Little Witch

Ablex' first game follows the titular Little Witch on her quest to become a full-blown witch. In a platformer/adventure hybrid she has to explore woods and caves, learn new spells and solve the problems of numerous people and magical creatures on her way. The game's mechanics and progression are similar to some of the Wonder Boy episodes, with slightly more emphasis on "RPG elements". It is also text heavy for this kind of game, and pages over pages on a special story book screen are no rarity.

The game world is divided into seperate areas, but some of the dungeons are huge and map-drawing is almost obligatory. Most of the witch's spells are used to fight the many imaginative enemies, but "talk" is a spell too, which results in frequent inconvenient switching in the menu. Without some serious grinding, most enemies are capable to kill the witch fast, resulting in many frustrating game over screens, but at least it is possible to save the game at any time. Yet the function should be handled with care, because it is also possible to save in unwinnable situations.

Little Witch has enough inspiration and fun ideas to be a very entertaining little game (it even uses pictures as doors to jump through between areas, two years before Super Mario 64), however done by a bunch of university students, the technical execution leaves much to be desired. There's hardly ever been choppier scrolling in a retail game and everything flickers like crazy, making enemies much harder than they need to be and not seldom rendering the game almost unplayable. The potential for a great game was there, and the graphics look really nice (if amateurish), but it would have needed a bit more programming expertise to truly shine.