A Bewitching Revolution
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
A Bewitching Revolution is a first-person adventure game about a communist witch living in a cyberpunk city. Use magic to help the city's residents build collective forms of power and resistance!
Inspired by the work of Silvia Federici, A Bewitching Revolution tells an optimistic story about people transforming their gloomy capitalist present into a bright revolutionary future. It is designed to be played in a single sitting, roughly one hour long.
-- FEATURES --
- Use tarot readings to find the futures that capitalism has closed off
- Repopulate the city with trees, plants, and helpful animals
- Cast spells and brew potions which remake the urban environment
- Help residents build unions, community gardens, and other collective organisations
Strike, riot, and take back the city!
-- PRESS --
"A Bewitching Revolution seeks a better future outside the grim march of capitalism – a place where all can prosper and find a bit of hope." - Joel Couture, for indiegamesplus.com
"It is not every day that you find a game based on the writings of Italian autonomist Marxist feminist Silvia Federici. [...] Even without the background bibliography, A Bewitching Revolution is a wonderful little game." - Kat Brewster, for RockPaperShotgun
"A great little fusion of communism, cyberpunk and witchcraft." - FreeGamePlanet
-- CREDITS --
- Trailer music: Smooth Steering by NY Vice
- Stream sfx: https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/339324/
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Brazilian Portuguese translation now available!Jan 02, 2022
- A Bewitching Revolution released!Apr 09, 2019
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
best commie game ever!
Just want to say, I play this game about once a year, and recommend it all the time!
You know those memes where "You win an absurd amount of money, but you have to spend one year in the last game you played?" Responding to the meme with this game is praxis...
Loved the use of different music according to the situation, additionally the small mini games throughout the journey.
loved it! i fell in the pond at the very end ;_; but i could see the end on youtube, didnt miss much XD
That was really beautiful! It certainly made me cry, but in a good way. Thank you for making this.
I really love the artwork on the tarot deck! Where did it come from? Anywhere one could get it?
They're all public domain illustrations! Mostly from the British Library Flickr account. I also uploaded all the card image files here - feel free to use them for anything :)
absolute GOAT moment thank you
Never saw a communist revolution game until now! We just need a GTA style communist revolution game
An awesome idea!
This is a wonderful game and I really like what you've done here, but I really wish you'd put a health hazard warning on it. The low FoV (with no way to change it) had me feeling physically ill after playing for quite a while.
I gather there are ways to set this using Unity, so I beg of you. Please either make future games of yours more accessible in that sense, or at least include a warning that for a portion of your audience they will not be able to play comfortably.
Aside from that, my only critique is that following the cops fleeing the revolution, it's not at all clear what I'm supposed to be doing. My bicycle says there are more people to help, but I cannot find more things to interact with or tarot readings to provide. Was that actually the end of the game?
This is really really cool. Thank you for this!
Thank you for making me cry tears of happiness and hope. May this game's utopia become tomorrow's reality. ☭
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 thank you so much for making this game!
Brew potions! Grow gardens! Start a revolution! A*
Perhaps a little too feel-good and simplified to my taste, but I overall liked the atmosphere (nice art and sound), seeing the city change, and some of the messages in this game.
Couldn't get the hang of acorn planting though.
Loved this! It's pretty, short and sweet and its contents are really important and conveyed incredibly well. Though, I did have some performance problems, but that's easily ignored. I am going to recommend this game to so many people!
Thank you!!
The game is just amazing! I shared it with all of my friends. It's really nice to find a game like that. I'm form Brazil, and I would love to contribute with a translation project
I got stuck at the loading page and couldn't get out of it?
Hey! Sorry about the bug - what platform are you playing on?
Windows(64 bit, ) but after a few tries it worked, and I absolutely love the game! 10/10
Also, I'm having trouble with the acorn, when you have time, can you explain it a bit more?
Of course! (I could definitely have tutorialized the acorn controls better, haha)
The basic idea is to direct an acorn into one of the patches of grass growing up through the ground. Interact with the acorn to start it falling, then hold the right mouse button and use AWSD to move the acorn around in the air. The little sigil on the ground shows you where the acorn is going to land. Hope that helps :)
10/10 made my day. i wonder if there will ever be a game that made me feel as nice and hopeful as this one did.
thank you so much! fingers crossed that one of my future games will be as hopeful as this one :)
I like the game it was fun and i haven't seen any games like it
This game is so endearing, uplifting, and adorable! Made my day!
Thanks :D
does the symbol (diamond with a line thru it) have any meaning/already exist? or is it just a general anti-capitalist symbol that was designed for the game? im an activist and would love something like this represented around my city.
That'd be awesome! As far as I remember, the inspiration for the symbol was some writing by Alain Badiou (which used the Ø symbol pretty heavily). The symbol in the game was meant to be a more rune-like version of that :)
This game means a lot to me and has been one of my favorite game experiences that I've had in a long time. I cared about all of the characters and it felt like I was drinking a cup of tea and talking about ways to change the world with an old friend. It's really great and thank you for a wonderful experience!
This was honestly the most uplifting experience I've had in months. Thanks for making it.
Really beautiful and very different from anything I've seen before in a game. Is it maybe because the majority of games are based in a capitalist reality? So that's why this one feels so unique. Playing it felt like speaking intimately with an old friend.
Thank you so much for the experience!
So glad you liked it!
'like speaking intimately with an old friend' is maybe my favourite ever description of the game :)
💕💕💕💕💕💕 :)
One of the most meaningful things about this game is how little of a role you as the player has in the revolution. It's the normal people that form the unions, organize protests, and participate in mutual aid. You as the character didn't have a part in that. At most, the player interprets the people's economic situation into political terms, which leads to the workers forming their own solutions. This shows how normal people, as soon as they understand how their own conditions relate to the economic system as a whole can change society overnight if they wished.
The day the working class stands up and demands a society that doesn't treat them as a means to making profit is coming. The divide between those who have to sell their labor, and those who buy the labor, has never been so great.
One of the best games I've ever played. Great job, honestly.
Will be waiting for a sequel :)
Thanks so much! I really wanted to avoid that sort of hero/saviour narrative, where the player comes in and single-handedly ends capitalism... The revolution will be collective, or it won't be a revolution!
Awesome! Love how simple shapes can convey objects this easily :)
A+
I would like to report a bug. I'm playing on the mac version and I am unable to interact with the people with tarot cards, the cat, the flowers, or the paper airplanes. I love the graphics!
Wow, was this before or after Bitcoin was created :P?
This game absolutely moved me. Simple yet so powerful and real, so relevant to our lives today. The game play was fluent and easy to handle, even on my keyboard, the music was greatly adherent to the game and I cannot get over the game concept, i'm blown away, a job well done and I cant wait to see what else you come up with
Thanks so much for the lovely comments!! I really appreciate it, and I'm glad you liked the game!
I absolutely loved it, very powerful and simplistic. The music was surprisingly effective given its minimalist tone, beautifull done overall. Thank you for making this. As someone mentioned below, you should enter this game into jams for better recognition :)
Much love,
Suriya
The graphics and the overall style was really nice. The mechanics were quite standard, though. Not enough witcheness in this. Socialism doesn't work. Also the changes in the environment appeared very well done.
They'll have to patch in better socialism then ;)
A powerful, excellent game.
This was fantastic and made for a really enjoyable stream. We needed something this hopeful.
The key rebinding, at least on the linux version, on the initial launcher doesn't seem to do a lot besides rebind movement. That was a little frustrating and we just had to switch from Dvorak back to qwerty to guide the acorns, but otherwise, this was great.