Back in the dark days when I was playing games just for the Gamerscore, I stumbled across “My Big Sister” in a sale, a retro looking adventure published (and I’ve since learned, ported to consoles by) Ratalaika Games which I played as part of Crapfest 1, the 8^th game I waded through and the longest on the 29 titles I played during the whole “Carnival of Crap” I subjected myself to.

I loved it… seems during the collection process for the initial Crapfest, I also found “Just Ignore Them” the prequel title which, again, I had a great time with… I’ve since played “Red Bow” and consider these 3 titles to be amongst the highlights of the 100 titles the Crapfest sessions have covered.

Since then I’ve literally bought the T-shirt of Stranga Games (the original Steam developer) and even exchanged a few Twitter messages on the subject of the next title and its eventual release on consoles, and replayed all 3 titles on PlayStation when they were on offer for under £1 each… when the new title “Ashina: The Red Witch” launched on console I bought it day one to show my support… landing a day or two before Starfield meant it would find its way to my backlog until the time was right… and now the time has come.

October 13^th

A couple of short play sessions whilst struggling a little with my second bout of Covid… what I do like about Stranga Games titles is that, when it comes to Achievements or Trophies, they are well planned out… too many Indie developers are happy to knock out a title with just a dozen or so Achievements… here we have 44 in total and after just over an hour’s play (spread over a couple of days) I’ve picked up 11.

I’m following a guide which has skipped (or edited out) all the dialogue and cutscenes, but as a fan of the developer I’m watching and working through all of them to get the full story… so while I’ve played for around 70 minutes, the guide I’m following is at 18 minutes.

I recognise characters from previous games (My Big Sister, Just Ignore Them and Red Bow) and believe this to be set before those, so setting the scene for the other games… whether this is correct remains to be seen.

October 29^th

Well… I had forgotten how much talking is involved in these games… the guide I’m following edits out all the long conversations and cut scenes… and clocks in at around 72 minutes… I’ve been playing well over 2 hours and I’m around 35 minutes into the guide.

A lot of that is because I’m a huge fan of the developer, bought the T-shirt and all that, and I love to see the stories they tell… so I don’t want to skip the dialogue… which does make a 2 hour completion a near 5 hour completion for me, playing in small bursts as I’m also trying to knock out the Level 100 Achievement on Starfield.

Add in that I’m intrigued to see how this ties in with the other titles… I know Ashina was the witch in My Big Sister who was jealous of, and stole, her sisters long legs… and here your character is Ashina and references have been made to how tall her sister is, there’s also reference to your mother Roh, who if I remember correctly, was your character in Red Bow.

November 1^st

Another character from previous titles appears, Sombria who is obsessed with being told she looks pretty… my love for the developer increases as the story reaches its conclusion and more story elements are revealed.

I played the previous 3 titles as part of Crapfest, and they all scored highly… one of the metrics for the scoring used to be the Achievement pictures, the square image used for each Achievement that appears on sites and the listing for the game… I detest when a developer used the same image for each, something drab and with no sign of imagination… to me, a collection of nicely designed images for the Achievements was an indicator of how much effort they had made, it was one more tiny detail that could make a game shine.

The Achievement icons here are superb, each a character from the game that do indeed show the attention to detail that has gone into the whole package.

November 7^th

Credits rolled… and all the leads into the other titles are complete… yes, it is the Ashina from My Big Sister, but she didn’t steal the legs of her sister, they were forced on her, she sits in the bath permanently because if she leaves, she dies, the Tina in the basement is not there because her sister commanded it either… both are where they are as a result of the witch Yoko’s curse.

With the way all the stories tie in nicely I can’t help but wonder what Stranga will come up with next… is there any scope to shoehorn another game into the mix? Or do we get a whole new story, but set in the same game space.

My overall play time clocked in at around 4 hours… I didn’t want to skip any of the story as the dialogue makes these titles, even the old school graphical style works for the story they’re telling… for an Indie game it’s the whole package.