Witch and Hero

Witch and Hero is a short 8-bit action RPG made by FK Digital and published by CIRCLE Entertainment on the 3DS eShop.

Plot
The plot of this game is that the witch and hero went to stop the evil Medusa from ruling the land. They were handily defeated with the witch turned into stone. To revive her, the hero must gather Medusa's blood (from her summoned creatures) and then defeat Medusa to completely heal the witch.

Gameplay
The gameplay is pretty simple in general. The goal is defeat the enemy while prevent the witch from being destroyed. The player uses the D-pad/ Circle pad to move the hero and run into enemies similar to old action RPGs like Ys. Hitting from behind deals more damage and reduces damage the hero takes. If the hero loses all his health, he will collapse and be unable to move until the bar refills. The only means of restoring health is grabbing one of the blue bottles with a cross that randomly drops. If the player fills up the red bar with blood dropped by the enemies and gives it to the witch, she will be temporarily restored firing off her spells, selected by pressing X to switch. L and R will rotate the witch and change her aim. Once the red bar winds down, she returns to stone. There are 20 stages in this game, each with progressively tougher enemies with varying movement speeds, health and damage output. Stages end when the boss enemies are defeated.

During a stage, the hero can collect coins and green orbs representing experience. Collecting enough experience increases the player's levels which affect the HP, how long the hero and witch can last, and MP, how long the red bar goes for. The coins are used at a shop where the player can upgrade Attack, Speed and Defense for the hero and Fire and Wind for the witch. Each one can be leveled up to level 20.

Reception
Critical reception was rather poor. The game has 44 on Metacritic.

In sales, however, the game is Circle Entertainment's biggest success. The game has sold roughly 170k with over 100k in Japan, mostly at full price. The downloads of the demo are also over 1 million.