From supporting Vanillaware to creating their own games, Digitalis Publishing (ジギタリス出版) has a vast and coloured history of art, tech and music under their belt. Lead by Yoshio Nishimura, taking inspiration from adventure books of old and other various pen-and-paper RPGs, this new game Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle is a compelling literary adventure. Can this spicy visual novel grasp player’s attention, or is it destined for a Bulwer-Lytton style award?
In a fun twist, Veritas Tales is actually set up as the player reading the adventure book in the library of an older wizard character. This character acts as a narrator of sorts, giving the player insight and letting them know when events have things like time limits. He is, in no uncertain terms, the dungeon master of this adventure and quite a delightful one. Player’s first pick the character they wish to play as: the barbarian or the witch. For this playthrough, the Witch character was picked as her design is pretty cute. They then set out on a danger filled journey full of fantasy monsters and puzzling scenarios. It all comes down to choices, stats, and a little bit of RNG.
The story is really quite interesting and has a few bad ends scattered throughout if players get themselves embroiled in trouble. It keeps that adventure book style consistent throughout. There are some other mechanics, though! Gameplay has combat, which plays out similar to a tabletop RPG, where the player has abilities and attacks to choose from, but they might not actually be able to hit the enemy every time. It’s relatively compelling and again keeps things pen-and-paper, so keep an eye on that HP value.
For more stressful moments, the player will have a timer. Complete the actions in time or fail horribly. This is a nice change of pace as it forces players to think on their feet instead of considering outcomes. Some of these parts were genuinely thrilling in a way that was unexpected for the style of game. Death isn’t an end to the story, though usually offers players a chance to go back to the page before they made the mistake.
When it comes to visuals, the witch, barbarian and wizard are the characters who have animation. This evokes some of the shine of the Dragon’s Crown character portraits, offering them life, but everything else is fairly static. However, static is not meant to be read as boring or uninspired. The game has a wonderful user interface full of papers and clutter befitting a table top RPG. The art on show varies in style a bit but has a lot of evocative imagery that works on a number of levels.
Music is similarly polished and interesting, often reflecting the setting of the current scene but with some of those nice fantasy flairs here and there. There are stand out tracks like battle and the more atmospheric ones, but some like the tavern track are not that good, a little messy. When it comes to audio, the game also has a fair amount of voice acting and not just for the wizard. Select characters have voiced lines during their story scenes. This helps in giving each character a proper sense of self, adding a lot to when they inevitably die due to the player’s choices.
Find out more about the game in our Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle interview with Yoshio Nishimura.
