https://store.steampowered.com/app/788740/A_Salem_Witch_Trial__Murder_Mystery/
The Salem Witch Trials aren’t exactly a great moment in American history, following on from the same sort of mass hysteria that engulfed Europe around that time.
This visual novel creates a fictional account of the hunt for so-called witches. Set in 1692, a mysterious epidemic followed by several murders lead the citizens of one town to believe there is a witch amongst them – and they’ll do anything to deal with her.
Playing as a somewhat more reasonable citizen (you state early in the game that you don’t know whether witches exist or not), you are assigned the task of helping the towns folk find the witch.
Given a map of the area, you set off in pursuit of your target, interviewing people along the way.
Eventually you come across the alleged witch, and after interviewing her, you need to decide her fate.
Graphically, the visual novel is fairly unique. Apparently the graphics are hand-drawn, and they are certainly unusual, being evocative of oil paintings. They aren’t bad at all – it’s a shame that the animation for characters is so limited though.
The story itself is very interesting, immersive and does show of what Tyranno Builder can do. Despite being somewhat anachronistic, it does give a slight glimpse of the era and how rumours, false accusations and grudges can have fatal consequences.
Tyranno’s backlog display isn’t bad, but the shift to an all white screen is annoying
Whilst the story is good, there some problems with delivering it : There are many cases where it appears that text has been assigned to the wrong person (most evident when you meet the Merchant), and there are also several cases where sentences for two people have been merged into one. A few spelling mistakes and missing characters round out the more problematic side of the game.
One other problem is that saving at the map screen corrupts the file, preventing you from being able to continue with the game if you reload it.
The music isn’t bad and fits well into the game.
Overall, it’s an interesting game and one that is worth looking out for.
