The Witch's House

Lore & Background

The Witch's House follows Viola, a 13-year-old girl who wakes in a forest and, finding her exit blocked by thorns, enters an old mansion. Once inside, the entrance vanishes, trapping her. She is accompanied by a black, talking cat that serves as a save point and occasional companion; the cat speaks casually but the player character does not respond until the ending. The house belongs to the witch Ellen, who was originally a sickly girl neglected by her parents. The cat is a demon who gave Ellen magic in exchange for luring people to the mansion for him to eat, promising to cure her illness. Depending on player actions, the game has several endings; in two of them, it is revealed that the character controlled by the player is actually Ellen, who has stolen Viola's body, while the 'Ellen' seen in the game is Viola using Ellen's magic to try to reclaim her original body.

Reader's Guide

The Witch's House is frequently cited alongside Ao Oni, Yume Nikki, and Ib as a key title that popularized horror games made with the RPG Maker engine. Its influence is acknowledged by indie development teams such as AstralShiftPro and Buriki Clock, who cited it as inspiration for their games Pocket Mirror and Cloé's Requiem, respectively. The game's reach extended into live events: a haunted attraction at the 2015 Niconico Super Conference, primarily based on Ao Oni, also incorporated motifs from The Witch's House, Cloé's Requiem, Death Forest, and Moonlight Yokai. A similar attraction at the 2016 conference featured The Witch's House alongside Ao Oni, Angels of Death, 7 Ways to Die, and Tsugunohi. The game's original freeware version was downloaded over 200,000 times by the end of 2013, and its 2018 remake was published by Dangen Entertainment for Windows and macOS, with ports to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One following in October 2022.

Did You Know?

• The Witch's House was developed in the RPG Maker VX engine and released as freeware on October 3, 2012.
• A prequel novel titled The Witch's House: The Diary of Ellen was released in 2013, telling the backstory of the witch Ellen.
• The game's remake, The Witch's House MV, took five times as long to develop as the original due to completely remade graphics.
• A manga adaptation of the novel, illustrated by Yuna Kagesaki, was serialized in Dragon Age magazine and collected in two tankōbon volumes.