One can be forgiven for not expecting much from a game like Rainbite's Trigger Witch. Taking a look at the store listings for the title gives it the appearance of something we've seen many times before. Pixel based twin-stick shooters with an art style that draws artistic inspiration from myriad classic titles are more common than potholes in New Jersey, and the potholes can be less likely to cause annoyance or aggravation. Still, there's something to be said about being in the precise mood for that exact kind of thing (meaning the game, not potholes). Those that do decide to take the low-priced plunge into this title will find a game that deserves plenty of valid criticism, but manages to coalesce into a project that's greater than the sum of its parts.

In Trigger Witch, the player takes the role of Colette, a fledgling member of the coven known as The Clip. Considered to be the protectors of Evertonia, the group blends Old World mysticism with firearms into a religion called Ballisticism. Much is expected of our hero, being as she is the daughter of the Grand Receiver of the order, a pressure that she can accept with grace and humility, or with an off-putting brassiness. These are choices left to the player. On the day of her final test for graduation from the school known as The Stock, she witnesses a mysterious man who escapes from a holy portal, known as the Ordinance Rift, and walks away. As is obvious, this appearance will drive the crux of the entirety of the plot as Colette will be tasked with collecting various objects to chase down and stop the Man in Black and save the world. As a plot, the set up doesn't do much and seems paint by numbers. The mere fact that the game starts with a "wake up, sleepyhead" moment doesn't portend an interesting tale. Fortunately, the writers actually manage to go to interesting places with the set up, exploring the "two sides to every story" trope in interesting ways, allowing for the heroes and villains to have devastating flaws and laudable values. Beginning the game, the anticipation was that the narrative vignettes would be things to speed past. There's enough there, however, to warrant allowing the short intervals to play out. It helps that the wordplay manages to blend groan-inducing puns with a silly in-world piousness to become something interesting, almost in the way of Warhammer 40K's satire, but in a much brighter, cheerful world. Plus, the mere fact that the writers found more gold in the vein that Enter the Gungeon seemingly tapped out is impressive.

Still, one doesn't typically come to a twin-stick run and gunner to read a book. They're there to mow down ever increasing hordes of baddies in satisfying ways. It's here that the game does hit the target. It must be said that it starts off incredibly easy, to the point where this middle-aged reviewer was considering kicking the difficulty to the hardest level. At the around the (obvious) midpoint, the challenge does ramp up in a satisfying fashion. Players will need to choose their targets to knock out the problematic troublemakers, quickly decide on the correct weapons for the moment and make liberal use of the quick dash escapes. That quick dash is especially useful. While it's responsible for the title's early wispy challenge, the cooldown-based ability and its extremely generous amount of invincibility frames becomes paramount to clearing the rooms and bosses that Colette will face in the later game.

Also adding to the fun are the numerous weapons that pepper the world. Flamethrowers, double fisted uzis, heavy machineguns and more are waiting to be discovered. The way these work is that they all have unlimited ammo, but every weapon, save for the starting weapon, need to be stashed away to reload. So, a typical battle would be starting with one of the found weapons to whittle down the forces, and swapping to another found weapon or the baseline firearm to finish them off. Because of this, the found resources in the world are best used first on the starter pistol and health upgrades. There comes a point, though, where it pays to become accustomed to swapping between the weapons with ammo limitations. They are much more powerful in the long run. In fact, sinking funds into the secret baring maps and poking at the world becomes one of the more entertaining aspects of playing the game, simply because upgrading a once weak weapon into a swarm-melting dynamo is rather satisfying.

The other major peg that Trigger Witch hangs its gameplay on are puzzles. Most of the game is spent exploring various dungeons, each with exploration and mystery-based challenges to uncover and solve. None of these manages to be too difficult. Typically, if an answer isn't immediately apparent, then the player should look somewhere else. Still, there are some headscratchers that can stop a player for a few moments. There was one switch-based puzzle in the Mines dungeon that halted my progress for about five minutes. The solution, involving banking a shot off of walls that cause bullets to ricochet was stupidly easy in hindsight, but it was satisfying to solve. A smart person would have had a quicker time of it than I, but these help provide gameplay variety.

Where the game could have handled this aspect better would be a wider array of abilities to use. Based on Colette's shoot-or-dash move set, the puzzles more often than not revolve around standing on or shooting switches. This is a game that wants to be a run and gun version of an old school Zelda game. One of the underpinning joys of those classics is finding new abilities and figuring out how to use them to solve the puzzles. In Trigger Witch, there isn't much of that. Sure, the flamethrowing Fire Lance is needed to remove some obstacles, but moments like that are few and far between. Rainbite would have benefited by finding more instances where found weapons are needed to solve a challenge. It's less rewarding when the Colette players met at the beginning would have been perfectly capable of handling a late game situation.

Graphically, the experience is serviceable. The artists drew laden scoopfuls of inspiration from A Link to the Past, older Dragon Quest games, and other nostalgic favorites when designing the look and feel of Evertonia and its monsters, to varying degrees of success. A fire-dropping fly, bristling with hairs has a stylish look. A rolling ball, or a melted hat scooting across the ground does not. This mixture of well thought-out designs and stuff that wouldn't look out of place on a bargain basement Commodore 64 disc I found in a close out shop's bargain bin causes me to wonder if there were different artists with different talent levels working on this one, or if the artists simply ran out of ideas/time. I consider it a bonus puzzle, one that has not yet been solved. Throwing in the look of the character portraits and the conundrum deepens.

The music, however, is where the line must be drawn. When playing games, music is either great and adds to the feeling of the excitement and emotion of what's going on in the game or it's generic. When it's just generic, it just fades into the background. In Trigger Witch, the tunes manage to grate on the nerves. Some are written to be store-brand Zelda tunes. Some are just Medieval-by-way-of-chiptunes noodling. None of the tunes are compelling, despite the attempts at ramping up the aggression of the area's song when the battle starts. Under normal circumstances, I would simply write a flippant comment and move on. In this particular case, though, it should be mentioned that Trigger Witch was something I was playing because I had to review it. When I finally turned down the music so I could pop on a CD I just received, my opinion of the game itself improved considerably. As such, the developers should thank Devin Townsend for improving their review score. Admittedly, that advice is confounding when praising a game as derivative as Trigger Witch, but the difference is that the gameplay lands where the tunes do not.

Closing Comments:

That Trigger Witch does nothing new is something that cannot be hidden. It's a well worn genre piece mixing in elements that have been used over and over for generations, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun, which is where Rainbite pulls the rabbit from the hat. Exploring the world is fun, gunning down the enemies is fun, and finding and using new and varied weapons is, well, fun. At a bargain price and clocking in at around eight or so hours, there isn't much reason to leave Trigger Witch in the holster. It's not the best game ever, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do. That's reason enough to turn on a personal playlist and get trigger happy.