Nine Witches: Family Disruption Review (Switch)

Set: Nine witches: Family disease
Gender: Adventure, Puzzle, Action
System: Nintendo Switch (also for steam, Xbox One)
Developer | Publishing:. Blowfish Studios
Age Classification: EU 12 | USA Teenagers
Price: EU € 17.99 | USD 19.99 | UK £ 15.99
Publication date: 4. December 2020

Nine witches: Family Disruption is a graphic adventure by the developers of Indiesruption, published by Blowfish Studios.

Nine witches, family illness, Nintendo Switch overview

October 1944

It’s October 1944, and something strange is happening in the city of Sundae, Norway. A mysterious black moon floats above the sky and disturbs the inhabitants. Later in the Second World War, the secret division of the Third Reich, Occult 55, arrives in Sundiae to lift the old curse and desperately tries to change the course of the war.

The village celebrates the end of the world with a festival, the eclipse festival. Their mission is to steal the identity of the German director Otto von Celluloid and penetrate the occult SS.

Nine witches, family illness, Nintendo Switch overview

Professor and his assistant

They play Alexei Krakowitz, a paraplegic emigrant and professor of occult sciences, as well as his assistant, Akiro Kagasawa. The professor is known for his research in the occult sciences and can speak to the dead.

The couple goes on a secret mission to Norway to solve the mystery and save the world from the clutches of Occult 55. They will bring the world back to some kind of normal life.

It’s a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Nine witches are full of tongue-in-cheek humor and even know it’s a video game. Not all jokes are good for everyone, but it’s a great story.

Use of unique capacities

Nine witches is essentially an adventure game. They talk to people, find objects, use them and solve puzzles with very special skills. The game doesn’t hold your hand at all, it’s up to you!

It’s a five to six hour adventure with several strange characters, from the ghost of a dead priest to a former bartender whose bar was robbed and had to clean up after drunken German soldiers. They may seem uninteresting, but each character has his own nuances that will somehow distinguish him.

Alexei and Akiro – Team.

Alexei Krakowitz and Akiro Kagasawa work as a team.  Alexey is in a wheelchair and cannot move his limbs, which makes interaction with the environment completely impossible for him. Instead, Alexei can go into a trance and enter the realm of the mind.

It makes him float like a ghost. So he can spy, swim through doors, talk to other spirits to get clues from them, and see all the objects that belong to them. It’s a nice little helpful tip to help you determine if you missed something in the rooms you’re in, and it’s a welcome addition.

There are times when the stairs can prevent Alexei from advancing, or you have to interact with the object to continue the game. That’s where Akiro comes in. Akiro is Alexei’s brain, and they help each other! You can change any character by quickly pressing the ZL key.

Switching symbols

Knowing when to use Alexei or Akiro is one of the tricks of the Nine Witches. You start to see each scene from two different angles. At the beginning of Nine Witches, I had to think about using both characters. The more you play, the more you get used to searching for interactions and objects with Akiro. Then, stop by Alexei’s to see the surroundings in the spiritual world, you’ll probably even find something you missed.

Throws a bent ball

Nine Witches occasionally throws a curve ball and changes the adventure point and clicks them to shoot. Those parts of the game seemed imprecise to me. You have to move your pieces in line with the enemy, shoot and pass the line of fire (in case you get hit). It is hoped that the enemy will stay in place and the bullet will reach its target.

Luckily the first pictures have been taken. But at the end of the game, the complexity of the shot increases significantly. That means you’ll be upset if your bullet doesn’t hit the target. I could do it entirely without the shoot-em-up sections, because they don’t work as well as the rest of the game.

The plot is quite humorous, and the fourth wall consists of regularly broken characters. Sometimes humour made me laugh, with puns and playful words that give me common sense. It’s an entertaining game with a retro look, where you have to solve puzzles by looking for a few pixels nearby!

Visual aids and controls

As you can see, the games have a retro style with pixellated images. It creates the perfect atmosphere for the script. And it’s worth stopping and looking around so often. With the nightly flickering of light and sound effects, it really creates a scary atmosphere, in keeping with the story of the game.

The controls work really well, you use the joystick to control the movements of the characters, which is much easier than clicking to move in other games. The only other commands are three presses of the button, one to open the inventory, one to view the inventory and one to use the object. It’s simple and everything works perfectly.

Conclusion

Nine witches: Family Disruption is a humorous and scary plot and adventure game that is very entertaining. I used to have fun playing Nine Witches, which sometimes made me smile.

Fans like that must like it as much as I do.