AUTHOR: EMILY RAE-BRINSDEN
Have you ever consumed a piece of media that utterly changed your life?
For me, that piece of media was a ‘RPG Maker’ horror series called ‘Witch’s Heart’, created by ‘BLUESTAR IZ’ (@bluestar_iz and @blueiziz on twitter). And, boy, could I talk about it for hours.
Before we go on, I’d like to lay down a few warnings! First, beware of minor spoilers for all the currently released games in the Witch’s Heart series (i.e., Witch’s Heart; Witch’s Heart: Bonus Stage; and Witch’s Heart: Unknown Past, Dorothy’s Secrets). Secondly, violence and death are major parts of the games’ story and themes, and are depicted graphically in each game. If either are something that bother you, Witch’s Heart probably isn’t the series for you!
With that out of the way, let us begin!
The story begins with our protagonist, Claire Elford, playing in a flower field. Claire is a bubbly twenty-three-year-old who introduces herself as a lover of ‘cute things’, ‘pretty things’ and ‘beautiful things’. But don’t let her sweet nature fool you, she is quite literally—both story and gameplay-wise—one of the two strongest characters in the game. The other is a cursed immortal edgelord, but we’ll get to him later.
And while Claire is a definite optimist, things aren’t all good in her life, either. She can’t remember much of her childhood, and dreams of a mysterious girl called ‘Patricia’ each night.
After an unfortunate spot of rain, she finds herself taking shelter in a large mansion with three strangers: the self-proclaimed travelling ‘witch expert’ Ashe Bradley; the sweet, strange and nocturnal Noel Levine; and—wouldn’t you know it—the aforementioned, and incredibly mysterious, edgelord Wilardo Adler.
In the mansion they find the irritable ‘Lord of the Mansion’ Sirius Gibson… and a bunch of murderous or deformed monsters that stalk the halls from sunset to sunrise.
The last of the main cast to mention are the demons—because horrific monsters just aren’t enough to deal with! Without giving too much about them away, their names are Zizel, Lime, Charlotte and Rouge, and while they aren’t the game’s only ‘antagonists’—really, you can’t trust anyone besides Claire—they are certainly some of the best ‘villains’ I’ve ever seen.
Last year when I sat down with two of my friends to play Witch’s Heart for the first time, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I didn’t know how much I would come to love the silly little characters Bluestar had created, and the harrowing secrets they hid behind their colourful exteriors.
Witch’s Heart managed to touch on all the themes I hold most dear—love, magic, family—and managed to make the ‘looping timeline’ trope make sense, not only for the players, but for the characters within the story.
Each of the games made me cry multiple times: the relationships the characters forge with each other are so unbelievably raw, particularly considering the dire circumstances they are forged in. And each of the characters have heart-breaking backstories that justify even their most evil of motivations—well, aside from Rouge and Zizel, whose positions as purebred demons spare them from negative life experiences and justify their… well… demonic attitudes.
While it won’t mean much to you now, my favourite characters are Claire Elford, Noel Levine, Wilardo Adler and Charlotte—though, I do truly love them all. And my favourite game in the series is Bonus Stage!
The secrets that game reveals are incredibly satisfying. Trust me.
Witch’s Heart is a series that makes you delve into the darkest places of the human psyche. It makes you consider your life, those you hold dear and the extent you’d be willing to go for either.
But, most of all, it makes you consider the question: ‘do you have a wish you’d be willing to kill for?’
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