If you were to have told me last week that one of my favourite Next Fest demos would be a game about a dog witch called, well, Dog Witch, I probably wouldn’t have been surprised per se, but I would have raised inquisitive eyebrow.
The new Steam Next Fest Demo for Dog Witch is available here, and it’s playable on both Windows and Mac. It offers an eight level, two biome demo of the full game, which is due to land on November 5, 2025. Not long to wait, then.
I don’t think there is an ounce of fat on Dog Witch, which boasts cute but crude low poly graphics and a simple, chunky interface. The card explanations offer up the minimal amount of detail, yet everything is clear enough that I immediately had a sense of what I was doing and what was going to happen next.
I think this is a bit likey Dicey Dungeons in the sense that sometimes, less really can be more. In fact, I thought the game’s visuals were perfectly charming and did exactly what they needed to do, and nothing more. Simple yet effective design.
What’s more impressive is how quickly the game’s simplistic facade melts into quick and tactical turn-based battles, each of which takes place from a side-on perspective. It’s like someone shone a torch into the Darkest Dungeon and revealed that actually it was populated by giant milk cartons and weird snake-frog things all along.
Dog Witch is a quirky and irreverent game of dice rolling, deckbuilding, and general strategising. You get a number of rolls per turn, so you get to use the dice you want, then re-roll the rest. Doing so gives you a chance to push your luck just a little, but it’s often worth it because the rewards are new items to use in future battles.
My dice collection expanded over the course of the demo and eventually included creatures that you can summon into battle, include goblins and skeletons, as well as my little doggo’s wand abilities.
On the other side of the screen is your opponent, and maybe even a few of their own supporting minions. Some enemies will hit your summons, some will hit both of you, while others can target whoever they want. It’s always clear what’s happening, though.
But don’t forget, you’ve also got that wand – you are a witch, after all – and you can charge it up to make it more powerful. On top of that, there is also mana, which when charged can unlock powerful bonus attacks – it pays to spend your dice carefully across both attack and defense.
Another thing I quite like is the bone system. If you use three of the same kind over the course of one turn then you will get a secondary benefit on top of the main shield that stacking so many bones provides. When my shield was charged with three bones at once, it would unleash a bonus attack at the end of my turn, hitting one enemy for 3×1 damage. Handy.
It’s not long before your enemies can summon their own supporting units, at which point it’s a case of putting out fires and trying to come out on top of any exchanges. This makes for tense turn-based battles, but they’re not particularly long and the bright and breezy visual style helps to keep things feeling light.
Dog Witch is the work of a solo dev called Heckmouse, with support from Mystic Forge and Rami Ismail (who used to be one half of Vlambeer, of Nuclear Throne fame). I didn’t know much about it before sitting down to play, but I was pleasantly surprised at every turn, and I mean that quite literally in this case. Check out the demo here and stay tuned to Rogueliker for more coverage on Dog Witch next month.
