PAX Online 2020 Highlight – Nine Witches: Family Disruption

Before playing the demo for Nine Witches: Family Disruption I hadn’t played a point and click game in years. Watching the trailer for this game gave me some mad nostalgia for games I loved as a kid. Mainly Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max, which were funny narrative-driven romps. Nine Witches: Family Disruption totally scratched my nostalgia itch.

This 2D pixel art action-adventure takes place in an alternate 1944. In this version of 44′, members of a division of the Third Reich called Okkulte-SS have tapped into occult powers that will really mess with the fighting power of the Allied forces. The UK’s Prime Minster enlists help from Alexei Krakovitz, a quadriplegic Russian expatriate professor who is an expert in the occult. Together with his trusty assistant Akiro Kagasawa, they must travel to Sundae, Norway to investigate and squash the Nazi’s mystical assault.

The adventure begins with you playing as Akiro and wandering around Krakovitz’s house. The game’s potty humour comes out swinging when you travel upstairs and Akiro lets out a series of farts due to the lights being out and “darkness making (him) nervous.” You move around with four main controller prompts. Pick up. Look. Speak. Inventory. You can open your inventory, stand next to an object or person and select “use object with *insert object in front of you here*” Akiro really doesn’t want to pick up a lot of stuff, such as a portrait of Krakovitz “I don’t want to touch that.” Ouch. Awks.

Later in the demo, you have the ability to switch between Akiro and Krakovitz. Playing as the latter lets you experience “astral sensitivity” and “astral projection.” The former sees Krakovitz snoring in his wheelchair as he soars around with the powers of a spirit. “Astral projection” enables you to talk to spirits and also to locate certain objects around you by “sensing” them.

Akiro wields an old Japanese pistol, which could at any moment misfire. There is one moment in the game where you have a standoff with an enemy and you are able to pew pew your pistol at him. So obviously Akiro is the muscle and Krakovitz is the brains in the operation.

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From the small snippet that I played, I’ve already fallen for the games irreverent humour, its simple yet effective gameplay and the characters of Krakovitz and Akiro. I am very much looking forward to seeing if this wacky duo can beat the Nazis and stop them from winning WWII.

Nine Witches: Family Disruption does not have a release date but it will be coming out on PS4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch. The demo is available right here if you want to check it out yourself! And stay tuned to Checkpoint Gaming for more of our favourite indie games coming out of PAX Online 2020!