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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:

Marsh-Frog Mondays, 2 - The Technician
over 7 years ago – Mon, Dec 05, 2016 at 05:01:57 PM

Welcome to the second instalment of Marsh-Frog Mondays. Last time we asked you if this should be a regular thing; and the response was an overwhelming yes. Thanks again for all the support!

  • The next Gold tier test is still coming along nicely: we’re still busy fixing bugs, adding new features and tightening up the gameplay. Sorry about the wait.
  • Programmer Rob joins the Witchmarsh team! He’s already started on the game’s items, looting and inventory systems, and we’re delighted to have him on board. :D

And with that, it’s on to this week’s spotlight.

Spotlight: The Technician

Primary Attribute: Might.
Melee weapon(s): Wrench.
Suggested Roles: Tank, damage, support. 

The Technician is a solid choice for anyone looking for a tough yet versatile character. High maximum health, two passive defence skills, and strong melee attacks make her a great front-line attacker.

The Technician can’t learn abilities and so doesn't have a mana bar (the resource used by spell casting investigators). Instead she equips gadgets, a unique item type which replicates the effects of magical abilities. She also has four unique skills:

  • Engineering: A general tinkering skill which unlocks new wrenches, armor and consumable items.
  • Welding: Sturdy gadgets which grant your team armour and utility.
  • Electricals: Fragile gadgets which shock and stun enemies.
  • Chemicals: Gadgets which inflict heavy damage but are highly unpredictable, possibly scalding the Technician or her allies if not used with caution.

 

Weaknesses

The Technician may have a monopoly when it comes to gadgets, but there is one drawback: she can’t learn abilities. As a result, her move-set is limited to whatever gadgets she finds on her journey, and by the way you spend your skill points.

Other Investigator Spotlights
The Trapper | (More coming soon!)

#Indiedevhour

This week we posted some new animated gifs on our twitter and tumblr pages.


This one shows how the Witchmarsh characters have evolved since the game was announced.

And finally, new, more expressive player defeat animations!

Emergency KS call to arms - Odod Books (6 Days left)!

If you like comic books and eldritch mysteries, check out the Kickstarter for Odod Books, featuring OVER THE WALL by Peter Wartman.

 

It's a captivating line of children's and young adult graphic novels which they're hoping to bring to American shores. They’ve been fans of Witchmarsh since the beginning, and now they need help spreading the word (only 6 days to go!). Check it out if it looks like something you or a young relative would enjoy.

That's all for now. Hopefully we'll be back before long with news of the Gold tier test. Apologies once again for the long wait, we hope it will be worth it!

Thanks for reading,

- Inglenook

Marsh-Frog Mondays, 1 - Trapper Spotlight
over 7 years ago – Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 12:07:05 AM

Hey everyone,

In the previous update we talked about communication, and asked for your suggestions as to how we could do things better. Thanks to everyone who sent in ideas, feedback and words of encouragement.

Since then we’ve been hard at work on the next version of the Gold Tier backer test. Sorry for the long wait; but with its completion we hope to turn a major corner in the game’s development.

Here’s where we currently are:

  • Still no solid news on the full release date and the next version of the backer test. Stick with us and we’ll hopefully have an announcement before the next scheduled update (December 5th).
  • Note: For those who backed the Digital Bestiary tiers, the next version will be sent out alongside the next release of the Gold Tier test.

For the time being, in response to your suggestions, we’ve decided to launch what we hope will become a fortnightly feature: Marsh-Frog Mondays.

Here's the idea: every second Monday (roughly 7PM, Eastern Standard Time) we’ll aim to bring you up to speed, talk about what we’ve been working on, and give you a closer look at one of the game’s features or playable characters.

Let us know if you'd like this to become a regular thing. Also, ribbit.
Let us know if you'd like this to become a regular thing. Also, ribbit.

This week we’re covering the Trapper: a reliable source of ranged damage, capable of picking off enemies from afar with her trusty rifle.

Spotlight: The Trapper

 

Primary Attribute: Senses.
Melee weapon(s): Machete / Logging Axe.
Roles: Ranged damage, Search, Locks/traps.

“This continent is a vast, unwieldy machine.” - John Adams, 1775.

Background

Country living was the cat’s pyjamas as far as the Trapper was concerned, but all that changed after the war. While parts of the economy soared ever higher, many of the nation’s farmers were selling up; overwhelmed by growing debts and a surplus of goods. Prohibition had sealed the fate of the Trapper’s family farm, now in receipt of their final notice from the bank.

Just when all hope was lost, a cryptic listing in the Herald caught her eye, it read as follows: ‘WANTED: Safecrackers, sharpshooters, sleuths. ONLY THE CRAFTIEST NEED APPLY.’ The Trapper quietly folded her newspaper, finished her breakfast, hitchhiked into town, and was safely aboard the next outbound train.

Players can write their own investigator biographies if they choose to do so. (Click to enlarge).
Players can write their own investigator biographies if they choose to do so. (Click to enlarge).

 

Passive Trait: Expert Traps

While several of the game’s playable investigators can plant traps, only the Trapper excels in their usage  She gains a passive boost to trap damage, and spent traps have a chance to be instantly recovered. She also begins the investigation with 5 points in the Locks and Traps skill.

The Trapper plants a snare trap.

Special Ability: Mark Target

Places a bullseye on an enemy for fifteen seconds, reducing their chance to evade incoming attacks. The Trapper will also deal bonus damage to marked foes.

Core Skills

  • Leland [Alternatively, your rifle name here] - (Unique) During character creation, players can choose to enter their own name for the Trapper’s trusty rifle. Placing points in this skill will allow her to tinker with it, increasing its damage and bonus attributes.

  • Marksmanship - (Unique) The Trapper's firearm shots have a chance to land with pinpoint accuracy, inflicting significant bonus damage.

  • Locks and Traps - The investigator's skill at setting and dismantling traps. In order to pick the locks on doors and chests, the Trapper must first learn the Safecracker talent.
     
  • Search - The Trapper, PI, and Curator all have a knack for finding secrets thanks to their primary attribute, Senses. This provides a small but noticeable boost to the Search skill (pictured below), used to uncover whatever traps or treasure might be hiding in the shadows.

 

A player can choose to spread their points around evenly, or focus them in a few key areas. An investigator’s skill level determines their ability to equip items of that type, and boosts their effectiveness in that field.
A player can choose to spread their points around evenly, or focus them in a few key areas. An investigator’s skill level determines their ability to equip items of that type, and boosts their effectiveness in that field.

 

Weaknesses

  • Melee damage: unless the greater talent Woodcutter is chosen, the Trapper will do negligible damage at close range.
  • Survivability: the Trapper has a low health pool and is limited to light or medium armor, so you’ll want to keep her out of harm’s way. Watch out for sneak attacks and long-ranged enemies who might try to pick away at your back row. During boss encounters, be extra mindful of positioning as there may be less means of escape.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this update. We’re sorry for the lack of solid news regarding the next backer test build, or the overall release date. We’ll be back soon with something tangible, as well as more updates and feature spotlights.

And be sure to let us know if you'd like this to be a regular feature.

Thanks for reading,

Inglenook

Catching Up
almost 8 years ago – Thu, May 12, 2016 at 12:24:33 AM

Hey everyone,

As you might have guessed, things are still behind schedule. Rather than set new dates for the beta and make a bunch of fresh promises, what we’ll do is go over where the game’s at; where we hope it will be in a few weeks, and hopefully we can take it from there with more frequent updates.

Thanks to all the alpha testers who sent feedback for the version 0015 release. If you’re a late backer who backed after the sendout, just sit tight and the next version, 0016 should be rolling your way shortly.

Alpha 0016 will feature:

- A boss encounter!
- The first road test of the brand new cutscene and dialogue systems.
- New weapons; TNT, darts, shotguns, thrown knives, bear traps.

You can track the Alpha’s progress, see what we’re working on, view bug fixes and more in this document (Google docs).

Dialogue System Upgrade

Rather than simply displaying text and presenting players with a few choices, dialogue and NPC interaction in Witchmarsh now sports many shiny new features. In addition to adding to the game’s Action-cRPG feel, the new system can handle features like skill checks and special dialogue paths for certain player specialisations.

For example, a player skilled in Rituals may unlock hidden dialogue choices when talking to a gang of occultist nogoodniks. We hope that these changes will significantly increase the game’s re-playability, and allow players to dig deeper into the game’s fictional universe and 1920s setting.

Communication/Update Status

Waiting for solid news between updates - especially on a project with less than a handful of developers - clearly isn’t working. As we’ve focused with laser-like precision on our own tasks, communication with backers has repeatedly suffered. In a major way. All we can do is apologise and try harder to bring you news, even if it’s just to let you know we’re still here.

Alpha Status

Our present focus is on delivering the second release of the Alpha, currently in version 0015. The good news is the UI overhaul (despite being incomplete), is already a vast improvement on the old version. It’s more flexible, and will allow for features like draggable windows, user customisation, and scaling for large monitors and TVs. It looks a lot prettier, too.

The new hotkeys, with functioning cooldowns and ammo counters.
The new hotkeys, with functioning cooldowns and ammo counters.

The alpha boss is in the testing phase, and we’re hoping to get more functionality in before letting the Gold Key testers take a look. Radial commands - currently undergoing repairs - would be ideal for ordering your followers out of the various hazards that are spawned during the encounter.

Release Status

Content for the campaign is coming together and acquiring a level of polish that we’d hoped for when we first called for delays. Despite the fact that things are still progressing much slower than we’d like, the main environments of the game: the city, the marsh and the crypts are in the bag. When the alpha is done we’ll be moving on to several key story locations that we want to polish up and turn into unique set pieces.

Reward Status

A knock to the development cycle has meant the setback of several of our plans, including the delivery of rewards like the design-a-monster and backer portraits. Sorry again for the delays on this, and we will be in touch once we’re ready to start adding them to the game.

Well, again thanks for your patience. We hope all the delays and waiting will be worth it once we get the final, polished copy of the game delivered to you all. Again, thanks for helping us to do this.

Yours faithfully,

The Inglenook Games Team

Alpha 1 for Gold Tiers going out now!
about 8 years ago – Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 07:57:46 PM

Hey Beta Key backers!

Alpha 1 should be heading your way now. It's short and somewhat rough. We've recently overhauled the GUI, reconfigured loads of stuff under the hood and moved to a new item system.

It's short and basic, but we hope you'll stick with us as we gather initial feedback before adding back in the finished features and extend the test dungeon with more enemies and rooms. We expect the first patch to land in about 5-6 days once we've read your thoughts.

Like it says in the in-game disclaimer, this version's mainly to gather feedback on the ranged and melee combat. So grab some items from the chest, stick them on an investigator and give shooting/punching some skeletons a try.

Let us know what you think!

Known issues:

  • Using a stack of healing potions will consume the whole stack (glugglugglug!)
  • Resolution is fixed and only in windowed mode.
  • Mac version is still in the works.
  • Movement command on radial not currently functioning.
  • Some issues when quickly swapping in and out of aiming mode.
  • Bard needs a jumping/aiming sprite.
  • Scroll bar on text is not functioning.
  • Lots of tooltips missing in this version. They'll be added in the next few versions. 
  • Interface needs polish in general (it's brand new) and more functionality.
  • If you talk to the NPC while your AI friends are fighting, all kinds of craziness can happen.
  • Abilities and status effects are temporarily out of the game, we'll put them in next time, so the feel of combat is definitely not final.

Happy testing, and Alpha 2 will be along shortly with more to sink your collective teeth into!

- Inglenook

Delays into 2016 / Alpha Schedule!
over 8 years ago – Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 11:32:43 PM

Hey everyone,

We realise this has been a bumpy road, but we do have concrete news for a change. Progress has been great, but we still feel that more time is needed to ensure a game which is finished to a high standard. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to the majority of you, but to those just realising you won’t be getting the game in December, we apologise sincerely.

The good news is: the alpha is nearly done, and will be ready for Gold Key backers by January 20th! The first test will involve a side-dungeon using a precreated party, mainly to get feedback on the controls and combat responsiveness. The second alpha should have more features to test, once we’ve addressed the feedback from the first round.

We hope for the campaign mode alpha to be going out to Gold Key holders by summer 2016, and the beta a month or two before a possible Autumn/Winter 2016 release. We hope that all the extra effort and delaying will be worth it.

The bigger they are ...
The bigger they are ...

If you’ve become a late backer in the last 35 days and were expecting the game in 2015, we’ll be happy to issue you a refund via BackerKit. We’ve now amended the late backer dates to coincide with the latest release estimate.

Here’s the timetable of things to come.

  • January 10th. Bestiary PC/Mac version 2. If you haven’t got yours yet, we’ll send you an updated version then.
  • January 20th. Alpha 1 - Single player (Gold Key)! + Town Council Forums, to discuss the alpha, suggest ideas/changes and submit bugs.
  • February/March 2016. Alpha 2 - Single player (Gold Key)
  • Summer/Autumn 2016. Beta (Silver Key).
  • Autumn/Winter 2016. New full release.

We’ll be back soon with a Christmas update, and would like to express our sincerest thanks for sticking with us. We understand that it must be frustrating to put your faith in a project, just to see it go dark and fall behind. In the new year we’ll work harder to keep you involved.

Oh and, here's a GIF from the upcoming alpha. We'll be working extra hard on it over the weeks to come, and we look forward to hearing your feedback, Gold Key holders. :)

Best wishes,

Inglenook