Nine Witches: Family Disruption | PC Review

Nazis. Aren’t they the perfect enemy? No matter what medium, whether it be movies, TV, books, or games, Nazis are the perfect enemy to go up against. They’re utterly evil. They committed some of the worst atrocities in human history. It’s very black and white, really. Nazis bad, Allies good. Because of that, World War II always makes for a perfect background for heroism in games. The Allies stood up to fascism and kicked Hitler’s ass all the way back to Berlin. This period is also a fruitful source for alternate history stories. And this is where Nine Witches: Family Disruption comes in.

Alternate WW2

Nine Witches: Family Disruption is an alternate history WW2 pixel art point and click adventure game developed by Indiesruption and published by Blowfish Studios. In their version of WW2, the Nazis have an occult division called Okkulte-SS. They are currently active in occupied Norway, where they are doing something evil and mysterious in the town of Sundae. Allied Intelligence seems to suggest they unleashed some kind of curse. As the military doesn’t have anyone capable of dealing with such things, the Allies enlist the help of Professor Alexei Krakovitz, a specialist in all things occult, and his trusty Japanese assistant Akiro Kagasawa. Their mission is to infiltrate the Nazi base in Sundae, find out what the evil plan is, and stop it if they can.

Dynamic Duo

In Nine Witches: Family Disruption you play both Alexei and Akiro at the same time. The professor is a paraplegic, so Akiro has to be his hands and feet. The professor is far from helpless though, as he has mastered the skill of communing with the dead. When he goes into a trance, he can leave his body and roam around in ghost form. This enables him to speak with lingering spirits, but also to spy on the living and gain information he would otherwise not have been privy to.

Akira is a very capable assistant. He protects the professor with his life and is the one who can manipulate his surroundings. Akira is quite the smart guy himself and, guided by the player of course, is usually the one who gets the duo out of pickles throughout the game. He can do all the physical stuff, from opening doors and picking things up to shooting enemies and creating diversions. He has a good sense of humor too! Generally you can say that wherever Professor Krakovitz goes, Akiro goes as well.

Smooth Operator

You control both characters in the game and can switch between them. When you control one character, the other will follow automatically, unless the professor is in his spirit form. I played the game with a controller, and I must say that it made for a very intuitive way of playing. The left joystick controls movement, the buttons are actions, and the trigger allows you to switch between characters. You can also play with a keyboard, but that is a lot less instinctive; it takes a bit more to get used to. But either way works fine for the game. The actions are simple: Talk, Use/Pick up/Inventory/Spirit Form. Later in the game, the professor gets a fun new skill, but it would be spoiling to go more into that. 

Go Full Wolvenstein

The puzzles range from simple to challenging, but not impossible. As long as you keep in mind that you have two characters with which you can solve these puzzles, one of which can walk through locked doors!  Another element that is worth mentioning is that the game has several arcade sections. During these sections you control Akiro and you have to shoot Nazis. These sections can be very difficult, especially halfway through when I had to fend off four waves of enemies and, if I died, I had to start over with wave 1.

However, the developers understood that not every adventure game player likes sections like this, so they give you the option to put the difficulty to easy. When you do that, you get help from an unexpected source during these fights, enabling you to quickly dispatch your enemies. And yes, you can die in Nine Witches, but luckily you get to start again right before that moment and try again. You can also save whenever you want, and the game also has an autosave.

Old School Art

The most attractive part of this game is the pixel art. I am a sucker for sweet pixel art. It’s a style that ages very well and Nine Witches deliberately invokes old school pixel art style, and does so beautifully. The backgrounds are particularly well done and add to the mood in a good way. The sound is also good. There are plenty of sound effects, but there is no voice acting. However, this is not a problem, as the way talking is done here suits the game. It’s a bit silly, and so is the game.

Toilet Nazis

Nine Witches is a comedic game as well as an alternate history game. This is both a blessing and a curse. The game is very irreverent, and is at its best when it makes fun of the Nazis. Where the game swings hard and misses is with the toilet humor (quite literally at times), its weird fascination with testicals and the fourth-wall breaking jokes. I believe the game doesn’t need those jokes, as its story is quite strong and there are plenty of other jokes that do land. It came across as a bit immature and kind of unbalanced the tone of the game every now and then.

Conclusion

The dodgy humor took away a bit of my enjoyment, but there was still enough to keep Nine Witches afloat. The characters are funny and cool, the gameplay is intuitive and smooth, and the story is intriguing. The pixel art elevates the game some more and I had a fun 9 hours in the company of Aleksei and Akiro. I would not mind playing more adventures with this dynamic duo and taking on Okkulte-SS elsewhere in war torn Europe to ensure a victory for the Allies. Because who doesn’t like kicking Nazi ass?

To hear me talking more about Nine Witches: Family Disruption, be sure to listen to Episode 325 of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 1:05:59 time stamps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjW5a1HVRwY

This review is based on a PC copy of Nine Witches: Family Distribution provided by Stride PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox platforms, and Nintendo Switch.