The Button Witch

The Button Witch
N/A
Metacritic
100
Steam
68.25
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$14.99
Release date
27 December 2020
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
100 (21 votes)

Adventure game full of magic, puzzles and cute characters, featuring a young witch-in-training and a talking ghost-squirrel!

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The Button Witch system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Microsoft® Windows® 7/8/8.1/10 (32bit/64bit)
  • Processor: Intel Core2 Duo or better
  • Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • Graphics: DirectX 9/OpenGL 4.1 capable GPU
  • DirectX: Version 9.0
  • Storage: 1 GB available space

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
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Callie Pygian (Ghostly)
Callie Pygian …

A lovely game with very nice, humble developers too. I loved the atmosphere and art style of this game, as well as some characters and puzzles were pretty great too.

It's extremely heavy on puzzles, think of Professor Layton especially for example and will tax your mind a lot but for more cerebral players, this will be a treat rather than a trick too naturally.

Full of charm and very relaxing, it has some truly tricky puzzles and stuff too, it really made me struggle but I'm not exactly the "sharpest tool in the shed" as the legendary song All Star by Smash Mouth says (RIP Steve too).

You could do much worse than this game and its genuinely a hidden gem. I could only imagine how a sequel could improve on this too.

I also was the first to find a truly secret Easter Egg in the game by complete chance (hint its by the river) and that was a really heartwarming, major and pleasant surprise for me.

I wish the devs a lot of prosperity and hopefully a sequel to this game one day too!

> > Be me, casual gamer looking for a magical time on Steam
> > Stumble upon "The Button Witch" because the title sounded like a spell gone wrong
> > Click download faster than a wizard casting "Insta-Install"
> > Game starts, greeted by a talking squirrel ghost; immediately questioning life choices
> > Realize it's the best life choice ever, 10/10 would question my life again

> > The puzzles in this game are as diverse as a wizard's spellbook - from escape rooms that make you scratch your head harder than an itchy potion rash to riddles that would leave Sphinx nodding in approval. And don't even get me started on the item combinations; I've never felt more like a magical MacGyver.

> > The magic system is straight-up Hogwarts meets Houdini. The "Magnet Spell" makes metal move like it's been hit by cupid's arrow, and the "Light Spell" lights up fires quicker than a dragon's breath. The more you progress, the more spells you unlock. It's like leveling up, but with more incantations and less grinding.

> > The characters in this game are crazier than a cauldron of caffeinated pixies. Each one has a personality more distinct than a unicorn in a flock of sheep. Shoutout to the talking squirrel ghost for providing commentary that's more entertaining than a Quidditch match.

> > The plot is thicker than a potion of invisibility, full of mystery, secrets, and more twists than a curly fry. Multiple endings keep you coming back like a wizard to a magical bargain sale.

> > And let's talk about the devs for a sec. Reached out to them about a minor bug, and they responded quicker than a snitch on a Quidditch field. Nice folks, genuinely caring about their magical creation.

> > Accidentally stumbled upon a secret Easter egg in the game. Felt like Harry Potter finding out he's a wizard, only I was just wandering around trying to figure out where I put my magic wand. Developers were more excited than a house-elf with a sock about it.

> > Artwork by Caterina Capogrossi is like a visual spell - charming, whimsical, and enough to make even a dementor crack a smile. The cartoonish vibe is so cute that I'm pretty sure my heart melted faster than an ice cream cone in the Forbidden Forest.

> > In conclusion, "The Button Witch" is a magical journey that's more enchanting than a Hippogriff ballet. Get this game if you want to experience a world where puzzles are spells, characters are crazier than a boggart in a funhouse, and Easter eggs are as rare as a phoenix feather. And don't forget your magic wand; you'll need it to cast the spell of five stars on your review. Accio, good times! 🧙‍♂️✨

INT. HOBBITON - DAY

FRODO sits at a table in the Green Dragon Inn, sipping on an ale. SAM, MERRY, PIPPIN, and BOROMIR join him, all excited.

FRODO:
You won't believe what I found, lads. It's not a ring, but it's pretty magical.

SAM:
(eyes widening)
Another quest, Mr. Frodo?

FRODO:
No, Sam. It's a game. "The Button Witch" on Steam.

MERRY:
(squinting)
Is that some kind of elvish contraption?

PIPPIN:
I hope it's not one of those games where you have to carry an item for miles and miles. My virtual legs can't handle it.

BOROMIR:
(grinning)
Finally, a game I can get behind! Is there a mode where I can wield a sword and charge into battle? ⚔️💨

FRODO:
(relieved)
No, Boromir. It's a point-and-click adventure, filled with puzzles and magic. Just like our journey, but with fewer orcs.

CUT TO:

INT. RIVENDELL - NIGHT

ARAGORN, LEGOLAS, GIMLI, and BOROMIR are gathered around a table, examining the game on a laptop.

ARAGORN:
(pointing at the screen)
Look, Legolas, it's like Rivendell, but with fewer waterfalls and more cartoonish charm.

LEGOLAS:
(smiles)
I can appreciate a good aesthetic, especially if it involves fewer orcs.

GIMLI:
(grumbling)
Hope there's more hacking and slashing. Dwarves don't do puzzles.

BOROMIR:
(raising an eyebrow)
Point and click? Where's the glory in that?

CUT TO:

INT. MINAS TIRITH - DAY

GANDALF, sitting in a wizardly manner, is playing the game with his staff. FARAMIR watches in curiosity. BOROMIR enters, looking intrigued.

GANDALF:
(looking amused)
This "Button Witch" game is quite intriguing, Faramir. The puzzles are more twisted than Wormtongue's words.

FARAMIR:
(nods)
And the magic system is as versatile as your staff, Gandalf.

GANDALF:
(chuckles)
Indeed, my young Steward. It seems even wizards enjoy a good point-and-click adventure.

BOROMIR:
(skeptical)
Point and click? Can you even call it an adventure without a battle?

CUT TO:

EXT. THE SHIRE - DAY

The Hobbits and Boromir are gathered around a campfire, playing the game on a tablet.

SAM:
(looking determined)
These puzzles are trickier than Gollum trying to figure out if he likes fish or not.

MERRY:
(grinning)
But the characters are as lively as the Shire during a harvest festival.

PIPPIN:
And the talking squirrel ghost is a riot. Even better than Gandalf's fireworks!

BOROMIR:
(smirking)
I suppose it has its charm. But can it match the glory of Gondor? Maybe they should make it a point and swing simulator! ⚔️🔄

FRODO:
(smiling)
It's a journey worth taking, my friends. A quest for the button that binds us all.

FADE OUT:

The fellowship of gamers, including Boromir, continues their adventure, conquering puzzles, casting spells, and laughing together in the virtual realms, proving that even iconic heroes enjoy a good game when they're not saving Middle-earth.

Lain Fate
Lain Fate

This game was impressive & I wanted to make it through the manor.
Some of the puzzles required you to mess around until you finally had enough information to solve them.
I encountered a glitch where I was unable to trigger Ignis to talk to me about his poetry book so I was unable to get the best ending.
Overall this game was fun & I'm glad I played it.

Cahalith
Cahalith

The Button Witch is a point-and-click adventure game / puzzle game made in RPG Maker. So it plays like an RPG Maker game, but instead of levelling up and grinding, you'll be decrypting codes, using objects on other objects (or characters), solving a whodunit murder mystery, working through movement and logic puzzles, doing sudoku and so on. Indeed, the game offers a great variety of different puzzle types, which means that even people like me (who suck at maths, but are used to LucasArts style object-based puzzles) will feel really smart every once in a while.

Apparently, the game was made chiefly by only two people, but you can really feel the love that these two put into making it: The laid-back and funny writing, cute art style, entertaining characters and catchy music make sure you'll enjoy yourself even when you're stuck on a puzzle for a bit. From what I've read, the game also doesn't use RPG Maker stock assets, so jaded veterans of these types of games won't be bothered by samey visuals.

On a final note: If the cute art style has you fooled into thinking that the puzzles might be aimed at little kids, guess again! Most of them require you to carefully scan rooms to detect items and interactive bits - and the maths puzzles require you to be able to do things like figuring out numbers sequences governed by unknown mathematical rules or combining different hints scattered across the environment into a working mathematical formula. I am not a smart person, so maybe when I say some of these puzzles pose a significant challenge, this doesn't apply to you. But be aware that because of the great variety of puzzle types in this game, you'll need to have some level of expertise in many different puzzle-solving skills, at the very least.

If you either have all of those skills or use a walkthrough for puzzles requiring skills you don't possess, this game is a real blast!

kumabushi
kumabushi

This is a fantastic adventure game that takes about 4 hours to get all achievements. I was especially pleased that they made a walkthrough available as DLC, to help get past particularly tricky puzzles or to find hard to get achievements. The devs were also very nice about helping me out with any bugs I encountered, and were quick to get them fixed. While the game itself is based on the RPGMaker engine, don't be fooled! The engine has been heavily customized to work well with a point and click game, and most (if not all) of the game assets are custom-made. I was very impressed at the quality. The music and dialogue are also very endearing, and I highly recommend getting the soundtrack.

Moonfox
Moonfox

A short, funny mystery adventure with partly tricky puzzles. The characters are likeable and have unique designs. Also I really like the magic puzzles. I hope to see more of them in a prequel / sequel.

Zazu/Ibl
Zazu/Ibl

Edit: As of v.1.07 quite a few bugs, both small and large have been squashed, and I can now say that I do recommend it, with the caveat that people who are deaf or have hearing problems may want to skip it due to a puzzle requiring sounds if you don't want to use a walkthrough or attempt to bruteforce it.

Added a few notes on things that I was able to confirm have been fixed.

The original review below is in regards to v.1.06 of the game.

Review:
The game sounds great on paper, and while I enjoyed a lot of it, there are still more things going wrong for it sadly. there's a couple of things to note in the bad stuff section.

Good things:
- Story - while somewhat basic and at times trying too hard to be funny without getting there, is good. Young witch needs to apprentice with master sorcerer who for some reason has loads and loads and loads of puzzles in his mansion that she needs to solve.
- Graphics - are cute! Insanely so. Most of the things in the game seem to be hand-made as well, which is really nice.
- Puzzles - some actually requiring thought, even if there are a few too many math-y puzzles. While I enjoy them, I understand that far from everyone does.

Bad things:
- Spelling errors and weird sentence structures at times. For example: at one point you're told a person CAN walk, which is sad, because they can't get to the other side of the garden... it's supposed to be CAN'T. There are a few of these sprinkled throughout the game.
- Bugs are mostly graphical ones thankfully, sadly there's _a lot_ of them. In the first 10 minutes I had found 4 different ones. Think my favourite one was where the game put my head through a lamppost for some very grim imagery. Most if not all fixed as of v.1.07 from what I could tell.

- There's also at least one softlock and a few other minor bugs that were annoying, but at least the minor ones weren't game breaking. (Potentially fixed in v.1.07, didn't have a save nearby to test.)

- The other thing that lowers the score a bit is accessibility. One of the puzzles requires you to replay the same music that's being played. While you can hear the music on the same screen as you have to play it, that still makes it near impossible for anyone that's hard of hearing or deaf to actually finish the game.
- And on the topic of accessibility, you more or less need to use keyboard + mouse to play the game. It is possible to rebind controller mappings, possibly requiring separate software to help, but you wouldn't be able to aim spells, as those are based on where the mouse pointer is, instead of moving a square or something around the screen to target things. Sounds like a minor thing, but it actually makes it more annoying to play.

Final notes:
If bugs are fixed and some puzzles tweaked a bit, this would easily become a recommandation, but I sadly can't recommend it as is.

MissSkillShots
MissSkillShots

I absolutely love this game!! I really really enjoy games like Mad Father or Corpse party, but these puzzles were significantly harder and made you think outside of the box!! It was super challenging but in the best way possible because once you get it, man!! I really hope more people start to play this game because I want them to produce more games hehe!! I've never been one to replay a game once I've finished it but I did this one and that is saying something!! The art, music and story was fantastic!!

discobandit
discobandit

What a delight! I purchased The Button Witch purely for the graphics, and anticipated a standard point-and-click, puzzler, but a tiered puzzle system (that is one layer of spells usage, one layer of usual type game puzzles), and pretty darling world building has made this game a rad experience. Awesome game to be snowed in with over the weekend.

Soiguapo
Soiguapo

Great atmosphere and characters. The puzzles are pretty good though you do end up doing some pixel hunting from time to time. You can definitely tell the creators cared about this project. If you enjoy point and click puzzle games this is definitely worth a try.

Nemutation
Nemutation

Solid puzzle game overall with cute art and characters! A few too many puzzles/interactions had semi non-sensical solutions tho and a lot of straight up math. Fun if you play it with some bros and pick eachothers branes tho

McPerser
McPerser

To be honest I didn't expect a lot of this game. The reason was that it just doesn't look as polished/beautiful as other indie games I love. Don't get me wrong: I don't mean the artworks. I mean the character models and so on.
Now, the truth is the game is great/better than expected. It doesn't compete with my favorite games but made fun from the beginning. I love that you need some logical thinking and have to understand sequences of numbers for some puzzles. Furthermore, you really need to observe the environment and the rooms you visit to solve most puzzles. And especially the hint button was often useful if you missed something or lost track.

So I'd say if you are into puzzle games, you can give it a try. Thus, my recommendation.

Lyssy
Lyssy

A lovely, whimsical adventure game with tons of puzzles to solve! The spell-casting system for environmental puzzles is a nice addition to the standard point-and-click, inventory + logic type puzzles. This game is cute as a button and I enjoyed the 10 hours I spent working through the puzzles and getting the best ending. My only real complaint is that the magic system is a little bit clunky at times -- if you use the keyboard to move around (which I found more comfortable in this particular game) then you have to move from the arrow keys to the mouse to cast spells. There were also a couple times when targeting with a spell was a bit finicky, but most of the time, it worked well. Definitely recommended to those who enjoy cute games, point-and-click adventures, and puzzle games in general! It should be more well known. It's right up my alley and I found it entirely by accident!

TheShiftyBomber
TheShiftyBomber

This is an excellent little point and click puzzle adventure. The art is great, the world is simultaneously cute and creepy. The puzzles are challenging but not too wildly obscure. And the music is awesome! Super impressive for a two person team! It's got some glitches, so i recommend saving often and to multiple files, but if you like puzzle games, you'll enjoy this one!

Kala Rosa
Kala Rosa

Incredibly sweet game with decently hard puzzles. Got all the achievements!

Goobr
Goobr

very cute game with beautiful art. the puzzles are a lot of fun and i love that they take quite a bit of thinking to figure out!

also some very fun and ODD easter eggs

Dreadjaws
Dreadjaws

The Button Witch is clearly made with RPG Maker, but it's actually played as a point & click adventure game, so it has more in common with games the likes of The Secret of Monkey Island or Grim Fandango. I know RPG Maker games have sort of a bad rap for being cheap, easy asset flips, but this is certainly not the case here. This game is very competently made and makes the most of its available development tools instead of doing just the bare basics.

For instance, there's no combat here. The game's bread and butter are the puzzles and these are all very creative and interesting. They're not as simple as the stock puzzles you usually see in this kind of game. No "rotating the pipes" or "memory match" here. Most of the puzzles are mathematical in nature, and even when they aren't they still require some thinking.

The story is also quite interesting, and manages to keep you guessing. Characters are quite appealing too, even those you only get to meet for a couple of lines of dialogue. As usual for this sort of tile-based game, graphics might look like asset flips at first, but the more you play the more interesting and varied they become. Character portraits are beautiful. The music is nice, if not anything groundbreaking.

The game includes a hint system to help those who might get stuck. Sometimes it's more useful than others, but it's very welcome and it even ties into the game's story very cleverly. There are actually a couple different endings, depending on you engaging with a couple of side quests. There's also an in-game achievement system, though at least at the moment there's no actual Steam integration for them, so they can't be seen in your profile.

On the negative side, a few of the puzzles are a bit on the obtuse side. While most of them are perfectly solvable just by thinking others will require some brute forcing. For instance, in certain puzzles you're given a series of numbers and then you have to figure out the last one. This is a pretty normal mathematical puzzle and can easily be solved by figuring out the series' formula, so that's a good puzzle. But then other puzzles give you a few separate letters or numbers and it's your job to figure out if you're supposed to add them up, exchange them, multiply them or what with absolutely no clues about it, so the solution can really only be obtained by trial and error.

That gripe aside, it's a very good game and I definitely recommend it. The whole experience will last between 7-8 hours, depending on how many sidequests you do and if you decide to hunt for achievements.

edgarsoftly
edgarsoftly

This is closest to a game with puzzles like a professor layton game that ive played in a long time, even better it in the form of a escape the room point and click game. i also really like the way the spells work and open each new area up like a metroidvania. the music great too, perfect easy listening for solving puzzles.the character designs and pixel art area all cute and well done. I found out about this game from an oddheader video.so there are eastereggs to found,as well as some fun instances of forth wall breaking dialog. always a good sign of good puzzle game all the pages of notes of me figuring out how to solve them.i gave up on the music puzzle. but im tone deaf so im not to bothered by it. my only complaint is the control schemes were all kinda awkward to use. admittedly i probably could've spent the time to make how i wanted but was too lazy.
glad i found out about this game.