Mesmalie

It starts badly: you wake at night to flames, and your barely controlled Magick is the likely culprit. That is how you end up at a decrepit house where Mesmer, one of the coven's witches, greets you at the door and your training begins. The setup plays for laughs, and it earns them, but the tone shifts as the story goes on. What begins as wacky hijinks slowly turns unsettling, and by the end it is saying something about self-doubt and insecurity that lands harder than the cute art lets on.

This is a handcrafted point and click narrative where dialogue branches and choices carry weight. Poke at the many interactable objects to practice your Magick on, and even the most obscure actions can have their own dialogue, which makes diverting from the main path rewarding. The story runs through three sessions, each with a distinct gameplay style for training your ability. There is a chapter select, so you can hop into any story beat, and there are ending variations for abandoning the story mid-way, which is a nicer fate than most games give quitters. Secrets are everywhere, and hunting them down is half the fun.

If you are in the mood for a story that carries everything, this one is short, a few hours per run, and built to be replayed. Choices matter enough that picking an option you actually mean can open up something entirely new instead of a reworded line, and each playthrough feels different even when it lands in the same place. Multiple endings, including a true one that takes some digging, give you reasons to return, and the chapter select makes a second run painless. The writing is the draw: funny, specific and quietly emotional, with an original soundtrack that sticks around in your head after the credits.