Witchaven

aka: Witchaven: Dare to Enter...
Moby ID: 3318
DOS Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/24 2:23 AM )
Included in

Description official descriptions

Grondoval, a knight from the land of Stazhia, has been just chosen to travel to the forbidding Island of Char. An evil witch named Illwhyrin has cast a curse of never-ending darkness on Stazhia, and built her lair, the Witchaven, on the island, sacrificing the few foolish humans who dare venture there. The witch's present goal is to remove a magical barrier known as the Veil, which serves as a portal to the world of demons. Should she succeed, unspeakable evil shall arrive and consume the world. Grondoval must defeat Illwhyrin's demonic minions, reach the core of Witchaven, and defeat her.

Based on 3D Realms' Build engine, Witchaven is a first-person fantasy slasher akin to Heretic, with the addition of a simple role-playing experience and level system: the player accumulates experience from killing monsters and acquiring items, so as to become more powerful (with seven experience levels altogether). The weapons include knives, swords, bows, morning stars, battle axes, throwing axes, and halberds. Spells such as Scare, Night Vision, Fly, Fireball, and Nuke, are available via scrolls found during exploration, although the more powerful spells require that the player character has attained a certain experience level (for example, Nuke, which disintegrates opponents, requires the hero to be level five to cast). Scattered around the levels are potions which grant the protagonist such boons as healing, invisibility and strength.

Spellings

  • Witchhaven - Common misspelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

20 People

Executive Producer
Producer
Product Manager
Lead Programming
Additional Programming
Original Music & Sound FX
Creature Modeling
3D Animation and Artwork
Cover Artwork
Map Coordinators
Original Story and Maps
Documentation
Quality Assurance Manager
3D Introduction
  • Animation Factory
Weapons Provided by
  • Blacksword Armoury Inc.

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 66% (based on 13 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.0 out of 5 (based on 23 ratings with 4 reviews)

Early but excellent medieval action.

The Good
This game presented 1st person medieval excitement. The levels were large (for the time), and the engine was quite advanced. The obvious detail in the warring goblin and ogre factions and the variety of monsters, weapons, potions, magic and power-ups made it the best twitch & kill fantasy game of the time. The variety in environments, including rooms that actually serve purposes (torture rooms, libraries, gardens, etc.) make it that much more realistic.

The Bad
The controls were relatively sloppy compared to other games coming out at the time. The game as a whole wasn't always stable, and some of traps were downright too difficult in the darker areas. The lack of an ending cutscene really killed any sense of closure to me.

The Bottom Line
Ultima Underworld with better graphics, absolutely no role-playing, and nonstop slaughter and adventure in a dark and twisted fantasy world, involving "vast" (for the time) outdoor environments and indoor dungeons as well. Definitely a shining example of a great game, but could have been something that could have been so much more with a few added story elements and some tighter controls.

DOS · by Jason Musgrave (72) · 2003

So terrible it almost defies belief

The Good
Released by Capstone, Witchaven achieved a small amount of fame within a certain niche of gamers (notice I say "small", it's not as if the game was a full-blown cult classic or anything) for being one of the first medieval themed FPS games, along with Heretic and Hexen.

In Witchaven you play as...er...some guy who has to do....something. OK, I neither know nor care what the game's about, and since you spend most of the time fighting endless armies of warty goblins I have a feeling it doesn't matter much anyway. The game is standard FPS fare similar to Doom or Heretic, although there are some RPG touches like experience points and an inventory. This doesn't add anything significant to the game (and Hexen took it much further by allowing you to pick a class, Gauntlet style) but it's still a point for creativity.

I'll have to end there.

The Bad
I hesitate to use the word "turd parade" to describe a game, but here I am left no choice. Witchaven is terrible. It is botched and ruined in almost every way. I won't call this the worst FPS ever made ("worst FPS" is like "worst haircut", i.e. something that's apparently made impossible by karma) but surely it must be near the bottom of the barrel.

So where do we begin our autopsy?

Witchaven isn't really a first person shooter but a first person slasher. Most of the game you'll have to use melee weapons like flails, swords, or your fists. Hit detection is horribly skewed and you have to get extremely close to attack an enemy, and there's no feedback as to whether you're causing any damage. You just hammer away at enemies until they fall over dead. The entire game consists of this. That's right, other than looking for keys and getting lost in mazes, you spend the whole time whacking away at goblins.

Heck, even controlling your character is a massive annoyance. Your character doesn't walk, he slides. It feels like you're on roller skates. And since you can clip through any enemy or object in the game (I think this is a bug) you'll often walk through the enemy you were trying to attack in a bizarre sort of osmosis. I've never really enjoyed first-person slashers since they're too damned hard to play because of the perspective. Some games compensate with a "Z-button" feature (I'm thinking Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time) that automatically locks you on to nearby enemies, but there's nothing so sophisticated in Witchaven.

These problems torpedo the game on their own, but there's lots of other stuff to point at. Perhaps to enhance the paper-thin RPG angle, they included the "realistic" feature of deteriorating weapons, which is a nightmare unto itself..

Basically, if you use a weapon for too long it will break and you'll need to find a replacement. It's lots of fun when your sword breaks in the middle of a fight, but what's even worse is that weapons sustain damage even if you aren't hitting anything with them. That's right, you can wreck any weapon in the game by swinging it at empty air. As you can see, they've implemented a feature that makes the game less fun, slows down the action, and makes no sense.

Even the experience system is broken. You gain points every time an enemy dies. That's it. If a monster falls into a pool of lava on the other side of the room you gain experience. Even better: if you exploit infighting among the game's many enemies (goblins of different colors will fight each other) you can rake in massive points without lifting a finger.

Other than the pseudo-RPG features, there's nothing even remotely creative behind Witchaven's design or content, and the game comes across as just a really crappy Doom knockoff with swords rather than guns. Level design is cut-rate, the weapons are almost stupendously boring, and the enemies all feel like stronger/weaker clones of one another.

The game's graphics are competent, but the art is simply terrible. Seriously, the goblins look like they were drawn by children, and while the other enemy sprites are somewhat better they're still the sorriest bunch of claymation rejects you're ever likely to come across. Just look at the screenshots. Additionally, the sprites have almost no depth shading, and this makes them look like cardboard cutouts.

...You get the idea. Witchaven isn't a game where you have to look hard to find what's wrong. You have to look hard to find what isn't wrong. This is a game with almost no redeeming aspects at all.

The Bottom Line
Avoid. If you really want a medieval-themed classic FPS, play Heretic or Hexen. They're problematic games in their own right, but it's like the pearly gates of heaven opening up next to this.

(Although I should note that Witchaven uses an early incarnation of the famous Build engine, and therefore may be of technical interest to Ken Silverman fans)

DOS · by Maw (832) · 2007

And now for something completely gory

The Good
Graphics in the game are rich in variety, colour, shadows and lighting, not least the amount of gore, which captures a horror atmosphere and exceeds Doom a level higher for its time. The intro cinematic is thrilling to watch from beginning to end. When you plunge into the game, you're greeted by close range weapons and trap-ridden labyrinthine levels with quite a selection of monsters and demons from the smallest poisonous spider to the great witch Illwhyrin herself.

The RPG elements fit nicely as progressive experience earns you new abilities, new spellcasting capabilities and increased vitality. Potions, spells and magic items make the combat more interesting and guarantee you'll get through the level successfully. The weapons, though mainly consisting of melee type, have their different reaches and damage power. Replacing the weapons as they get damaged is a small chore, that is compensated with bonus EXP. What few ranged weapons there are have a generous amount of ammunition around the levels. It's neat that you can use the magic arrows to make a ladder, so you don't have to waste a fly spell.

The Bad
Somehow going through a level doesn't feel as satisfying as it does in other FPSes because there's no kill count, item count or secret count to tell if you fully beat the level. Some of the levels are just plain mean because you'll find an overwhelming number of instant-killing spike traps and closing mechanisms which trap you forever. The difficulty levels in the game are hard to tell apart and the Nightmare difficulty makes the game next to impossible to beat, more so than Doom. Even dying a level restarts you with 0 EXP, making saving the game frequently an absolute must.

In the midst of the gameplay there is sadly an abundance of bugs in the game, such as the broken jumping mechanic, clipping through walls, which kills you without warning, and the inability to pick up daggers, not to mention the infamous level 5 bug that stops you getting the brass key to the exit (saved only by an Unlock Door spell).

Finally, the only area in which the game lacks variety is the soundtrack, having only six music tracks (the last one being removed from the Adlib/SB16 sound card for no reason) where more would have completed the scary atmosphere from level to level.

The Bottom Line
Doom and Heretic brought you the finest first person action in the early 90s. Witchaven tried hard to reach the level of those games, but failed by a mile. If shooting was always your kind if action, then it takes a lot of getting used to with a melee arsenal. Sadly there is quite a lot missing that would have made it top of the FPS list. Recommend that you sharpen your FPS skills before you play this title. Witchaven is memorable, but not everyone's favourite, so give this title the benefit of the doubt and make the most of it.

DOS · by Kayburt (30335) · 2021

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Witchaven's cover art is by artist Ken Kelly. It was available as a mail-in as a wall-poster upon release as well.

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Dare to Dream 3
Released 1994 on Windows 3.x
Dan Dare III: The Escape
Released 1990 on Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC
Daredevil Denis
Released 1984 on BBC Micro, Electron
Dare to Dream 2
Released 1994 on Windows 3.x
Daredevil Denis
Released 1984 on Commodore 64
Gex: Enter the Gecko
Released 1998 on Windows, Nintendo 64, PlayStation...
How to Cope with Boredom and Loneliness
Released 2016 on Windows, Linux
Skydiver
Released 1978 on Atari 2600, Arcade, 2010 on Windows...

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 3318
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Erwin Bergervoet.

Windows added by Plok.

Additional contributors: Rebound Boy, Luckspeare, Jason Musgrave, formercontrib.

Game added February 15, 2001. Last modified March 16, 2024.