Witch Ring Meister is yet another simulation game from inutoneko, the Japanese indie developer I’ve been following for years. My last post was about Soul Smith of the Kingdom, another of their games. Normally I like to let time pass between games in the same series/genre. Unfortunately I’m going through a gaming rut right now where I don’t feel like playing anything with lot of talking in it. Which describes 90% of the games on my backlog. So… yeah. I’d rather play an idle clicker than any of those million-dollar quality JRPGs, bite me.

I rightly criticized the “English” “translation” of Soul Smith last time, but I’m happy to report that the translation of Witch Ring Meister isn’t half as bad. It’s still clearly done by a non-native speaker, but at least it makes complete sense now. I still played in Japanese because I didn’t want to take the chance, but I’m happy to see them going in a more quality direction.

Though I’ve gotta wonder, is it really that expensive to hire a proper translator from the start? Or at least an English editor? It bugs me when a game gets a bad translation because most video games will only get one localization ever. They need to make it count. Especially when it’s a game I enjoy, I feel sad that people aren’t going to get a good experience purely because some shoddy localization company cut a few corners. Mrrghhh. But anyway, Witch Ring Meister‘s translation is passable so feel free to try it if you’re interested.

Story: Marietta is a witch who wants to become a ring designer. Her father, who owns a jewelry store, wants her to study magic instead. Finally they arrive at a compromise where Marietta works on rings for a while, and if she can win the prestigious Miss Design Award he’ll let her follow her dream. Don’t we all wish we had a rich daddykins who would bankroll our wildest business plans? I know I do.

Gameplay: Marietta works on designs and prototypes together with her staff and a team of jewelers. Better staff, better jewelers = better rings.

Ring crafting takes the form of a clicking game. Get enough of the orange Work panels clicked and your production is a success. Then you can use the blue Advice panels and the purple Magic panels to get bonuses. But watch out for your HP and the time!

It’s not too hard, and you can one-click automate the process if you want, though if you really want good bonuses you’ll do it manually. For best results you’ll clear single panels that are in the way so you can link up larger swatches of color, saving time and HP. And if you fail there’s always Quick Load so don’t worry too much about it.

Once you’ve made a ring, you put it in your store and mass produce it to generate more funds to make more rings and hire more staff. As time goes on, the rings lose popularity and stop selling as well. Then you can either put them in a catalog to increase Marietta’s stats or use them as reference samples to create new, hopefully better rings.

Here’s what the catalog looks like:

The various elements of the rings directly affect the stat boosts you get. E.g. fire magic = more craft power, water magic = more HP. You need to use powerful rings as samples, but you also need to use them to power yourself up. It’s a balancing act. Usually if it’s a really good ring with a high rank or good skills I’ll use it as a sample, otherwise into the catalog it goes.

This is the Idea Note screen where all the magic of coming up with new rings happens.

That’s my Idea Note screen around the time when I won the first Miss Design award. The thing to note is the area in the middle with Technology, Staff, Shop, etc. You’re limited to creating rings around that level, give or take a rank. Since I have Bs there, my rings are coming out B+, B, C+ with the occasional A. If you want to make better rings, you’ll have to invest in better staff, invest in better jewelers who can source better material and invest in your shop. Which all takes money, money, money.

BTW, here’s my Idea Note screen around the time I won the second Miss Design award and finished the game. Posted for no reason except I’m a show-off:

Z+ is the highest rank you can get in the game. Am I awesome or what? Ufufufufu~ Since I’m at it, I might as well post my main menu from around that time as well.

I’m gonna be soooo rich when someone invents a way to convert game money to IRL money…

Enough boasting, back to the game. Here’s the shop screen where you can add all kinds of facilities to… your shop? The city of Ishwald? Seems like you pay for new facilities in the city to drive the economy so you can make more money. It’s the only reason I can think of why you have stuff like hospitals on the list.

TBH I felt that aspect was a bit nonsensical. Like instead of building restaurants and stuff, it would make more sense to have the same menu but fill it with marketing campaigns, renovations, store design options, etc. The kinds of things that would really drive sales in a real jewelry store. Not that Witch Ring Meister is realistic or anything, but random stuff like this just bugs me.

Moving on, here’s the staff screen where you can hire and fire workers:

As I mentioned, their combined stats for each category (Technology, Service, Popularity) affects the quality of the rings you can make. The better your staff, the better your stuff. So it’s in your own interest to pop into the Staff screen regularly to swap in better recruits if you can find them. Luckily they don’t mount any FFT-style guilt trips when you fire them, so fire away. Where they do play hardball is when you try to recruit talents that are way above your Shop’s level. Then you either pay through the nose or play some obscure negotiation game which plays like how I imagine Minesweeper would play if I could actually play Minesweeper.

Let’s see, what haven’t I covered yet… Ah yeah, skills and companions. Companions are the usual Ishwald crew. Nowadays the character stories are all optional, so I haven’t read any in ages. I got fed up with the story not going anywhere meaningful fast. If Shio and Fill don’t get together in the next game, I will riot.

Their main purpose is to give you boosts when you’re making rings. They give Marietta craft chips that can refill her HP, increase ring popularity, reduce HP loss during crafting, etc. They also have individual character skills you can buy with AP. These refill your HP, add more panels of a certain type, stop the time, etc etc. Late game, spamming Fill’s “Random Work” + Shio’s “Enhance Work” should be enough to complete most rings in the first move, leaving you with plenty of time stack bonuses.

That’s another thing I have against Witch Ring Meister: it gets really easy after a while. Quite apart from the fact that you can’t be game over’d, it’s too easy to succeed at crafting and the penalties for failure are really low. It’s good if you don’t want stress, and I enjoyed it anyway, but a Hard Mode would have been nice.

Last thing to cover: the Skills menu. Apart from character skills, Marietta can also spend AP on boosts that affect the whole game. Things like lower crafting damage, easier Contest requirements, better staff in the recruitment pool, etc.

The blue line under a skill means it’s active that month. The red line on top means the skill can be ranked up and upgraded further. The sucky thing about these is that the number (0, 90%, 100% etc) represent the chance of the skill to proc that month. So it’s meaningless to invest in a skill unless you have the AP to take it to at least 70% immediately. Also some of the skill effects are rather poorly explained, which is a bit irritating.

But enough talk. How is Witch Ring Meister as a game? TL;DR it’s awesome. I don’t have to do anything, I just point and click and the game plays itself. But the panel game is a lot of fun. It’s sort of strategic-y, sort of a race against time, sort of a rage against the cheating developers. What’s even more fun is slowly, but surely getting better rings. At first you can’t win even the easiest contest, your rings are all cheap kitsch, hardly anyone comes to your store and your HP is pathetic. Then you get better rings, you get better stats, you’re making good money, you’re winning everything, nothing is impossible for you. You’ve got it made!

But only in the game, not in real life. Boo hoo hoo.

There are only three things I have against the game.

1. I’ve mentioned it before, but it gets easy too quickly. I’m not looking for a hair-rippingly frustrating experience, but I did want to spend a bit more time racking my brains. It needed more contests, more goals, more achievements!

2. The limited number of rings you can sell and samples you can keep is frustrating. 5 of each was a bit annoying because it limits your earning potential and creativity.

3. A lot of stuff is poorly explained in the game. Especially the process for getting better rings. I had to check a FAQ to figure out that everything matters so you should upgrade everything stat. It was also from a FAQ that I learned you had to click character skills when crafting rings to active them. I thought they were automatic. Etc etc, it needed better tutorials.

Apart from that, I had a great time and stayed up all night at least twice just playing. It’s the first inutoneko game I’ve finished since Harvest Green in 2017 and I only managed it because this is so simple and undemanding and yet deep.

TL;DR: Witch Ring Meister is great fun if you like simulation games and growth narratives in a colorful, stress-free, idle-friendly package. At 30 hours for completion, it’s a good time filler too. I’m really sad to be done with it, but I’d been feeling a bit blah about gaming lately, and this has given me the spring back in my step. Yay!