As is town life sim tradition, Witchy Life Story begins with your customized witch arriving in the tiny town of Flora to help the locals with your special abilities. Less traditionally, you actually do not want to be there escaping from the big city. You've been shipped off by your grandmother to serve as their witch for two weeks, all to prove that you aren't a total embarrassment to your bigshot witch family the von Teasels. Best get to brewing then, shouldn't you?
Witchy Life Story has announced its September 30 release date with a new trailer today and there's a demo available on Steam if you'd like to give it a go. I tried out the first few days to learn the ropes around Flora and found that this town is certainly a concoction of distilled cuteness.
Take note that Witchy Life Story is definitely more on the narrative side of sim games. It's "a cozy story filled with chaos, friendship, and romance," Sundew Studios says on its store page. I spent most of my time in conversation with the six main characters around Flora, learning about the impending festival and choosing dialogue options for my desired flavor of chaos teen (overconfident or totally disaffected).
The witchy bits center around gardening and brewing, both of which are pretty simple. A selection of flowers will pop up in your garden each day for you to clip and water, though a few will take multiple days to bloom again, and you're able to use fertilizer you've collected to speed them up.
Each morning, the locals will send you letters asking for particular solutions. The mayor wants to feel reconnected to her duties, which calls for a "reconnect potion" my grimoire tells me, while her granddaughter needs an "inspiration potion" instead. Though Sundew Studios cautions that "just like any client, sometimes what they really need isn’t what they asked for."
Each concoction, be it potion or incense or other output, has a symbol, color, and astrological symbol associated with it, as do all of my flowers. I choose three flowers to hit all three requirements, choose the right form for the spell, and click on the brewing stand to make it happen. Easy peasy. Witchy Life Story's store page references Tarot readings and guided meditations I can prescribe instead of brewed spells, though I didn't quite get to those bits of the demo.
As a story-led game, it'll be the cute but sassy flavor of teen writing that makes or breaks this one for most people. Convenient then that you can hop in to give it a try in the demo. If it's just the recipe you'd been waiting for, launch day on September 30 is just around the corner.
Oh great, the full Inzoi system requirements are posted and I'm barely above the minimum specs so I guess my Zois will be beautifully blurry
'I was recklessly brave to even think about creating a game of this scale': Inzoi director admits he now sees 'why so few companies have attempted to develop a life simulation game'
