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Trigger Witch takes the “ultraviolent Nintendo game” gag to its logical conclusion

By Amr (@siegarettes)

• Trigger Witch 
• Developers - Rainbite
• Publisher - eastasiasoft
• Switch, Playstation, Xbox

Among easy internet gags “Nintendo game with ultraviolence” is a long time staple. One look at Trigger Witch and it’s easily clear this is its starting point. Everything from the viewpoint, tilesets, structure and even certain melodies mark it as a clear pastiche of A Link to the Past, with AKs and Magnums replacing the swords and magic. Complete with the violent bursts of blood when you finish off an enemy. 

What makes Trigger Witch stand out is how far it’s willing to take the concept, answering questions of how and why, and doing legitimate world building around it. Witches in the world have forgotten how to use most magic, and in its place a faith devoted to the use and crafting of firearms has developed, complete with rights of passage to receive your first gun. 

It’s at once far more elaborate than you’d expect–going so far as to talk about the infrastructure that allows them to develop and magically conjure ammunition–and not elaborate enough. By answering so many questions about the world it leaves many more open. And coming from American gun culture, in which the right to lethal force is presented with equal religious fervor, Trigger Witch rides an uncomfortable tension. 

More straightforward is Trigger Witch’s play on the Zelda structure, complete with an overworld that slowly opens its gates as you earn new weapons. Traversal’s a little less charming when the doors open to a grenade launcher, however. Likewise, enemy patterns become less interesting when your entire arsenal is projectile based. Most enemies you’ll encounter perform some form of either rushing you down or firing at you, and though the room design attempts to keep this novel, it quickly becomes rote. 

When combat does switch up for boss fights, it becomes a hectic, sloppy mess. Not confident that it’s boss gimmicks can carry it, Trigger Witch throws enemy mobs into what are already iffy fights, completely breaking up the steady rhythm that its combat sets elsewhere. The first boss fight in particular proved so tedious that I ended up just spraying bullets and spamming health potions to grind through it. 

Building on that is Trigger Witch’s bizarre ammunition system. Your revolver is the only weapon that can be manually reloaded, with other weapons requiring you to switch to the pistol and wait until a full clip conjures itself into the chamber. It’s already a bizarre system with only two weapons, but the more weapons you pick up the more unwieldy it becomes, adding an unwanted sense of chaos to combat. 

Trigger Witch is full of small decisions like this that make it more messy as it goes on, which draws a lot of unfavorable comparisons when the game you’re riffing on is known for its flawless polish. Outside of boss battles, it does a surprisingly good job setting the pace, but these small problems continually have Trigger Witch stumbling over its own feet. 

With more considered combat Trigger Witch could have remained an enjoyable, if derivative, Zelda style adventure. As it is, it’s a light hearted gag that does more than expected, but doesn’t quite deliver.