Alright, time kick off the first Backlogged post of 2025! Let’s see, the last time I did one of these was *checks notes* – Horizon Zero Dawn back in July 2023. Wow, been a while the . That tracks though, it’s probably the last time I finished a game. So Wytchwood must of done something right if I saw it all the way through. (It did!).

Last spring, I was really into cozy games. My wife had just picked up Disney Dreamlight Valley on the Switch and was playing it constantly. Which is out of the norm for her. Typically, she only plays games featuring a certain plummer in a red hat whose having a party.

What stood out to me while watching her play was the quest system. It wasn’t just a Disney skinned Animal Crossing but a Disney skinned Animal Crossing with crafting and gathering quests! It seemed like the perfect Steam Deck game but it stubbornly refused to go on sale. So I went in search of a game with a similar vibe. What I ended up finding was Littlewood which satisfied my need for endless crafting quests up until Dreamlight Valley finally went on sale a short time later. But ran into Wytchwood recommendations constantly on my search.

Flash forward to this year’s Winter Sale where Wytchwood once again caught my eye. I was looking for a low key game with quests that I could play on the Steam Deck (I’m trying to use it more this year).

Wytchwood tells the story of a Witch (suprise!) who has enters a magical contract with a goat. Well, more like some sort of supernatural entity trapped in the body of a goat. There’s a shrine near the Witch’s home that contains a woman in a magical slumber. The Witch has no memory of the woman, or the goat for that matter, but seeing as she’s in a shrine on her property, she must be important. The goat informs her he’ll wake the sleeping woman once the Witch gathers twelve souls, from villans who wronged the sleeping woman in some way, to complete the contract. So off she goes to collect the souls.

Things I Liked:

The QUESTS!

It’s a good thing too because that’s why I bought it. Wytchwood is a crafting adventure game which means every quest is a crafting quest. It’s one of those games where everything is a gathering node. Logs, plants, animals, people, they all drop something that’s neededto craft something else. There are certain items that have to be crafted to continue the story so I was constantly running back and forth between zones to get materials.

I quite enjoy games with this mechanic. Most notable for me are Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles and Summer in Mara. At the start, there’s a phase of discover when everything is new and I’m figuring out where to get the things I need. Later, there’s a phase of mastery where I know where everything is and all I need to do is go out and get it.

I also thought the progression was well done. The story is split into three chunks where the Witch needs to gather four souls. The crafting requirements start off simple with with only a few materials needed to make each item. As the story goes on, you might need to craft multiple items to craft one story item for the next step in the quest. Towards the end, I even had to craft multiple items just to craft an item I needed to gather a certain material. It never feels overwhelming though.

The Length

One of the reasons I didn’t initially buy Wytchwood is because one of the complaints I kept running across was that it was too short. I should have probably gone over to How Long to Beat to verify that, or maybe I did and thought that 10 hours was too short at the time. Now that I’ve played it, 10 hours is plenty. Any longer and it would have out stayed its welcome. I can only run back and forth, gathering wood yet again, before I say enough already. With that said, I didn’t have to spend too much downtime in between quest steps gathering materials. The crafting recipies range from 1-8 materials so I usually only needed one or two more of each ingredient to complete the recipe.

The Docks Theme

As a whole, the Wytchwood soundtrack is serviceable. It’s not overly exciting, but it does it’s job and sets the mood for the world. But, for whatever reason, The Docks theme has been stuck in my head for the last two weeks and I can’t make it stop. I even plucked it out on the piano a few times. This particular track reminds me of the Summer in Mara OST. For that reason alone, I’m sticking music under things I liked. Oddly enough, The Docks theme doesn’t actually play in the Docks, it plays in the Village and the Market areas. The actual Docks theme is missing from the official OST. Which is a shame, because I quite liked that one too!

Things That Could Have Been Better:

Steam Deck Battery Drain

Wytchwood made my Steam Deck work for it. The battery lasted about an hour when I was playing. I haven’t played that many titles on the Deck, but I don’t recall another game draining the battery quite so quickly. It’s fine though, I rarely played longer than an hour at a time on it, but I thought it was notable.