but luckily he shines in vfx and action!

So where I’m wasting time trying to make a menu feel good or a tree sway just right -Jason was crunching away on making the character’s play feel good -which is paramount to making a good game. The moves, the physics, the camera -J is a beast at what he does!

For such a short period of time he managed to piece together a lot of mechanics and effects very quickly. A lot of things took consideration to elements that didn’t even make it into the jam version -such as enemies. Unfortunately, there were too many bugs to work out with the enemies by submission time that we just decided to drop them from the jam version completely rather than risk the player getting stuck. Rest assured, there is a lot of delicious play juice by Jason there that didn’t make it into the jam release and probably won’t until the full version is released.

As J and my own code turned into two separate plates of spaghetti on a half built table, we managed to use each other’s strengths efficiently to cobble it all together in the last 2-3 days. It was insane!

That said, as long as J and I have known each other it was an honor to finally work with him -seriously, awesome to work with him and can’t thank him enough for joining me on this project!

Our buddy Falloneus, who makes fantastic chiptunes among a variety of other styles was coming back from a tour if I remember correctly and was totally on board for helping out when he got back. He was awesome to work with and gave me exactly the heavy, sinister, and pensive tune I was hoping for for the rpg meta game part of the game! It almost induces chills in a strange way!

I really, really wanted to fuck with the player a little bit, so I wanted the game to have beautiful art and then in the arcade machine have very cheesy, basic art with chiptune music that felt contrary to the art to suggest something was a little off…that something is wrong. We were running out of time so the car music was a track that I had done myself in beepbox and had been looking for a good chance to use it.

Working with Dan was amazing! -especially for such a small window of time. He was up all night going back and forth with Jason and I to sculpt the sound to not only fit our game but to give it soul. Little nuances like the sound building with jason’s charge spell to the rich ambience of the music carrying the theme tune with muffled rain. Dan was soooo patient with my picky, weird requests -and like the pro that he is, he not only surpassed my expectations but communicated fast and well along the way -which is sooooo important when it comes to this stuff!

 

Press

Streams, articles, let’s plays, etc -if I missed yours just send me a link

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Witch Hazel – Game Jam Build

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