Daemonologie

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Find the witch in a Scottish village before the last morning.

Platforms: PC
Stores: Steam, itch.io
Price: Paid
Rated: Very Positive on Steam (89% of 766 reviews)
Players: 1
Made by: Katanalevy
Released: 2024

Not on Switch. Daemonologie is on Steam, itch.io and PC. It is not in the Switch part of the site you came from.

What frightens You are a witch finder sent to a 1600s Scottish village to find its witch. You question villagers, and when they will not talk you can torture them on instruments shown in close-up. Each night brings a stop-motion nightmare of wool-covered beasts with gaping mouths, skeletal figures and a beaked creature, and you must hang someone by the last morning.
Content: torture, execution, violence, occasional swearing, mild nudity (painted).

A short folk horror game set in the Scottish witch trials of the late 1600s, by Katanalevy. As a witch finder you question and torture villagers to sort truth from lies, while stop-motion nightmares come each night. It is meant to be played in one sitting, and more than once.

About Daemonologie

Daemonologie is a short folk horror game by Katanalevy, the maker of Symphony of Seven Souls, published by Oro Interactive in October 2024. It is a rebuilt and expanded version of a game the maker first made for the Haunted PS1 game jam in 2020, which is still free on itch.io.

You play a witch finder summoned to a small Scottish village in the late 1600s to root out the witch who lives there. Over a few days you talk to the villagers and try to tell their truths from their lies. When someone will not answer, you are allowed to use instruments of torture to make them.

The game does not lead you. It recommends taking notes, because you must keep track of who said what about whom yourself. At the end of each day you sleep, and prophetic nightmares play out in stop-motion: strange, toothy creatures, figures strung up in the grass and other cryptic images that may hold hidden truths. By the end you must choose who hangs.

The horror is in the black-and-white hand-drawn pixel art, the nightmare animation and above all in the cruelty you are asked to carry out. Players describe it as short and very unsettling, and some find the torture hard to sit through; the point is the horror of the witch trials themselves.

It suits players who want a short, dark investigation with a historical setting, and who will replay it to see what they missed.