Witches and glitches are your targets in retro adventure Witchhunter.exe

Witchhunter.exe looks like a lost choose-your-own adventure trapped in the interface of a Gold Box D&D game. It casts you as a witch hunter right out of Salem who has to interrogate a group of women to determine which of them is in league with the Devil.

The Devil, meanwhile, appears in pop-up boxes like he’s infiltrated your operating system, adding an element of ghost-in-the-machine glitch-horror to proceedings.

The combat system, where you either have to type the right word or select it from a list before you’re struck, looks like fun. I’m a bit less sure how the Devil stuff will land. Much as I liked Pony Island, I feel like I’ve played enough games that turn out to be haunted simulations I need to hack my way out of. At this point, the fourth wall has been knocked down so many times I’d be happy for a game to just leave it intact for once.

Still, as someone who has watched way too many movies like Witch Hunter General and The Blood on Satan’s Claw and Cry of the Banshee and most of the Hammer horror movies with Peter Cushing and/or Christopher Lee in them, stylistically Witchhunter.exe looks like it could be my cup of hemlock. You can keep up with its development on Steam and there’s a beta playtest on the way.