I had hoped this would be a neat little indie game about magical crafting in a mystical world. It was, sort of, problem is it was also an annoying chore when the game just wouldn't let a quest end and had you backpedaling like mad to old locations to get something like a jar of water.

It wasn't just the backpedaling, but the stacking of requirements just to get a simple ingredient seemed absurd. Like mosquito needles? You gotta make a smoke bomb to stun them before you can chop them. The smoke bomb isn't free, that has 3 required ingredients, and I think one of them is a two-fer. So just to get a mosquito needle, you've used 4 other ingredients. And maybe you need 5 of those needles, so 20, now. This is the structure of Wytchwood.

When you first open your grimoire and see how many things you can make, you don't really know what you're in for. When you're not even done with the first batch of souls and only 25% of it is full yet you're already feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of some of the crafting, something is wrong. The way the game works, its foundation, is basically "you will need a LOT of everything and you won't know when you'll need it". So you can't even just walk anywhere, you have to stop and pick up everything that has a glowing outline, because for all you know, the next quest needs 30 of whatever you're grabbing. And that's not wild: it probably does. And if it doesn't? The next may.

I got sick of this fast. I never finished the first batch of souls. Maybe my issue was sort of "starting" every quest at the same time, but that was how I realized how they get "harder" is just by making the reagent requirements stack up to absurdity. One of the three items you need for this is a protective talisman, you need three items to make a protective talisman, one of those items is magical paste, magical paste has three ingredients, over and over and over. Quite fucking tiresome.

I liked the atmosphere and art style. The game looks good. Nice audio to go with it, though when you approached someone humming, for some reason it could get loud enough to vibrate your speakers when everything else you've ever heard was just fine. I liked the writing, the humor wasn't incredible but it worked, I think it kept me hooked for longer than I ever would have been. It helps distract you from the tedium, basically.

It's a subpar game unless you love love LOVE this shit, and I don't have anything else to really compare it to. Which, cool, it's unique and was clearly a gamble. It's nice seeing someone take a chance and experiment. I just think the experiment failed. I have zero doubt that the last batch of souls has requirements stacking up to such complex nonsense levels that I would have rather just sit here and shit my pants than find out its ending.

Just a suggestion to any developers looking to make Wytchwood but better.

If I'm 1 hour into a game about crafting - please, please, PLEASE don't immediately drop me 4 levels deep into fetch quests... because I will quit your game.

You have go to fetch the Snake for the Goat, but to get the Snake requires the Mirror Shards, but to get the first Mirror Shard from the Goblins I need to eliminate some other woodland creature, and to eliminate the creature I need to craft something or other, and to craft that I need to travel to various corners of the map to retrieve three items to craft another item which is part of the recipe for so-... ZZZZZZZZ.

I looked up that this game was 10 hours long, realised I'd barely escaped the first hour, and tapped out immediately.

It's a shame because the art and music in Wytchwood was lovely. Seemed like the basis for a nice relaxing chilled experience, but Fetch Quest: The Game needs a lot more seasoning to it to avoid it feeling like work.