Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle screenshot
Image: ジギタリス出版 & 15 Industry

Hands up if you remember Fighting Fantasy books like The Warlock of Firetop Mountain or Deathtrap Dungeon? If so, congrats, you're old! If not, they're early predecessors to solo TTRPGs. Choose-your-own-adventures with dice-based combat, loot, and stats that you kept track of on a separate page. Out today, Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle aims to recapture that nostalgic magic, wrapped in a gorgeous living storybook aesthetic courtesy of Vanillaware artist gone indie Yoshio Nishimura.

While much of the game's art is static panels, the breathing watercolor character portraits, lively narrator wizard, and an abiding love of UI that you could almost reach out and touch is evidence of its Vanillaware heritage. Nishimura worked on Dragon's Crown, Odin Sphere, and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, three of my all-time PS3/PS4 faves. The star power extends further, with Final Fantasy Tactics composer (and regular Vanillaware partner) Hitoshi Sakimoto providing the soundtrack.

It's wonderful to see the game-book aesthetic captured so well, albeit in the form of a big hardback book with gorgeous full-color art. Better than the cheap paperbacks I had as a kid. Whenever stats change, the pencil and eraser come into play, and dice roll across the surface of the pages. There should be a bit of replay value, too. On top of the regular branching mechanics, there are two playable characters: a warrior guy and a lady mage, each able to tackle problems their own way.

With such a veteran artist leading the show, it should be no surprise that everything here is hand-drawn. Nishimura is keen to emphasize that every one of the hundreds of illustrations here is entirely human-made, with no corners cut using AI. Same with the boisterous voicework, coming from a particularly jolly wizard who plays the role of narrator. You can get an earful of it (along with Sakimoto's fantastic music) in the demo here, and the full game is out now for £15.25/$17, with a 10% launch discount for the first two weeks.

And for those fiending for more Vanillaware on PC, a remastered version of their classic platform hack n' slasher Muramasa: Revenant Blades is due sometime next year. Hopefully just the first of many to come.