Bad Witch [BOTH DEMOS ARE NOW LIVE!] 18+, witchy romantasy horror WIP (Chapter 1 of 21)

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Hello and thanks for taking the time to check out my demo!

OG demo 7k words // AU demo // tumblr post // voting is now closed, thanks for participating! [19 April]

BAD WITCH takes places in an alternate universe, one where magic exists and witches run the world. In this magical, matriarchal society, there are several rather famous (or infamous) families, your character being the latest in a long line of witxhes as powerful as they were controversial.

Bad Witch isn’t going to be for everyone.

This is a story of excess & indulgence. Of lust & love. Of luxury & depravity. Of horror & debauchery. And of rediscovering your inner witch

WILL YOU BE A BAD WITCH, OR A GOOD WITCH?

In an alternate reality, Witxhes — along with their epic stores of magic — were discovered centuries ago, and humans wasted no time waging war against them. It was a pretty silly move in hindsight, as the combined force of the Witches easily crushed the humans into submission.

Humans were relegated to a lower class of society (Humanes), and the bougie Season of the Witch began. Witching Society flourished and quickly took over the world, and would eventually trickle down to influence the Humane class. Witxhes tend to be quite opulent & over indulgent, and often revel in their personal vices.

The story centers around a close-knit witxhes coven nearly a decade after their graduation from a prestigious magic school. During your time at Ariadne Academy, your coven (affectionately nicknamed the Silverlakers) was closer than any other coven. The nine of you shared an intense hunger for magic that seemed to go unmatched amongst your peers. Thousands of nights were spent reading old spellbooks cover to cover, or out in the woods singing & chanting and breathing life into the same stale old magic.

Now… this is where things take a little split. I’ve been working on this story for years but when I started thinking about converting it to an IF/non-linear format, I started looking at the story & characters from a different perspective. Aaand then I kind of wrote an AU fanfic for my own story, which brings me to my predicament. Each storyline has its own advantages & disadvantages, but I’m genuinely interested to know which one readers might prefer. So I’ll be sharing both demos & hoping there’s a clear frontrunner.

OG VERSION
When the story picks up years later, MC and the rest of the Silverlakers are still incredibly, almost unreasonably close. They take codependent to another level entirely, but what does it matter really when you’re so blissfully happy, loved & content?

It isn’t until your past (and the skeletons in your closet) starts beating down the door that MC must reckon with their past.

•personalise your character’s witchy home, and how it relates to their magic
•decide what kind of relationship (if any) MC has had with their ex since breaking up at graduation. Also choose what originally drove MC to end things
•currently (1st chap) is in first person POV

AU VERSION
When we meet up with MC this time around, things have irrevocably changed. The coven has long been fractured, and has little in common with its former self. MC keeps in touch with one or two Silverlakers but the connection is tenuous at best. But after years of avoiding their covenmates and running from the past, MC is finally forced to confront the ghosts that haunt them.

•choose how to approach your old coven — try to rebuild what you’ve lost, or turn your back on them for good
•couch surf with what friends you have left, or explore luxury hospitality accommodations
•currently in third person POV

As will probably become obvious fairly quickly, I’ve been HEAVILY inspired by stories of Magic Schools That Shall Go Unnamed, TR0N, the awe-inspiring creations of Alexander McQueen, Gossip Girl, & Hellraiser. This is essentially my twisted love letter to the horrifically beautiful parts of our world.

Currently I’ve written (1 Chapter of 21, about 7k Words) and plan on updating regularly, as I’ll be working on it full time.

And although I’ve been working on this story for a decade, and it’s IF counterpart for nearly 3 years now, it’s nowhere near as polished as I planned for it to be. But I know that if I didn’t just post it, I’d be fussing and perfecting it forever & ever. So I’m aware that it’s a bit rough. I know I need to add/work on character descriptions, specifically with the Silverlakers, and that will be included with the next update.

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Hii, this wip interested me greatly and i like how there’s a lot of world-building so far, though i did encounter quite a few bugs:

The first was when i wanted to choose “Witches B*itches”. Second happened when i wanted to choose “I stifle a chuckle”.

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Thanks so much, I really appreciate that! I’m currently updating all of the stat menus but I should put notes about being under construction.

And thank you for the screenshots, I’ll fix those up (=

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Loved the demo so far! Not sure if it’s a bug or not but I ran into an endless loading screen when I went to Ash’s penthouse :slightly_smiling_face: Looking forward to more of this! :heart:

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I haven’t gotten to try this yet but they sound awesome! Will we get to choose what your off magic we use or specialize in?

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witches. luxury. lust. Alexander McQueen + Gossip Girl inspo… oh yeah i’m tuned in lol.

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@JaneSweet still playing demo but noticed a issue of sorts when using the teleporter thing that first paragraph is doubled.

When talking with gillian black they change gender quite often when they were chosen to be female when the option was given.

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I think need saves for this so tester doesn’t need to restart from the beginning when they encounter an error.

Also will be wise to put extra warning of the incomplete section in stats menu.

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Awesome, thanks for the feedback! So chronologically, the OG demo will be the first to get a spicy scene and I didn’t want that to affect people’s opinions too much. They’ll both be VERY spicy but AU takes a couple more scenes to get to the first explicit scene.

For now, I’ll update the current end of the chapter to indicate as much (=

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Yes, saves are a must but I’m having some trouble with the code change showing up in dashingdon. Hopefully some troubleshooting this aft will clear that up. Thanks for playing & commenting!

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Those are both now noted and should be fixed. And thanks for letting me know (=

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haha I had a difficult time paring down the list of inspo but I’m sooo glad those resonated with someone else. Especially Alexander McQueen… but I really think a delicious, scary-sexy world run by witches would be heavily outfitted in his creations :black_heart:

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Well consider me intrigued so far, definitely putting this on my interest list.

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Just finished playing the OG demo, and it was so-so: not too bad, but also with quite a few problems. I also know you’re fully aware there are problems and it’s early days, so please keep in mind that I’m only responding to the experience I’ve had with the current iteration, and know it may well be much better in a few version’s time when you’ve had a chance to tinker some more.

Let me begin by saying I was playing as a masculine male MC. I envisioned him being a bit arrogant, but not excessively showboat-y or extravagant with how he dressed or acted. This is the lens through which I’m judging the game. I know it will be very different from playing a female MC, but that’s part of an IF where we can choose an customise our character, right?
I say that because in it’s current iteration this game feels much more like a kinetic novel with a predetermined female MC rather than an interactive fiction where we can roleplay an MC we envision. the only real choices that are in our hands are some aspects of our MC’s appearance, and even then the choices don’t really cater towards anything beyond a female/feminine MC very well.

Next, we’ve very little choice in dictating our MC’s personality through speech and actions, personalising our experience. Currently the story is quite linear in every regard, giving us very little choice to roleplay or deviate from the course in even the most insignificant ways.

Multiple times as I played I couldn’t help feeling the story would be much more suitable to be gender-locked female. To me it just feels too apparent that this was (and in most ways, still is), a novel about a female MC on a very linear journey, which isn’t surprising considering how many years you’ve put into the game envisioning just that - it’s infused the writing and will probably take some time to change, if you truly want to.

In the current iteration, it didn’t convince me I could play as the masculine male MC I set out as.

I’m interested to see how the AU demo turns out, as I’m hoping because it’s a newer concept you haven’t worked on as long it won’t be as deeply infused with the feel of a female MC, so might be easier to make into an IF with a more encompassing roleplaying experience than the OG is (at the moment).

In any case, good luck with it all!

Anyway, here is a list of some bugs/errors, etc I came across while playing. Also some small suggestions:

First bug I came across, if you change your mind about your surname/family name and choose the ‘Hmm I don’t think I got that right’ option, it freezes up when you click the ‘okay’ button, and you have to restart.
Error says: intro line 134: bad label input_name

‘It sounds like a harpy or maybe a siren, you’re not too sure at the moment.’
‘You’re’ (2nd-person POV) should be ‘I’m’ (1st-person POV), or it could be rephrased to something like ‘It sounds like a harpy or perhaps a siren, perhaps I’ll find out.’ or such.

‘The nearby noise of shoes crunching across broken glass snaps me out of my thoughts. It’s too close to try to hide.’
‘It’s too close to hide’ sounds awkward. Might be better as, ‘snaps me out of my thoughts, but there’s no time to hide.’ or such?

With the way that the epilogue ends without any climax or foreshadowing, and the way Chapter 1 starts at a completely different place without linking it to the epilogue in any way (like ‘X weeks earlier…’ or such), it’s quite disjointed and immersion breaking. It also makes the epilogue feel a bit pointless because no stakes have been introduced. It’s just a block of abstract text in context with what comes after.

After choosing an outfit, it gives us three options for accessories (floppy hat, lace gloves and bejewelled cape), but no option to not wear any accessory if none of those three options appealed to the player’s/MC’s style. Speaking of that, could we also possibly also get an option for something a bit less “flashy” (or more like something a male MC might wear), like leather gloves or a ring of some type, for those of us playing a non-flashy witch?

For the hairstyle options when dressing up, there was no style options for short hair, only shaving it off totally. Maybe there could be an option for short and messy, or short with an undercut, or such (again, thinking of a male MC here, but of course female MC could want this too)?

When given a choice of makeup or not (I wanted to choose not, because… well, I’m sure you know), even choosing not to wear makeup was something like ‘I don’t need to wear makeup, I’m just that cute’… which… my MC doesn’t want to wear makeup because he doesn’t wear makeup - looking ‘cute’ doesn’t really come into it. Perhaps there could be a choice beforehand asking ‘do you want to apply makeup?’ and by choosing ‘no’ it skips it altogether.

‘I stride into the transperia chamber with time to spare. The floor to ceiling chamber is the height of magical luxury, transporting its occupants to a connected chamber within a few seconds. Of course, they’re still rather new and only work within a certain radius.’
This paragraph repeats twice on the page.

‘You were one of the first local witches to install one in their home but it started quite a trend. And now any establishment worth its salt has a few transperia chambers, if only for the convenience of their more moneyed clientele.’
‘You’ is in 2ng-PPoV. Though this may be important information for the reader to have, it should be reworded to stick with the 1st-PPoV of the rest of it, otherwise it feels disjointed. Maybe something like, ‘I’d become accustomed to using the chamber, so it was easy to forget that although my family was among the first to install a transperia chamber it was still mostly a luxury afforded to the wealthy and exclusive. Not a convenience to be expected if the need to skip locales suddenly arose.’ Or something to that effect. The example is a little awkward, but sticks to the 1st-PPoV.

‘“Dyer Institute of York,” I state clearly into the voice box, superstitiously straightening myself.’
I could be wrong, but did you mean ‘subconsciously’ or ‘self-consciously’?

When choosing to write a thesis on psychological effects of herbs on sexual pleasure, it leads to this:
‘I’d written my thesis on and was really hoping I could use it to bullshit my way through an audience this large and…. varied The attendance at these lectures was typically split 60/40 for industry Witches, and their Humane spectator counterpart.’
Doesn’t mention what MC wrote their thesis on, and is also missing a period after ‘varied’.

‘Setting my cuff to vibrate only, I rummage around my purse for’
My MC wouldn’t carry a purse. Maybe when the MC is getting ready for the function, you could give an option to choose between a purse or a messenger bag, or even some clever little magicked pocket in their clothes or something?

“Can I get you another?” comes a strangely familiar voice. “It’s not Mr Jameson’s fault that other guy was a fuckin’ creep.” “Thanks but I can buy my own.”
New line for the MC replying. Also, not sure my MC would care about the other guy being a creep, he’d probably just tell him to p*ss off and go back to drinking, and probably wouldn’t have other guys worrying about him being creeped on. But that’s a small thing I guess.

Error when clicking on the stats button at some point after choosing the MC’s hairstyle:
choicescript_stats line 4: Non-existent variable ‘mc_haircut’

In relation to the flirting with Gideon and the sex with Asher, there should be a choice to avoid both if the player isn’t interested in one or both of those characters, or just doesn’t want the sex (at that time, or at all). There should definitely be a choice to avoid both, regardless.

Endless loading screen in Asher’s apartment - though I assume that’s where the current demo ends, and not an error?

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i love love love this concept! from the descriptions alone i suspect im going to like the og demo the most, but im still looking forward to the second one! im also quite intrigued by the RO options and also by the witchy world in general. i love that the mc’s house is connected to their friends’ houses?? like hello thats actually so perfect

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Sounds interesting

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The demo won’t let me go passed MC and Ash in Ash’s kitchen.

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Thanks so much! I love both versions [obviously] but the OG is a little bit more light and lovely because of the coven’s close, long-running friendship. And I love exploring some of the little [and BIG] ways magic could affect relationships, for better or worse.

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I can’t even begin to thank you for your comment. All of your points are very valid [and very closely echoed my husband’s thoughts, lol] and I really appreciate your insight. I loved all of your suggestions and will incorporate some of them with the next OG update.

And you are absolutely right on your main point, that this version heavily skews towards the feminine, which is not my ultimate goal with this story, either version. When I originally started toying with the idea of translating this story into an IF format, I spent months making all kinds of lists on whether it should be a gender-locked story.

And with the heavy matriarchal themes, that seemed to make sense. But that’s not the story I’m looking to tell through this format. It’s a magical world but the MC will get treated differently depending on whether they’re a woman, man, or nonbinary person, just as each RO will behave slightly different if they’re a woman or man.

Anywho, thanks again for the fantastic feedback (=

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