Early Access Launch Feedback and Upcoming Updates

Greetings from Team Tapas!

First of all, we’d like to thank you for supporting and playing Garden of Witches’ Early Access release. Your many comments, reviews, and words of encouragement have been a tremendous source of strength for us.

Since the Early Access launch last week, we have been fixing critical bugs based on your feedback while also carefully reviewing every piece of feedback you have given us. There’s a lot to take in, but we’ve had extensive discussions about how to improve the game and the direction of our future updates.

Today, we’d like to share a brief summary of all the patches we’ve done during the past week as well as some of the feedback and issues we have collected. Then, we’ll talk about the upcoming updates we have planned.


As a rule, we usually share patch notes via announcements whenever there is an update to our game. However, due to the urgency of some bugs, we rolled out a few updates in advance. We apologize for the delay in sharing the patch notes, but in the future, we will make sure to announce patch notes in a timely manner.

Here are fixes included in this update:

• Fixed an issue where sound effects would not play after the ending of the final chapter.
  
• Fixed an issue where players could acquire more than four scissor attributes under certain conditions.
  
• Fixed an issue where after obtaining the Cracked Swan Doll relic, tags removed by choosing the Crying Ouija Board could still appear as selectable attributes with the Sewing Kit relic.
  
• Fixed an issue with the endgame content score tracker where the most recent score was displayed instead of the highest score.
  
• Fixed an issue in Chapter 1 where rewatching the ending scene would result in only being able to fast-forward the cutscene instead of allowing the player to skip it.
  
• Fixed an issue where if the player moved to another chapter before clearing Chapter 5 and then cleared that other chapter, then they would not be able to return to the chapter they were originally on.
  

The following issues have been confirmed and reproduced by the dev team, but they require additional time to resolve. We are doing our best to identify the causes and to fix them as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience in the meantime.

• Some relics do not function according to the values in their descriptions.
  
• The mouse cursor does not disappear during gameplay under certain conditions.
  
• There are long loading times when entering a combat zone for the first time after launching the game.
  
• FPS drops during some boss fights, especially with Nahatra (including the second phase).
  
  • We have identified some optimization-related issues and are currently working on them.
    
  • We plan on releasing a public beta build to test these fixes, so we would greatly appreciate your participation!
    
• Players occasionally get stuck in walls when using the Ambush skill.
  
• Enemies sometimes get stuck on objects and are unable to move.
  
• Abnormal angles appearing in the grid pattern of one of Nahatra’s attacks.
  
• Various graphical, animation, and visual effect issues.
  
• Various translation errors.
  

The following issues are issues the dev team has not been able to reproduce yet. If you could share more detailed information via Discord, we will do our best to resolve them as quickly as possible.

• Dash does not activate when attempting to dash while pressing the up and left buttons.
  
• Nintendo Switch Pro Controller is not recognized properly.
  
• Buttons on the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller are assigned incorrectly.
  
• The skip button does not work during the credits scene after the ending.
  
• In rare cases, save data becomes corrupted and prevents gameplay.
  
• Blood Clot amount does not increase even after acquiring a Blood Clot.
  

Based on the feedback we’ve received so far, although there are several areas that need improvement, we believe the game has generally received positive responses.

Many of the features we tested internally and deliberated upon are functioning as intended. However, we acknowledge that there are shortcomings with content volume, difficulty balance, visual clarity, and UX, which we may have overlooked or underdeveloped.

Below are the issues we’ve identified based on user feedback.

[h2]Chapter 1[/h2]
Although Chapter 1 may feel somewhat easy, we believe it plays an important role in allowing players to quickly immerse themselves in the game and story while enjoying the basic progression system. However, many users pointed out that Sil’s initial movement and attack speeds felt too slow during their first playthrough.

We intentionally set the stats lower to create a clear sense of improvement when players experience their first death and upgrade their stats in Sil’s house. That said, this design choice might give the impression that the tempo of the game’s combat is slow, which we think is problematic.

[h2]Chapter 2[/h2]
This chapter introduces the Synergy System, a core element of the game, and it has generally received positive feedback. However, there is a noticeable lack of explanation regarding map rewards and the effects of various attributes.

[h2]Chapter 3[/h2]
In Chapter 3, enemy HP is significantly higher than in Chapter 2. This results in longer progression times, which may cause the pacing to feel slow or tedious depending on the player’s build and playstyle. We think this is a problem.

Furthermore, from Chapter 3 onwards, the performance gap between strong and weak builds becomes much more pronounced. During development, we balanced enemy HP based on high-performing builds, which seems to have caused the overall difficulty to skew too high for those using weaker builds.

However, the core issue we are looking at is how to help players understand which builds are possible and how each system works. Players often lack a clear understanding of how to optimize their build, leading to trial-and-error without a clear goal. We’d like to provide a better learning process to make the trial-and-error process less frustrating and more clear.

Relics also offer relatively limited variations to builds.

[h2]Chapter 4[/h2]
Compared to Chapter 3, the increase in difficulty appears to be reasonably tuned in terms of raw stats. However, some boss patterns were set to be too aggressive, and we’ve received feedback that certain boss patterns or mechanics felt overly difficult to learn or react to.

In particular, the second phase of the final boss relies heavily on pattern memorization rather than reflexive reaction, making it more difficult to master. While we believe a certain level of challenge is appropriate for the final boss, the current learning curve seems to be unnecessarily high.

[h2]Boss Pattern Difficulty[/h2]
We’ve received frequent feedback stating that Sil’s movement speed is too slow, that the dash cooldowns are too long, and that melee builds feel underwhelming. We believe these issues largely stem from boss patterns being too difficult to learn and being unfavorable for close-range combat.

Our dev team aimed to maintain a balanced ratio between patterns that players could react to in real time and patterns that required repeated attempts to learn. However, we recognize that this balance may need to be re-evaluated more carefully.

[h2]UI[/h2]
We designed the current version of the UI with a temporary layout that was easy to modify and expand. Throughout the Early Access period, we plan to fix various UI-related issues, refine the system, and gradually improve the interface.

By the time the full release comes around, we intend to enhance the visual design and add more detailed effects to polish the UI.

[h2]Other Feedback[/h2]
The following issues are issues we are aware of and issues that we are planning to address gradually throughout Early Access. We will continue to make improvements based on your feedback.

• Balance between spells, relics, scissor types, and dual synergies.
  
• The impactful feel of hitting enemies and getting hit
  
• Visibility issues with area-based attacks
  
• Repetitiveness in maps and regular monster encounters
  
• Limited overall content volume
  
• Lack of story content or side content
  
• Lack of build diversity
  
• Need for controller vibration and key remapping options
  
• Lack of a post-game summary screen or access to past play records
  
• Need for a true “skip” function instead of just fast-forwarding through story scenes
  

Among the issues we shared above, we consider the lack of content volume to be our highest priority to address.

Below is a brief sketch of how we plan to expand the game’s content.



We are currently aiming for a summer update that coincides with the Steam Summer Sale starting June 23 June 26 (edited). Since there isn’t much time left, we’re not sure how much we can get done, but we’ll do our best to deliver a solid update.

If we are short on time, we may release only a part of the update or push the schedule back slightly. We will share the development progress with you along the way to gather your ideas and to better identify what needs improvement.

• Epilogue Chapter 1
  
  • A new story featuring a different witch set far in the future from Chapter 5
    
  • A new gameplay style with its own rules
    
  • A simple progression system that only affects this chapter
    
• New Skills and More Scissors
  
  • Through the epilogue, a new ability will be unlocked that uses a new button (Keyboard: shift / Gamepad: RB)
    
  • We plan on adding 3 new skills that players will be able to choose from, similar to how skills and attributes are currently selected.
    
  • New scissors tied to these skills will also be added.
    
• Side Missions
  
  • We plan on adding about 10 side missions that can be attempted at any time while progressing through the main story.
    
  • These missions will be simple challenges that require understanding the game’s core mechanics and will have accompanying rewards for clearing them.
    
  • For example:
    
    • Chapter 2: Missions to practice the Counterattack skill or to learn certain mechanics like thread + charge, HP management, and Butterfly Step.
      
    • Chapter 3: Missions that hint at powerful builds
      
    • Chapter 4: Missions that make use of different scissors.
      
  • Note: These will not be simple tutorials but engaging challenges with meaningful goals and rewards.
    
• Balance Updates (for boss patterns and overall difficulty)
  

[h2]Full Release[/h2]
The full release will take place after a sufficient amount of content has been added. We are tentatively aiming for the Winter Sale at the end of this year at the earliest, but given the small size of our team (of about 6-7 people), there’s a high chance we may not meet that target.

That said, our top priority is to deliver a satisfying amount of content and quality rather than rushing to meet a deadline. Steam-related features such as Achievements and Trading Cards will also be added at the time of the full release.

[h2]Additional Epilogue Chapters[/h2]
In addition to the epilogue chapter planned for the Summer Update, we also plan to add another chapter around autumn. By the time of the full release, we aim to have at least three epilogue chapters, each with a unique gameplay system.

However, we currently lack strong ideas for entirely new gameplay mechanics. If you have fun or interesting ideas for epilogue chapters, please feel free to share them through our Discord community or other channels!

[h2]New Scissors, Skills, and More[/h2]
We will introduce new scissors and skills among other things through the new epilogue chapters.

Currently, some new scissors are being tested. As for new spells, it’s been a challenge to design entirely new mechanics that are distinct from our existing spell lineup, especially considering the need to align them with existing synergies and attributes. Because of this, it may be difficult to add new spells.

Instead, we aim to provide a more engaging gameplay experience by introducing a new skill button in the upcoming Summer Update.

[h2]Outfit Customization System[/h2]
We are planning to add a system where players can unlock various outfits and dress Sil with their preferred outfit of choice. You’ll be able to unlock outfits through various gameplay features like Challenge Mode and Side Missions.

[h2]Challenge Mode[/h2]
A full-featured Challenge Mode is scheduled to be added at the time of the official release. We aim to design enjoyable challenges that utilize the playstyles from both the main chapters and epilogue chapters.

※ Note:
The Challenge Mode currently in the Early Access version was added as a temporary feature for some of our short-term goals such as testing various difficulties.

It will be removed later. So records from the Early Access will not apply to Steam Achievements or platform milestones in the future. However, for those who have already achieved high scores, we may create a legacy records scoreboard for viewing.

[h2]Additional Platforms[/h2]
We plan to release the mobile version (Android, iOS) of Garden of Witches after its full release on Steam. It will be a paid app with no ads or in-app purchases. The price is yet to be determined but will be decided based on the pricing models of similar games.

We’re also preparing for console releases (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation) shortly after the full Steam release.

Support for Linux and macOS is also under consideration. However, since we have no prior experience with porting to consoles or other OS platforms, we cannot yet be certain how smoothly this will go. We will share more details once we’ve conducted further research.

[h2]Discount Policy[/h2]
We plan to participate in all major Steam sale events. Until the full release, discounts will be capped at 20% unless Steam offers a special promotion. The OST bundle pack will likely continue to be available at a 10% discount as well assuming no issues arise.

[h2]Voiceovers & Dubbing[/h2]
We are currently prioritizing Korean and Japanese voiceovers and considering English dubbing. We are especially interested in English voiceovers, as it seems well-suited to the game’s atmosphere.

However, due to cost concerns and the fact that this is our first attempt at implementing voiceovers, we anticipate some trial and error. So we cannot commit to it yet. If things work out, we may consider running a crowdfunding campaign alongside selling physical merchandise (goods) to help fund adding this feature to our game.


There are still many things we couldn’t cover in this announcement, but please know that we are carefully reading through all of your feedback. We would like to sincerely thank all of you who have sent us your many thoughts and suggestions.

As this is our very first attempt at developing a PC game, we are putting in our utmost effort to create something truly enjoyable, and we hope to continue receiving your valuable feedback.

Thank you again, and see you again in our next announcement!

※ Edited on 25.06.02
Originally, we said the Steam Summer Sale started on June 23, but the actual date is June 26.