Hello everyone!

We’ve got a much-requested blog for you today, but before we dive in, here’s a quick dev update. It’s been incredibly busy at the studio as we’re just wrapping up our final internal playtest and are working through some fantastic feedback – we’re feeling good about our progress so far! While the teams work on localisation and ongoing console porting, we’ve also been busy polishing pixels and squashing those last few bugs.

And just in case you missed it, our latest dev blog was all about customising your cottage and garden. The comments were really heartwarming, and we’re so excited to see how you all make your cosy cottage spaces unique to you! An extra customisation tidbit for you: Witchbrook has over 600 pieces of colour-swap furniture, plus clutter and knick-knacks to decorate with, so you’ll be spoilt for choice! 

Thank you and welcome to our Korean and Russian-speaking community members following the last blog’s localisation news; we’re so glad to be able to bring Witchbrook to more players around the world.

NEW CHALLENGERS (FOR YOUR HEART) APPEAR!

Meet Leif! Keen-eyed community members will have spotted our green-thumbed witch in the first-ever issue of The Witchbrook Oracle. The latest in Mossport’s most eligible bachelors, Leif has a heart of gold and is the kind of guy to bring the sunshine when it rains

Introducing Evadne! A walking daydream, Evadne is the only Witchbrook student who might accidentally invent a new potion while trying to make toast. Whimsical and charming, Evadne helps everyone to come out of their shell!

Now that you’ve met a few more covenmates, you’re ready for today’s blog, which is all about the tumultuous world of dating, penned by our wonderful Art Director and Writer, Steph!

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If there’s one thing life sim games have taught us, it’s that no matter how many plants you grow, fish you catch, or quests you complete, there are far more fundamental and critical questions that unify players in their extra-curricular pursuits.

Who can you kiss?
How can you kiss?
When can you kiss?

This left us with a huge responsibility to awe and impress, but as a team extremely well-qualified in wooing witches, we were keen to take on the challenge. It’s been a labour of love (literally), but we’re so excited to do a deep dive on the ins and outs of falling head over heels in Witchbrook!

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Let’s start with the cast!

Fellow covenmates, they’ve all got their own personalities, interests, and quirks that reveal themselves and evolve across your time at Witchbrook College.

We wanted to make sure there was a range of different ‘types’ to suit different tastes, so there’s someone for everyone!

And there are…

Drumroll please…

Eleven of them! Eleven characters you can romance!

You’ve already been introduced to Hana, Eli, Cormac, Pip, Leif, and Evadne, and you may even already have a favourite. 

All we’ll say is… just keep an open mind, because you don’t know who will be revealed next!

Building a relationship involves spending time with them, gifting them things, getting gifts back, and more!

If you come across a covenmate in their daily routine, they’ll have a thing or two to say about their day. And because the world around you is always moving, they’ll be reacting to it: the time of day, the weather, where they are, and whatever’s going on in their lives. 

Throughout your studies at Witchbrook, you’ll be supporting them in their own complex journeys and story arcs, with ≋dynamic cutscenes≋ packed with expressive, bespoke animations. 

We also get that dating isn’t for everyone and that some of you may want to uncover your covenmates’ backstories without the commitment. You can progress each covenmate’s story arc without so much as brushing hands, reaching for the same potion materials. Friendship is fun!

Take a look at the characters you’ve met so far! Can you imagine where their stories take them? 

Different characters are ready to date at different times, depending on what they’re currently going through. A shy wallflower might be more reluctant to open up than the bubbly life-of-the-party, for example. But when they’re single and ready to mingle, make sure you’re ready to make your move!

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EXPRESSING YOUR FEELINGS 101

So how do you let someone know how you feel? 

Easy. 

Mossport has a longstanding tradition of expressing affection through cards! Nobody’s sure when it started. Some say it goes back to old Mayor Wrigglesworth**, who fell deeply in love with someone three towns over. Not knowing when he’d see them next, he would come up with excuses to send cards for every occasion he could think of.

Birthdays… seasons changing… Tuesdays…

And the trend caught on!

Others say the people of Mossport are just a tiny bit emotionally repressed and can’t bring themselves to say their feelings out loud. Both are probably true!

Either way, there’s a card for everything! Available at Mossport’s post office, you’ll find cards to ask someone out, cards to go steady, and cards to break up. There’s the classic stationery, but also a fun, rotating seasonal stock!

Shyly express your blooming feelings through a springtime tulip card, or whimsically end your relationship with a sPoOkY jack-o-lantern (‘BOO! I’m breaking up with you!’).

The choice is yours, because in Mossport, love looks however you want it to!

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To explain the dating process, we’ve brought in an expert!

And by expert, we mean Fable, your trusty corvid business partner, who absolutely insisted. 

Has Fable been on a date before? No.

Does Fable know anything about dating? No. 

BUT, does Fable, at least, have SOME basic working knowledge of human romance? …

Anyway… he did, however, write his own lengthy introduction for this blog post, which we removed. And letting him demonstrate dating in-game was the compromise we settled on. 

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PLANNING THE PERFECT DATE

One of the highlights of Witchbrook’s dating system is how much freedom you have to play around in it and explore Mossport with your date.

Failure to plan is planning to fail – it’s up to you to pick and choose where you go on your date. You’ll need to figure out what they enjoy and take them out to two different activities. 

However, the time getting there and the things you see along the way are what make a date really memorable! There’s over 200 ‘date chatter’ spots scattered across the world, context-specific moments where your date will pipe up about whatever catches their eye.

So, be curious and explore! Take them places you’ve never seen them before. See what they think of the jewellery shop, the college’s romantic bridge, poking at seaweed on the beach (you never know what tickles someone’s fancy).

…or DON’T see what they think of other locations. 

The chatter is also how you’ll get a sense for whether a particular activity is actually a good idea for your date. They might hint that they’d love to stop somewhere, or make it pretty obvious that they wouldn’t. 

It’s worth picking up on, because even promising dates can go badly, and you’ll find out if it has the moment you drop them off at home. 

A bad date will make itself very obviously known…

But, hey! So will a good date! And a good date can lead to another good date, and then another one, and then…

It’s a long way from handing someone a simple card, isn’t it?

Just like the real world, some characters wear their hearts on their sleeves and are ready to let you in (both emotionally and into their homes!), but others may require a little more effort on your part before they reveal their deepest, darkest secrets. Relationship requirements between NPCs will differ.

GOING STEADY

Things are going well. You’ve managed to impress the target of your affections with gifts, fun dates and regular contact, and now it’s time to step things up!

Nothing says “baby, I wanna make you mine” like sending a covenmate a ‘going steady’ card. That’s right, you get to live out your childhood dreams of sharing a “do you like like me? Y/N” note.

Going steady opens up relationship privileges like… sleepovers.

In multiplayer, you’ll each be able to date a covenmate. Sometimes this might mean you’re crushing on the same person and both vying for their affection until someone ends up going steady. What’s a little romance without some heated rivalry? On your marks… 

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We hope you’re excited to experience all the romance in Witchbrook!

If you loved what you read (and are keen to hear more), please be sure to wishlist us on Steam so that you can be notified when the game comes out. No dating card required!

In the meantime, have a little think about who your type is…

And if you can’t decide, don’t worry! Fable has opinions and he will share them, whether you ask or not.

– Steph

Hi everyone!

Lately it’s been very busy in the studio, with lots of big milestones finally coming to a close. Last week we submitted our final big batch of in-game text to the translation teams, while this week the design team is midway through a final internal end-game balancing playtest. Console porting is also ongoing, and there’s of course been plenty of QA testing, polishing, and bug-hunting. 

Following on from our last update, we’re also able to confirm some more languages: Korean and Russian! The localisation teams on both sides have been busy working on the project for a while now, so we’re excited to bring Witchbrook to even more regions across the world. (Thank you especially to PoPo for your ongoing support! 🙏)

Today, however, we wanted to focus on a location central to your life in Mossport – your witch cottage and garden. Passed down to you by your late Aunt, this cottage may seem quite large for student lodgings, but you’ll soon be redecorating and filling it with all sorts of knick-knacks once you’ve earned some spare change. (Missed the last dev blog about how your Witchbrook College studies and fledgling witch business work together? You can read it right here.)

Furniture & Decoration

So you’ve moved into a two-storey cottage space, in need of a bit of TLC, now what? Thankfully, Mossport has its own furniture store, Harbour Home, over in the Docklands area, run by the dad-and-daughter duo Justin and Violet. Head over to their store to browse a rotating selection of furniture sets, each with multiple colourways. 

There’s even flooring, wallpapers, dividers, floor and desk lighting, rugs and pillars to lay out and fill your space just how you’d like it. If nothing takes your fancy, check back the next day to see what’s new in stock.

You’ll also be able to obtain ‘clutter’ items, special furniture, and other trinkets at other shops, Sunday Market stands, during seasonal events (like the image below), and as certain NPC quest and consultation rewards.

Now you’re ready to get furnishing. Thankfully, a witch doesn’t need to do too much heavy lifting, just a simple flick of the wand using the Telekinesis spell to move any object to its perfect spot. 

A witch’s cottage really comes alive once it’s filled with all sorts of books and clutter. To give order to the chaos, you can place items using a grid system which allows certain objects to be stacked on top of each other, so you can fill your shelves and surfaces as you see fit.

Walls also have a placement system, giving you the option to decorate with posters, crafted seasonal wreaths, and more. You can apply wallpaper to specific walls, or change up your flooring per room to give each space a different feel. It’s also fun to mix and match furniture from various sets in different colourways to make your cottage even more unique to you.

No one likes big light, so sprinkle your room with some well-positioned floor and desk lamps to make your cottage feel even cosier. Lighting can also be toggled on and off per lamp to change the ambience of each room.

Your Cottage Garden

A witch’s garden is perhaps even more important than their home. Early on in your new day-to-day life in Mossport, you’ll discover that filling up garden planters with various seasonal herbs can help save time foraging, and give you quicker access to ingredients for all sorts of potions, teas, salves, candles, and other magical craftables.

While your garden does have a practical part to play, we also wanted it to act as an extension of your witch’s personality, making it just as customisable as the cottage itself. You’ll be able to lay out garden paths and fences, which are all tileable, making them connect seamlessly as you place them.

Wild Flower also stocks all sorts of garden decorations, alongside the usual planters and seeds. Whether you want to make a cosy homestead filled with herbs and flowers, or a gothic cemetery, there’s plenty of options to get creative!

If you’d rather keep things wild, why not plant a meadow of wildflowers? When you first move into your new cottage, you’ll find the garden littered with weeds. If you allow your garden to grow naturally (with a little watering and encouragement) wildflowers will gradually start to sprout, and will slowly expand across your garden. A garden filled with flowers can be a great boon for beekeepers, keeping your hives happy and the resulting honey you produce even sweeter.

Animals you encounter in the wild may also pay your garden a visit and leave you a small gift to show their friendship. Later on during your time in Mossport your garden may also become home to a more magical kind of critter, but we’ll leave details on that a surprise for now…

Outbuildings

Throughout your playthrough you’ll be able to unlock additional outbuildings for use on your player land. For example, greenhouses allow you to grow herbs out of season, ensuring you have a stock of ingredients for magic craftables all year round. You could also use it to house your favourite potted plants, or design a little outdoor study nook.

There are also a few other placeable huts, which will give you easier access to tools usually found only within the College grounds.  

Furnishing with Friends

Playing multiplayer and want to tweak your cottage interior while they’re visiting? No problem, you and your friends can move around furniture and change up your layouts without disrupting online play. 

But what if you have different interior design tastes? Let us introduce you to the multiplayer cottages:

Online multiplayer will expand your cottage lands to reveal new cottages, each with their own rustic charm, and unlocked based on the number of players in-game. One is styled with a charming watermill, another has a beautiful sunroom overlooking the brook, and the other is built into the side of a cliff edge. These buildings are slightly smaller than the host player cottage, but allow each player to have their own space and garden area to decorate as they wish.

That’s all for this one. We can’t wait to see what designs you all come up with!

Hi everyone!

Today we wanted to share more about what you can expect from your new life as a student witch in the bustling seaside town of Mossport. We’ll also be sharing an update on how development is going. 

So then, over to the game design team!

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Enrolling at Witchbrook

So, you’ve received your acceptance letter and you’re ready to start an adventure as a new student witch in the town of Mossport, but… what does your new life look like? How will you pay your way through it? And how will you meet your goal of graduating college?

Luckily, your aunt has left you her cottage. But classes aren’t cheap, and surviving on instant noodles is depressing, so you’ll need to find a job! Luckily, the greedy cottage familiar has a plan to benefit both your studies and your bottom line…

Along with Fable, you’ll also have the support of your coven, a group of witches you’ll be living and studying with at Witchbrook, as well as the guiding hand of your benevolent coven leader, Professor Carlyle.

Witchy business

Why not start your own witch business? The townsfolk around Mossport are desperate for goods and services only a witch can offer, and your classes at college will expand the kind of goods you can supply them with. Your trusty moped (or broom, once you’ve earned your license) allows you to deliver goods all over Mossport.

Of course, building a good business relationship is important and comes with its own benefits. Fulfilling business orders increases that relationship and unlocks all sorts of perks and upgrades for your business.

Sunday markets offer their own unique opportunity for your business. Why not bring your goods into town, stock up a stall, and see if you can make a good deal with townsfolk?

Taking Classes

Now all that hard-earned money can pay for classes. Classes teach a witch new skills, enabling them to complete college assignments, craft and obtain new items, and undertake new activities. It’s also an opportunity to get to know your professors and covenmates.

These classes cover a variety of magical disciplines, from crafting tea, incense, and salves early in your student career to potion brewing, astrological divination, arcane rituals, and much more.

Assignments

Throughout the week, the college will post assignments for you to complete using the skills you learned in class. Many of these assignments will require you to head into Mossport to consult with its residents, diagnose a solution using the materials in the school library, and put that solution into action!

Completing an assignment will earn you college merits, which can be spent in the college shop for all sorts of wonderful items but, more importantly, allow entry to college exams! Often the folks you help will want to send you thank-you gifts of their own!

Credits are also earned throughout the game for exemplifying what it means to be a witch—whether that’s helping out around town, completing side quests, or unlocking knowledge.

Knowledge

As you live and study in Mossport, you’ll come to build up knowledge on all sorts of subjects. This is reflected in your knowledge collection!

The knowledge collection tracks everything you’ve learned and contains the requirements to memorise new information!

For example, finding a herb for the first time in the forest might unlock that herb in the knowledge collection, along with its description. But, information on the growth time of that herb will unlock only once you’ve grown it a number of times!

To start with, you’ll be looking up this information in books found and borrowed from the school library (don’t forget to return them on time!), but as you progress, you’ll be able to rely more and more on your own knowledge!

Taking Exams

Taking exams is an important part of your college life. You’ll need to complete a set of exams in order to advance to the next grade, enabling access to new classes, spells, activities, and certain dangerous areas of Mossport itself…

You’ll need passing marks in all of the grade’s exams to progress to the next grade. What mark you receive will depend on how much knowledge you’ve accumulated in the sections of the knowledge collection that the exam tests!

For example, a magical medicine exam might test your herbal tea, salve, and Herbology knowledge categories!

Not sure if you’ll pass? Attend a coven study group, where coven members will test your knowledge with mock exams.

Spells

Now, of course, it wouldn’t be a witch school without spells.

Once they obtain their wand, most witches are able to move objects intuitively and without guidance, so your wand is immediately a useful tool (especially when it comes to moving heavy furniture around the house).

But there are so many spells to be learned.

Each completed exam will entitle you to learn a spell from your coven head, Professor Carlyle, who offers one-on-one spellcasting tuition to her coven.

Spells offer all sorts of useful shortcuts for a witch. From guidance spells that help track down rare ingredients to flying over the rooftops on a broom, there is a large variety of useful spells to learn!

Wellbeing

It’s important to look after yourself between your studies, and that’s where the wellbeing system comes into play.

Everything you do in Mossport, from petting a dog to taking a walk in nature, or having a conversation with a friend, can increase your wellbeing. Whilst staying up far too late or upsetting a friend might decrease wellbeing.

At the end of a long day, the day’s events are tallied up and your current wellbeing level is adjusted.

Taking care of yourself enables all sorts of bonuses, from increased income and better deals to gifts and relationship benefits.. You might even perform better in your exam. It pays to look after yourself.

Graduation

Completing exams will allow you to advance to the next year, unlocking new spells, classes, and activities. But what about graduating from college?

Many witches decide to stay on as postgrads, looking to fill their knowledge collection completely, improve their grades in previous exams, and take their witch business to new heights.

Stories

Of course, you’re not the only witch navigating a new life. Your coven-mates each have a unique and bespoke story to tell. As you increase your relationship level with covenmates you’ll be invited into their stories and their lives.

These stories play out like mini visual novels that cover a wide range of tones, subjects, and perspectives.

Free Time

Your education is just scratching the surface of your life in Mossport. What about your free time?

Perhaps you’ll build relationships or even find someone special to take on dates? Maybe you’ll spend your time indulging in fashion and interior design? You might join clubs and begin to collect knowledge outside of school! Cooking, gardening, festivals, and much more. 

There’s so much to keep you busy outside college hours. But more on that later…

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Development Update

In our last dev blog we mentioned how we had been doing some (super secret) playtests to refine a few features, balancing, and ensure we’re happy with the pacing of in-game years. Over the past few months we’ve been continuing regular intervals of playtests, using the feedback to inform some important adjustments. It’s a lengthy, but important process – even playing through the first in-game year of the game can take around 40-50 hours depending on your playstyle, so you can imagine how quickly time can rack up when you do a few playtests back-to-back! 

These playtests have also sparked some extra gameplay additions we’ve wanted to add, both big and small, like extra spells, pedestrian gossip, some very special magical creatures, a placeable hut upgrade system for your cottage lands, new NPC animations and covenmate behaviours, new resources for crafting, and some new music tracks. Playtests are a fantastic way of highlighting what players enjoy the most, and where they spend their time, some of which can be quite surprising! Using this info, we can then improve the late game experience by adding even more content or activities that our playtesters enjoy to ensure Witchbrook remains refreshing after so many hours into the game. 

(We think it’s cute seeing covenmates expressing their personalities out and about. Here’s Pip pumping some iron by the docklands near her garage 🏋️‍♀️)

Localisation has been well underway for quite some time now thanks to our fantastic teams of translators. Like all aspects of Witchbrook’s development, we haven’t taken any shortcuts, so the translators are deeply entrenched in the game’s world, and in daily communication with the dev team answering questions to ensure each language gets the treatment it deserves.

We’ve also been able to increase the amount of playable languages beyond what is currently announced. We won’t confirm which languages yet in order to not cause undue pressure on the translators, until we’re pretty certain they will be ready for launch – watch this space!

We’re hugely proud of how far the game has come, and can’t wait to get it into your hands as soon as we can. There’s a lot of factors that could impact our release schedule, like unexpected delays in platform submissions, a pesky bug that’s difficult to track down, external team factors like porting or localisation, or extra polish needed on an important feature, so we won’t share a specific date until we’re super sure. But rest assured, we’re working hard and incredibly excited to share Witchbrook with you.

Thanks for reading everyone! 

-Chucklefish & Robotality

Hi everyone!

There’s a festive feeling in the air in both the town of Mossport, and around the studio here at Chucklefish as we edge closer to the holidays. 

So, grab your cosiest coats, hats, scarves, and gloves – winter has arrived in Mossport! 

The mornings may feel a little darker, and the days shorter, but with the first dusting of snow also comes the delightful addition of festive decorations. While it’s business as usual for your daily life in Mossport -with a routine of magical studies, crafting goods for consultations, and perhaps some late night foraging, or even a ritual – in the background the town is gearing up for the winter festivities.

Take a broom-ride through the outskirts of town and you’ll notice your neighbours have been stringing fairy lights across their porches. In town, every store from Calico, to Olive’s, Caffeina, Harbour Homes and more have decorated their windows with candy canes and baubles. Even the bus stops are draped in humongous red bows, and the street lamps are clad with winter garlands. 

There’s so many small details all around the town that we hope you’ll love spotting yourself, but for now here’s a few of our favourites:

🎵 Winter Suite – Witchbrook Soundtrack Preview

As we wind down for the holidays, we wanted to leave you with a present from Witchbrook’s composer, David Fenn 🎁🎵

David has done a fantastic job seamlessly blending the score of the Witchbrook soundtrack, with each track flowing into one another, changing with the seasons, time of day and various locations. There’s even a different version of each song for broomriding to really capture the uplifting feeling of flying through the town. Here’s David to expand a bit more on his process:

“One of the biggest differences, between Witchbrook and my past projects, is how open it is. When the music starts, I have no idea what the player will be doing that day, so the soundtrack has to account for a lot of different scenarios.

At the same time, it’s really important for the music to have space to breathe. The melodies are rich and naturally flowing, and it wouldn’t fit the experience to have them stopping and starting too often, whenever the player does something new. For that reason, the soundtrack utilises variants for different states, like riding the broom and entering cosy interiors.

Writing these has been some of the most fun I’ve ever had with music. I used every trick I’ve accumulated up to this point for creating variation while maintaining seamless flow. 

When you ride the broom, you’ll often hear the rhythmic accompaniment’s emphasis change dramatically, bringing out a completely different personality to the melody, which tends to pull me in a new direction of its own making! When you enter an interior, the melody retreats to a soft felt piano, and an intimate nylon guitar jams over the top, bringing new hidden complexities out of every chord change. It’s such an intuitive and delightful process, it’s one of my favourite things about making music for games.

I’m excited to show off the soundtrack in action at a later date, but for today I’ve put together a mini Winter Suite, showcasing the variants of one of the tracks that can play during the winter season. Hope you enjoy!”

A Witch Mechanic is in town
Meet Pip, another member of your coven, and a witch-mechanic, who runs a workshop near the harbour. Pip’s personality is as colourful (and slightly chaotic) as her inventive projects. She loves nothing more than figuring out the perfect way to mesh magic with her mechanical know-how, and approaches every challenge with a cheeky grin and can-do attitude. Will you choose to date Pip and help bring her magical experiments to life?

See a glimpse of some storyline cutscenes in this little preview 🛠️

What’s Next?

2025 has been a huge year for development and we’ve just finished some top-secret playtesting (shhh, don’t tell anyone) to refine some balancing aspects of the game, which has been a massive milestone and super insightful for us as a team!

On the development side, we’ll be focusing on implementing the feedback we received, adding even more content, porting to consoles, and tightening up the overall loop and balance of the game.

Huge thanks to everyone in the community for your enthusiastic support throughout 2025 and ongoing encouragement – we know it’s been a long journey, but we truly believe that all good things take time! We’ve poured a lot of love and dedication into Witchbrook that we hope you can see and feel on release.

Happy Holidays & have a lovely New Year! See you in 2026!
– Chucklefish & Robotality

Hello fellow witches!

The weather may be getting colder, and the days shorter and darker, but the team has been as busy as ever crafting content for you to get stuck into during your time in Witchbrook. In case you missed our last Dev Blogs, so far we’ve discussed the simulation of Mossport, as well as the design and inspirations of the College. This time, we’re sitting down with Senior Artist Jade Evans to focus on one of our favourite ways to express your unique identity: character customisation.

But before we were able to get into the threads and textures of player customisation, we had to ask ourselves some very important questions. How is this system used throughout the game for various characters? How detailed can we get with our pixel art clothing? Will everything look good when animated? What rules do we need to put in place to stop this from ballooning!? Can we wear scarves?! (yes, but they’ve now been designated as ‘evil’)

Here’s Jade with her perspective…

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Hi everybody! Across Witchbrook’s development, I’ve had the pleasure to have worked within many different fields, from concept art to character animation, and everything in between. In this dev blog, I’m going to hone in on the fundamentals of our character customisation and how we’ve been tackling balancing freedom for the player without creating huge production headaches.

I’ve had the fun but challenging task of deep diving into worldbuilding via its citizens: including design and animation, and spearheading how these all come together in a town as big as Mossport!  As a team, we’re pushing the boundaries of the medium through constant experimentation. Not just with art, but the tech behind it, to redefine what character design can look like in a pixel art game..

As an animator and a self-professed fashionista myself, I’m obsessed with the little details that bring personality to the forefront, and in our case, clothing is one of the critical and immediate ways to make a game world feel alive. Witchbrook is often compared to Habbo Hotel for its isometric pixel art aesthetic, but one of my influences lie elsewhere in other 00s browser games. When I was younger, I would play pixel art dress up doll games for hours, so it’s been really satisfying to tap into those experiences with our own in-game fashion. Not only am I drawing from my own tastes, experiences and countless hours of research, I often find myself coming back to the question of ‘what would young me find fun?’.

Character Creator Variety

Fashion plays a large role in life-sims, and we wanted to provide the player with a tonne of options so they could make their witch really feel their own. 

Variety is key when considering the designs for clothing. We wanted to explore different silhouettes, palettes and styles to avoid falling into the trap of everybody looking the same or restricting player expression –  whilst there’s nothing wrong with t-shirts and jeans, it’s always nice to have more choice! Mossport is also a living, breathing town with hundreds of pedestrians going about their lives – if the clothes don’t feel seasonal or weather-appropriate, they’re going to look out of place and break immersion.

Players should be able to see themselves in the game, so we’ve included a variety of skin tones and hairstyles covering a range of different hair textures. The system we’ve created includes different fringe options (or ‘bangs’ for those of you across the pond) that can be mixed and matched. Mossport’s salon will let you change up your style any time from hairstyle and colour, to trimming (or growing) your facial hair! 

We don’t believe in setting any limitations for what the player can wear, regardless of gender. Any hairstyle, clothing type, facial hair is up for grabs for the player.

Character Animation

Witchbrook may look like it involves 3D due to its fidelity, but it’s entirely an illusion – everything in this game is 2D, including our characters! 

For an isometric perspective like Witchbrook’s, 8 directions is necessary to believe you’re traversing through the gameworld. To make things more efficient for production, we animate 5 rotations and then the engine flips the remaining 3 angles to make 8. To do the maths on just walking alone, there are technically 5 directional walk cycles with 6 animation frames each. That’s 48 hand-painted animation frames!

Believability in how the player character reacts to specific scenarios was very important to us. For example with broom riding, there are tons of forces at play such as gravity, the wind, your speed and we wanted to reflect those. There’s a subtle animation of your legs swaying in the air and your hair streaming behind you. If you speed up, your character leans closer to the broom and your hair billows even faster! All these “what-if” scenarios and how we would expect a real person to react means that animations can start to stack up quick. As of writing, the player character has over 1,300 frames of animation that have all been drawn by hand!  

The Clothing System

We know players (myself included) love to accessorise, so we’ve pushed to allow as much layering as possible. Players are able to wear 11 layers at a time (not counting hair, fringes and facial hair) and we’re so excited to see how you style your witch!

A crucial part of my work includes ensuring all clothing options work seamlessly with the player character’s 1000+ frames of animation. Since each frame of clothing is hand-painted, this quickly adds up to a wild amount of work, especially when we start becoming more adventurous with clothing options. It quickly became apparent that we would need a bespoke system that could be flexible enough to support multiple variations of clothes, without adding too much production overhead. This became the Clothes Mapping System.

Similarly to 3D games, a texture is designed and then projected onto a mask that’s shaped like a piece of clothing – such as a shirt or a pair of trousers. However, these presented big challenges:

• Challenge #1: Our sprites are tiny! Texture projection works best when you have larger models so there’s more room for detailed designs to fit within the mask. Early on, we noticed that complex shapes and patterns were simply unable to squeeze into a mask that’s less than 20 pixels wide. 
• Challenge #2: Our masks sit on top of our player character’s body and need to react every time the body moves, so each mask would still need to be designed for every rotation, and for every unique frame of animation.

The first image is the greyscale mask that we animate across all the player character frames. The second image is our tester texture for positioning of the clothes mapping. 

Take our cropped cardigan design as an example. While it starts as a flat design, our system dynamically adjusts how it is mapped on the character based on the mapping nodes. This happens for every animation frame in every direction. Put plainly, it means that whenever we add any new clothing textures, they are automatically projected across all of our frames without a manual rework. 

All of our clothing textures are designed using RGB base colours, which allows for separate colour assignment in our palette system. This allows us to have nearly unlimited colour customisation options so players can mix and match to their heart’s content. 

Currently, we have 5 masks for clothing – a “dress” top, a shirt, a pair of trousers, a long skirt and a short skirt. Using only these 5 masks we’ve already created 60+ unique clothing items, from vests to corsets, to biker jackets and much more. And this is before factoring in colour variations and accessories!  

Calico & Brands

The final touch for our clothing system was to design Calico (Mossport’s clothing shop, first shown in Hana’s reveal) and its fashion brands. We tried to make clothes shopping feel like a relaxing experience, where finding the right piece of clothing feels more like browsing a curated boutique, rather than scrolling through an endless inventory.

Calico sells a number of distinct brands, each with their own aesthetic and personality! My personal favourite is Labyrinthe, our gothic line featuring corsets, dip-dyed jeans, layered oversized tops, and chunky boots. Every brand offers something unique so that players can find themselves amongst the racks.

For me, character animation has alwaysbeen a true labour of love. An immense amount of work, but incredibly rewarding. Seeing how much freedom players have to express themselves through fashion, or noticing pedestrians bundled up in winter coats or students in uniform, has made it all worthwhile. It truly feels like magic when it all comes together.

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Meet Cormac

Previously we’ve introduced you to the bright and bubbly Hana, and since then you’ve met the ever-curious Eli, editor of the Oracle. Keen eyed witches will have seen that another of Mossport’s eligible bachelors, Cormac, has entered the fray!

A gifted artist and the self-proclaimed black sheep of his family, Cormac is a witch who would rather be capturing the hues of Mossport in art form, than sat in a stuffy old classroom. With a perpetually paint-streaked persona, he will find a kindred spirit in those who can appreciate and find beauty in the unconventional. You’ll often find him hunched over a canvas at The Briny Brush, an art shop down by Parasol Sands.

The Witchbrook Oracle subscribers amongst you may also have spotted another character we’ve yet to formally introduce… More about her next time!

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Got any burning questions for the development team, or want to share your excitement with our buzzing community? Join our official Discord or find us on your preferred socials and become part of our Coven. And don’t forget, we also have The Witchbrook Oracle – an in-world newspaper, for those of you looking to dive a little deeper in the daily lives of those in Mossport.

Until the next one!

Alexis & Jade

A closer look at Mossport, and what’s brewing next year.

Hey everyone, 

We have an important update to share about Witchbrook. Originally we had planned to launch Winter 2025, but despite great development progress this year, we’ve made the difficult decision to shift the release into next year.

Witchbrook is a big project – and it’s taking shape exactly as we hoped; full of charm, depth and detail! In our first blog, we shared our goal to create a living, breathing world for you to explore, and as we bring all those elements together, we’re taking the time needed to ensure the world feels rich, immersive, and alive.

Map of Mossport

So far we’ve been quiet about the size of the gameworld, but today we’d like to reveal the first look at our map of Mossport! While the map highlights the sheer scale of the physical world you’ll be exploring, we’re also hard at work filling the world with spellbinding stories, captivating quests, and enchanting systems to enrich your time at Witchbrook College.

It’s really important to note here that the coloured areas you see here on the map are playable areas!

Whether it’s hiking through the peaceful green trails of Shadhollow Forest with its concealed paths and ancient secrets, or breathing in the salty sea breeze on the golden beaches of Parasol Sands, Mossport is full of natural beauty and diverse locations.

Often home to festivals and markets, Mossport’s high street is the lively heart of the town, with shops to browse, delicacies to sample, and friendly faces to meet. Whilst the Student Village buzzes with energy beneath the grand facade of Witchbrook College, housing a lively community of young witches.

When you need a step back, Shadbrook Cottage and its verdant garden offer a quiet retreat to transform how you see fit. Just down the lane you’ll find peaceful farmlands, and even a secluded spot to fish along the winding river. Each area connects naturally to the next, creating a world that feels lived-in, warm, and ready for you to explore.

What’s Next?

The extra time we’re letting the cauldron bubble has opened the door to exploring a few additional exciting opportunities, including additional platforms and language support we hadn’t initially planned! More details on this as soon as we can share them.

We’re hoping this glimpse at the map conveys the scale and variety of places you’ll be exploring in Witchbrook, when it releases next year! We’ll be sharing more development updates this side of the year with a blog focused on character customisation arriving in the next few weeks. Also word on the street is that there’s another The Witchbrook Oracle already in the works. We can’t wait to share more.

Thank you for your patience, passion and continued support.

Chucklefish

Hey everyone.

Following our first dev blog looking at how the town of Mossport comes to life around you (even when you’re not looking), we’d next like to fling open the Witchbrook College’s grand doors and invite you inside to see where the magic happens!

As a fledgling Witch, enrolling at Witchbrook College will be your first point of call to equipping yourself with the knowledge, spells, and skills you’ll need for making the most of day-to-day life in Mossport. 

But before we could even start designing the progression system for your scholarly studies, we first needed to take a step backwards and decide how magic works within the world of Witchbrook. Is everyone in the town of Mossport magical? Are you born with magical abilities that need to be harnessed, or can magic be taught? What type of magic will you be able to learn, and how can we make spells fun and interesting in general gameplay? 

To answer these questions (and more), here’s Witchbrook’s Producer, Rosie Ball, who alongside Abi Cooke, proposed the concept for Witchbrook (then known only as ‘Magic School Game’) back in 2016 during a pitching process.

The Magic of Mossport

From the very start, our take on magic was to be as grounded as possible. Magic is all around you in Mossport, and anyone can harness it with the right attitude and some practice. It takes hard work and passion, just like any vocation, and as such, magic is still a mystery to most people. The townsfolk of Mossport keenly rely on the budding witch populace (that’s YOU) to help them with their problems, great and small – how lucky to have a magical College on their doorstep!

You’ll be learning and refining your craft at Witchbrook College’s hallowed halls. In Alchemy classes, you’ll learn to use the local flora (and sometimes fauna) to craft remedies like herbal teas and topical salves for pesky everyday ailments, progressing over time to complex cures in the form of potions.

In the College Observatory, new students will attend daytime divination classes in tarot card reading, progressing to night classes where you’ll learn to communicate with the many constellations of the cosmos. A witch with divination skills can provide valuable advice to townsfolk on subjects such as travel, finance, love, and much more.

The Arcane Arts are taught only to witches who can prove their knowledge and pass their semester 1 & 2 exams. This is the realm of rituals and demons.

You’ll discover more classes to learn new spells to aid you in daily life as you progress with your academic studies. When it comes to applying your new magical skills, practical magic requires a hands-on approach. Every step of the way you’ll be consulting with clients face-to-face, sourcing your own ingredients, scouring ancient tomes, crafting the cures, and hand-delivering the goods in person.

We love the practical side of magic in Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching books, where the protagonist’s Grandma is a shepherdess and her deep knowledge of the outdoors is considered a form of magic. Likewise Witchbrook’s approach to civic witchcraft was also inspired by Kiki’s Delivery Service, focusing on using magic as a real service to the townspeople – a witch’s vocation is to help people and keep the tradition alive.

Your Coven are your classmates, the young Witches making the same journey through College as you, but not necessarily the same path! Everyone comes to Witchbrook College for their own reasons, and each Witch you meet has a story to tell.

Academic Architecture

I worked as a concept artist on the College, responsible for the “draw-over” layer, a detailed sketch over the greybox layout, which was masterfully designed by Witchbrook’s Art Director, Steph. The sketches were then rendered up by our talented Pixel Artists, who also added seasonal details, lighting and so many more details to bring the College to life.

Architecturally, Witchbrook is a sprawling collection of classrooms and campus buildings built across many years, with their style and materials reflecting the time period they were added.

The main buildings, including the Library, Observatory and Quad, are built of bright sandstone masonry in the grand style of Cambridge University, the heart of the beautiful city where Abi and I grew up. Adorned with statues and ornate pilasters, magnificent stained glass windows, and conical metal roofs. The fountain in the Quad is even based on the fountain in Cambridge Botanic Gardens, where I have visited countless times since childhood.

In the Library, I was inspired by the Wren Library in Cambridge, where the windows are above the bookcases on the second floor, allowing light to fill the room but giving the impression the room is empty when seen from the river Cam.

As you arrive into the College grounds, you’ll find yourself traversing a (metaphorical) gateway between the ordinary and mystical. Crossing a white stone bridge will take you away from pastoral farmlands and into the bustling student village – our take on a University town where witches live, work, and study, with the College main building at the heart of it all.

The curved bridge leading up to the Alchemy Lab was inspired by the MANY bridges of Cambridge.

A small detail that is very iconic of University towns is the uniformity of railings, signposts, and lampposts across the town. You can see the Witchbrook emblem features prominently in our designs – it’s hidden all over the student village. It’s also common to see these structures covered in various student flyers and their trusty bicycles! We tried to emulate this with brooms, but added the odd bike too for good measure. Flyers will also be a way for you to encounter new questlines, learn tips, and generally discover new things about all sorts of goings on in Mossport.

Many of the surrounding buildings are in a Medieval style with wattle and daub walls, timber beams, and wooden shutters. This includes the Alchemy Lab, Arcane Arts classroom and College Shop. These often incorporate the oldest elements of the College – crumbling red brick towers and archways, in the style of Dordogne, France.

There are some remnants of even older buildings in a solid grey stone, but their story is waiting to be rediscovered…

Meet Eli!

Last time we introduced you to Witchbrook’s first datable character, Hana. If you’ve been keeping up with our socials you might have already got the inside scoop on the Witchbrook Oracle’s editor (and eligible bachelor), Eli Ivers!

Eli is a well-known friendly face around campus. If he’s not on the hunt for his next headline, you’ll find him working at the School Shop near the College. Eli is currently working away on the next Witchbrook Oracle, so make sure you’re subscribed to never miss an issue!

What’s Next?

Next up we’ll be talking about all things customisation and fashion, so stay tuned for the next dev blog!

Got any questions for the development team, or requests for future dev blogs? Join our official Discord or find us on your preferred socials and become part of our lovely community. 

Until the next one!

Katy & Rosie

We’re so excited to finally kick things off here and have you with us.

It’s been an absolute whirlwind since we dropped our  First Look trailer, and we’ve loved seeing your reactions – especially the community discord server popping off during the announcement!

With each blog we’ll be diving into a different part of the game, starting with the ever-bubbling cauldron beneath the surface, quietly weaving its energy through every corner of Witchbrook: World Simulation.

It’s what brings Mossport to life and keeps things moving even when you’re not looking. So many of these systems require the complex coding of our team, including our CTO Rodrigo, that we figured it’d be best to feature his insights for this blog! Not only is he our head tech honcho on this project, he’s also created Halley – the very engine that Witchbrook runs on!

A Cauldron of Complexity

One of the core pillars in Witchbrook is “A Rich World Simulation”. To achieve that pillar, we have spent considerable time making sure that the town of Mossport is a living, breathing, believable place.

The passing of the seasons changes the town in many ways – not only are different resources and jobs available at different times, but the town itself adapts. People dress differently (perhaps some scarves and mittens in Winter, or umbrellas in the rain), schedules change, different weather conditions are present, and the town gets re-decorated to reflect the seasons.

Those changes are not instantaneous either: for example, you’ll see the town gradually filling up with flowers as Spring progresses, culminating in the Tulip Festival in the third week of Spring.

Along with the changing seasons, a smooth day-night cycle transitions Witchbrook from morning to afternoon, evening, and night.. The length of day even changes depending on the season – for those long summer days and long winter nights. You might have seen a tease of the view through the telescope in the Witchbrook Observatory – even this is affected by the same systems, (although I might be getting a little ahead of myself, as we plan to talk more about this in our next blog!)

Mossport and Witchbrook college are home to the cast of major characters (coven members, professors, shopkeepers, and more) that you’ll get to know (and, for some of them, date!) as you study in Witchbrook, but also to hundreds of unique and diverse citizens. The world is persistent, which means EVERY citizen has their own look, name, and home. They’re not just background characters, they’re part of the world’s fabric.

They are grouped by archetypes, which dictate how they dress and what activities they’re interested in – pay attention and you’ll be able to identify students, tourists, affluent residents, etc. You’ll be able to meet them and assist them with their requests, or you can just follow them around town and see what they get up to. Finally, you’ll also encounter a wild variety of wildlife, from small critters and birds, to larger, persistent animals.

The character’s daily routines allow them to get up to all sorts of activities around the town, and will change based on weather, season, or special events. All of this is fully simulated – even when they’re far away from the player, every single one of the hundreds of people who live in Mossport is still being tracked and updated. They will arrive at the same place at the same time whether you followed them or not, without any magical “behind the scenes” teleporting or spawning of characters.

To achieve this, the game has two levels of simulation: a high fidelity, graphic simulation for the chunks around the player, and a lower fidelity simulation for the rest of the world. The lower fidelity simulation still keeps track of all the important data, but without wasting resources with things that are currently invisible, like animation.

In addition to all the pedestrians, we also have a full traffic simulation in Mossport. The cars drive on the roads while respecting (British) road rules, signal with their indicators, and even wait for pedestrians to cross, helping to sell the feeling of being truly immersed in a big town. If you block the traffic, a small traffic jam might start developing – and the motorists will be sure to let you know of their displeasure by honking at you! There’s also a regular bus service that you can take to get around the town while enjoying the view.

Meet Hana!

In case you missed it, we recently revealed Witchbrook’s first dateable character – your peppy covenmate, Hana Satō.

You may have already spotted Hana’s signature pink ponytail in Witchbrook’s trailer, or perhaps hanging out in front of Mossport’s clothing store in the latest issue of The Witchbrook Oracle. Hana is a great friend to have around, with a sense of all the latest fashion trends from working at her part-time job at Calico, and a positive attitude towards every situation. How will you foster your friendship with Hana?

We’ll be gradually introducing you to more of Witchbrook’s cast of datable characters as we work towards the game’s release. We know you’re all dying to know how dating exactly works in Witchbrook, but that’s a topic for another day!

A Mammoth Task

It’s fair to say that game development is rarely a straight path, and Witchbrook has grown in ambition over time! We hope these blogs will give everyone in the community a look behind the curtain into our development approach, and why re-evaluating our plans has been so pivotal to standing out in the ever-growing life-sim space.

Witchbrook’s fresh isometric view reflects that, and moving to our new engine has allowed us to fulfill these ambitions. Whilst the larger concepts remained, this was a huge undertaking for our close-knit team of under 20 developers. It’s certainly taken us a little while to get here, but Witchbrook’s larger systems and foundations are in place and we’re finally on the homestretch to release!

What’s Next?

Thanks for reading! Whether you’ve been here since Spellbound or just joining us for this broom ride, it’s great to have you with us on the journey.

Got questions about Witchbrook or want to chat with other cozy spellcasters? Join our Discord and connect with our enchanting community. Speaking of which… our next blog dives into Witchbrook College and some of the fun activities you’ll be participating in… so stay tuned! Word is also on the street: The Oracle has a new editor, so definitely worth signing up to not miss the latest issue! If that isn’t your thing, we’re always active on socials, and if you haven’t already please give us a wishlist on steam, it really helps us out!

Till next time students!

Socks & Rodrigo