Garden of Witches

I went into Garden of Witches expecting a light palette-cleanser between heavier roguelites, and came out genuinely warmed by what Team Tapas has quietly built here. This is a top-down action roguelite from a South Korean indie studio whose fingerprints are all over the visual craft: every character portrait, every biome corner feels drawn with the same care their previous mobile titles brought to much smaller screens. Sil, the Thread Witch, fights with giant scissors as her primary weapon, and the absurd elegance of that image never really gets old. You pick two spells at the start of each run, then layer on relics and attribute-driven synergies as you push through chapter-gated dungeons, convincing unruly witches to show up to a very important tea party. The premise sounds throwaway but the writing has genuine wit, and characters like the perpetually intoxicated mischief-maker Fiena or the cheerfully flesh-obsessed undead duo Rims and Berry give the world a texture that most action roguelites don't bother with. The mechanical structure draws clear inspiration from Hades: randomized spell pools, branching room selection based on upcoming rewards, and a metaprogression layer that converts deaths into permanent incremental upgrades. Where Garden of Witches carves its own space is in how the five story chapters each introduce a new system wholesale. Chapter 2 unlocks the Synergy System, which lets you amplify attribute effects like burns or summons by stacking matching properties across your build. Chapter 3 layers in Relics, powerful effects that can redefine an entire run's strategy. Chapter 4 opens up the Weapon Select System, letting you swap away from the default scissors entirely. The Counter skill also sits at the center of the combat rhythm, a high-risk parry that Team Tapas has visibly iterated on based on player feedback. When a build clicks and your synergies fire together, the combat feels genuinely satisfying in the way only this genre can. That said, honest accounting requires flagging the roughness. The staged tutorial-through-chapters approach means early runs feel thin: new players spend the first couple of chapters without access to weapons or systems that the game clearly needs to feel complete, and by the time the full picture materializes, a first playthrough is nearly over. Content breadth in Early Access is also lean, with limited enemy variety and biome diversity not yet matching the quality of the boss encounters. The current run length lands somewhere between four and seven hours depending on your pace, and endgame hooks beyond basic record-chasing are still light. Team Tapas has flagged additional regions, bosses, side story chapters, and higher-difficulty content for the latter half of 2025, and their communication around the roadmap has been transparent. The Steam community response has been strongly positive, which suggests the core feel is landing even if the volume isn't there yet. For players who love hand-crafted indie worlds and don't mind boarding early, the bones here are genuinely appealing. The soundtrack shifts between cozy jazz and something far more urgent during boss encounters, and the hand-drawn expressiveness of each character during dialogue sequences is the kind of artisanal detail I always want more games to prioritize. If you are the type who will bounce off a sparse first hour and never look back, the honest advice is to wait for the content updates expected later this year. But if you can meet a game where it stands and appreciate the craft underneath the gaps, Garden of Witches already has something real to offer.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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