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Witchmarsh

Created by Inglenook

Witchmarsh is an action RPG set in 1920s Massachusetts. Create and manage a team of investigators in a story-driven supernatural mystery. Please note: Witchmarsh is currently delayed, with no current release date set. For a full status check on the game's progress, and an overview of development so far, please check the 'Project Updates tab above. Thank you for your patience and support! Update 20-05-2023: We are now planning to release a short, standalone Witchmarsh adventure first, titled 'Tea Party of the Damned'. All backers and pre-order backers of Witchmarsh will receive a free copy of this with your pledge. Thanks for your patience!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Checking in with Shrews n' Icons
about 6 years ago – Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 10:09:35 PM

Hey everyone,

2018's been a busy year so far. We now have many of the status effects in-game, such as sleep, stuns, accuracy impairments and slows; in addition to three types of poison!

Tactical commands via the pause menu have been redesigned and improved, providing a greater sense of feedback when issuing orders to your AI followers.

Story-wise, we've now implemented character-specific dialogue choices. For example, let's say you're talking to an NPC, and you suspect them of stealing a piggybank. If you have the Moose on your team, you could have them pick the guy up and shake him to see if he jingles.

In short, we're making solid progress towards the beta, but due to the complexity and scope of the game, it's still taking more time than we expected. So once again, apologies for the long wait.

Yup, we're still working away.
Yup, we're still working away.

Dev Blog Summary

Just a reminder that we've been keeping a regular dev blog (58 entries so far). Here are some of the recent highlights.

  • Update 57: Skulduggery! Three types of poison are added to the game.
  • Update 56: A whole raft of status effects are added, and we answer a question about the 'nausea' status effect.
  • Update 47: Branching choices, character-specific choices and the game's PDF manual.

Thanks for checking in.

- Inglenook Games

The Marsh-Frog formerly known as Mondays, 13.
about 6 years ago – Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 08:00:13 PM

Hey everyone,

A little later than expected but here's your Marsh-Frog fix.

We're still warming up after the holidays, but Rob's back and making progress with the game's systems. This week he's working on secret items and what we're calling Search Scores: hidden tests which can reveal objects in the game's scenery.

Bruiser Crab (Art) - The next enemy we'll be adding to the game's lineup of creepy crawlies.

Joe's animating some of the game's more brackish enemies, like this whack-happy crustacean. And Lou's been occupied writing dialogue, as well as building NPC encounters and cutscenes using Rob's handy GML script.

(As a reminder: Prior to this, Lou would pass his finished cutscenes/dialogue on to a coder, who would then dissect it in Game Maker. Thanks to a handy Script written by Rob, he can now create his own dialogue, branching dialogue and cutscene files externally - though the cutscenes still require assets and additional code to function. We believe this will save everyone a great deal of time.)

Dev Blog Summary

Here's a summary of the past few weeks of dev blog entries. You can browse them all here.

  • Dev Blog #24. Some quick Witchmarsh YES and NOs in bullet-point form, originally tweeted, as well as more dialogue and cutscene progress.
  • Dev Blog #26. Charmed dialogue and NPC exchanges. Lou talks about passing 'Charm' skill tests, and how certain NPCs' dialogue will change as a result. This ranges from subtle, to full-blown admiration, depending on the NPC.
  • Dev Blog #29. Some sample NPC dialogue, and our planned investigator-specific responses. In this case we used the Moose as an example.
  • Dev Blog #34. Yesterday's update. Starting work on the previously mentioned search system.

Until next time, thanks for following our progress. 2018 should be an exciting year for the project.

- Inglenook

Yohoho
over 6 years ago – Sun, Dec 24, 2017 at 09:08:09 PM

Hello everyone, and happy holidays!

Pardon the delay on this week's update. It was supposed to go up on Monday, but we've been busy getting ready for the festivities, battling cold germs the size of tower blocks, etc. You know, winter stuff.

 

Distractible terrain on the beach cave tileset.

The Witchmarsh Dev Blog is 1 month old! So far we've made 20 entries. Rob is still on vacation, so Lou (writer/narrative designer) has taken over. Here are some of the highlights:

- Rob created a script which allows Lou to convert his dialogue/cutscenes/branches directly into in-game code. This removes the need for a programmer to handle it manually, saving everyone valuable time.

- Joe finished work on another tileset for a location type, and he'll be converting it into new game levels in January. This was one of the last few area types with missing assets.

- Lou added some Moose-exclusive dialogue choices (sign language, etc).

- Lots and lots of bug fixes.

2018 will be Rob's first full year on the project, and with his help and expertise we just know it will be a productive one! We've got a lot to do, and we'll be going all-out to make up for this year's shaky start.

We'll return in January. Until then, we hope you'll have a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year,

- Your friends at Inglenook Games.

Marsh-Frog Mondays 12: The Return
over 6 years ago – Mon, Dec 04, 2017 at 08:24:19 PM

Hello everybody,

Things have been bumpy but right now our goal is to start posting more of these twice-monthly dev updates. On with the show!

He's doing his best.
He's doing his best.

 

Since last time, we’ve brought new programmer Rob on board, and he’s now up to speed. As we’re a handful of developers, expanding our core team has been great for productivity.

He’s also been posting up developer updates - seven so far - on the Chucklefish forums, recording his progress. Last week’s entries include a new cutscene system (the one Joe made was a bit buggy), and we’ve been testing it on a crypt-dwelling boss encounter. The boss itself will feature in the next backer test and is almost fully-functional. We’re aiming to get it done and tested this week or next.

Tonight’s dev update lists a few tweaks and bug fixes.

Improvements to the dialogue system include a way for Lou to create dialogue trees through scripting - rather than passing the dialogue in text form to a programmer, who’d then chop it up into code.

Joe has completed another one of the key environments. It’s a coastal cavern / underground beach area, populated by clumsy crustaceans. We've shown it off before, but now it spans several more zones.

Old screenshot (from September), ahoy.

 

We’ll be back on the 18th with more news!

- Inglenook Games

P.S. Our domain went down for a few hours today while we transferred it to another provider - we also forgot to confirm the transfer (whoops), which led to it expiring. In case you were wondering! We’re now back online.

An Overdue Update
over 6 years ago – Sun, Nov 19, 2017 at 11:37:21 PM

Hey everyone,

It’s been a while! We just wanted to let you know that:

  • Witchmarsh is still in development.
  • It’s still taking longer than expected.
  • We’re still not ready to announce a concrete release date.

While there hasn’t been much in the way new, spoiler-free content to show; we’ve been keeping our noses to the grindstone in order to get some solid progress made.

(Image) Testing some boss mechanics. Note that we’ve since corrected the blast radius detection on the explosions.
(Image) Testing some boss mechanics. Note that we’ve since corrected the blast radius detection on the explosions.

It’s disappointing to many of you that the game is still coming together so slowly, and we understand that. Please keep in mind that we’re a small team working on a big game, and that we’re truly doing our best.

Thanks for reading,

- Inglenook Games