I played the Dog Witch demo just a few weeks ago, and as such, I was very much looking forward to sitting down with the final game over the past couple of days. I’m happy to report that it did not disappoint.
Developed by Heckmouse and published by Mystic Forge, this dice-powered deckbuilder is about a magic canine who is out to battle a mean wizard. It’s not complicated stuff, but it is super charming and accessible, despite the mean streak that all good deckbuilders are hiding somewhere in their stack of cards. Or in this case, a big bag of dice.
How does it work?
My favourite thing about Dog Witch is the elegance of its design. The visuals might be chonky, even childish, but the gameplay systems that drive the action are anything but, and so far they seem nicely balanced against each other.
Your little hound flies from battle to battle on their little witchy broom, and each new landing means a battle against a strange creature. These fights are quite straightforward, at least at first, and the focus is on typical deckbuilder stuff: managing your actions, put up some shields, and cause as much damage as you can.
The playable pooch has dice with bones, which it can use for shields. Later in a run, you can upgrade these bones to have special benefits when three are used at once. You also have a wand, a curse, plus you can summon a “friend” or two into battle.
Each battle is a back-and-forth between your doggo and whatever strange thing it is you’re fighting, and you’ve got to do the classic dance of managing your cards/dice so you can do as much damage as possible, while taking as little as you can. You have a couple of re-rolls, so there’s a nice push-your-luck aspect that works alongside the more tactical elements.
So many treats
You start with a collection of dice relating to your basic hand: a wand, a curse, and some standard shield bones. Everything in the square boxes across the top of the screen, as you can see in the image below. As you go, you can upgrade these items, plus add additional bracelets, rings, and collars, as such directing your build to suit the upgrades you earn .
You can choose one item after each round, and so your growth is slow and steady. This ensures that every decision you make really matters, and if you’re not thinking about synergies and how you can connect your build’s various abilities, you’re not going to get very far.
The basic setup that you start each run with is simple yet effective. For example, your spells charge up your wand, and your wand deals out increasing amounts of damage. You also get a basic summons, a stun, and a spell that comes into play once you’ve charged your mana slots.
Overall, I think one of the things I am enjoying the most is how well the different spells, summons, and curses work together. Things get really spicy when you’re pushing further into the game, and you’ll need to find a good hook for that run, but there seemed to be several viable builds where you can use poison, healing, or even just plain ol’ brute strength to push through.
What else…
The visuals are somewhat cartoon-inspired, but I’m fine with that, because I like the absurdity that this brings. I’m also a big fan of the soundtrack, which was very hypnotic.
The run times are short and snappy, but that means the challenge ramps up quickly. Each world has four increasingly tough levels to work through, but after beating the mini-boss, you get your health back. Then you have to sacrifice some of that hard-earned health on one of your existing items, which becomes corrupted. This transformation costs HP but offers a nice added benefit.
There also seems to be a healthy supply of new items. I started playing earlier this morning, and Dog Witch has chomped through my day like my labradoodle chomps through a tray of nice grub. During that time, I saw plenty of repeats, sure, but also a steady stream of new items were thrown into the mix, and so the meta was constantly evolving.
After a few hours with the demo, and several more today, I am beginning to suspect that Dog Witch has cast some sort of charm spell on me. This is one of my favourite deckbuilders of the year so far, and I’m hopeful that Heckmouse can keep expanding on the formula and bring the game to a bigger audience, because it’s a very good Dog Witch!
Dog Witch is out now on PC (Mac, Win), and I played the game via access kindly provided by the developer and their publishing buds.
