Three cheers for Witchbeam!

[Brendan | Shinji16]

So, just my two bits on the recent developments surrounding what is one of the best twinstick shmups I've played in a very long time.

Wonderfuly brough up from alpha up and thru beta through a proper use of the Early Access system. Final product still has all the heart and charm its earlier forms did, while adding lots of delightful chaos and hype. A game that throws chaos at you, but also says it's ok to not perfectly dodge everything, just the important bits and also have fun blowing stuff up all the while.

You have mechanics and scoring systems to rewards the diehards, easy forgiveness systems (and rewards) for not so skilled players that are willing to jump into the mashes mot pit style and grow stronger for it, overall charm and design that make replace again again years later always a treat.

I cannot express my happiness for the success of this team, and completely understand all their focus for the near future will be sticking the landing on Switch. Will the newer content trickle back to PC some time soon? Likely. Sooner than later? Eh, who knows? I make this post to both give great thanks to the Witchbeam team, and to try and remind some of the equally eager but have perceptions or expectations of how quick so changes and re-updating may take. I strongly encourage we all sit back, play the new version if we're able,and otherwise keep the PC community giving any newcomers nothing but positive vibes, since one say we all might be tackling the same new connect together and could be better unified in our discussions, and less devisive than things seem right now.

Just my two bits.

[MrUnbecoming]

Indeed. When I bought and played the game 3 days ago (after having known of it for a long time, but not pulling the trigger) I wish I did. It's such an excelllent game, I already have 14 hours in the game and nearly all levels S+'d except for Collider and whatever is after that. It's such a highly polished and well-made game. It runs 144FPS for me LOCKED, it's insane how well this game runs I was astonished when I looked at my framerate counter and it didn't move. Even with all the crap that is on the screen, it still manages to keep framerate so hats off to the programmers. I have been listening to the developer commentary on all the levels, and it's so interesting to get insight into how the game was made, early builds, and my favorite is when they get into the technical bits. I really like how that was added in, and all of the codex, bestiary, and lore pieces that you can read and look at. The music player and image viewer is an especially nice touch.

It makes me really sad how a game like this can go under the radar for so long, getting buried by all the shovelware and garbage on Steam. I hope that the game sold well enough on PC that they might consider a sequel or successor, but either way I am happy it is on Switch. It's the perfect home for it. I really hope it sells well there, because after all the hard work the developers put into it, they absolutely deserve it. This game was their baby for many years, and it really shows in the final product. I just wish I bought it earlier.

[SMishra]

<3

It's still a very niche game, financially viable only because we basically destroyed ourselves doing almost everything as just one artist(who also programmed), one designer, and one audio engineer. But we do hope to one day do a sequel. In the mean time we're working on a few smaller projects with most of the team + a new addition working on a game called Unpacking and I'm making a little puzzle game as well. We will return to larger Witch Beam projects after these if funding and other factors allow, because after risking everything we had on AAC it's just not feasible to work that way forever.

As for the AAC+ content and PC, well we just finished up a patch for Switch to fix a few minor issues and Tim is headed to GDC, but it's definitely something we want to do. There's always extra testing and other issues with doing massive updates (especially since we changed Unity versions and re-wrote a lot of stuff for Switch), and we've always made the updates that happened for consoles happen on PC when we could, so I don't think that approach will change.

[MrUnbecoming]

Originally posted by SMishra:

<3

It's still a very niche game, financially viable only because we basically destroyed ourselves doing almost everything as just one artist(who also programmed), one designer, and one audio engineer. But we do hope to one day do a sequel. In the mean time we're working on a few smaller projects with most of the team + a new addition working on a game called Unpacking and I'm making a little puzzle game as well. We will return to larger Witch Beam projects after these if funding and other factors allow, because after risking everything we had on AAC it's just not feasible to work that way forever.

As for the AAC+ content and PC, well we just finished up a patch for Switch to fix a few minor issues and Tim is headed to GDC, but it's definitely something we want to do. There's always extra testing and other issues with doing massive updates (especially since we changed Unity versions and re-wrote a lot of stuff for Switch), and we've always made the updates that happened for consoles happen on PC when we could, so I don't think that approach will change.

Thank you for the transparent reply. I really enjoy the game, you guys did a phenomenal job on it, I can't stress enough. I'm looking forward to what other projects you and your team have in store, because this game was of the utmost quality. Probably one of the most polished games I have played on Steam, and that's saying something because I have 860 games. I will say that I am not a huge fan of puzzle games in all honesty, but if it's something new and/or interesting I can definitely keep an open mind. It's sad to hear that you guys ended up nearly ruining yourselves (probably financially and mentally) by making Cactus, but at the very least it produced an excellent game that gets a new life on Switch.

[MrUnbecoming]

Originally posted by SMishra:

<3

It's still a very niche game, financially viable only because we basically destroyed ourselves doing almost everything as just one artist(who also programmed), one designer, and one audio engineer. But we do hope to one day do a sequel. In the mean time we're working on a few smaller projects with most of the team + a new addition working on a game called Unpacking and I'm making a little puzzle game as well. We will return to larger Witch Beam projects after these if funding and other factors allow, because after risking everything we had on AAC it's just not feasible to work that way forever.

As for the AAC+ content and PC, well we just finished up a patch for Switch to fix a few minor issues and Tim is headed to GDC, but it's definitely something we want to do. There's always extra testing and other issues with doing massive updates (especially since we changed Unity versions and re-wrote a lot of stuff for Switch), and we've always made the updates that happened for consoles happen on PC when we could, so I don't think that approach will change.

I just beat the game, what an awesome ending haha! Cactus is my favorite Android by far. "Both?" That ending was sick. I finally also beat Collider by the way. I hated the level, but once you get to the miniboss consistently it flowed well and was fun.

[malpollyon]

+1 to all the support for Witch Beam. This game is an absolute gem, and is one of my go-to games when I just want to relax and unwind. I'm thrilled to hear the content from the switch version will make it over here if it's at all practical, it would be an excellent excuse to replay the game. But even if it never did I've had my money's worth 10 times over from this game.

[Reynard Fulvipes]

Agree with the above. Well polished, tonnes of charm, didn't try to be more complex for the sake of complexity or trade quality to put more stuff in it, and something I keep coming back to every couple months.

I've wanted to build an arcade cabinet to have for my office for a couple years now (something with a PC in it to run arcadey stuff on) and if I ever get to it I'd like to make the art on the cabinet AAC themed and have this run on it by default. It's like modern day Smash TV.