I’m developing a story-driven game called Coven, set around 1655 in the fictional Puritan settlement of Alderford, Massachusetts.
You play as Hannah, a 15-year-old girl whose family has recently moved to the settlement hoping for a fresh start. After she is accused of witchcraft by Reverend Elias Harwood—a trusted minister she believed would protect her—she is thrown into an abandoned well outside the village.
Instead of dying, Hannah falls into a vast cave system beneath Alderford. There, she discovers the names of seven other girls and women who were condemned before her. Their spirits are trapped inside distorted recreations of their final memories, and Hannah must uncover what truly happened to each of them.
Each chapter follows one victim further back through history. Hannah explores caves, finds clues and remains, solves environmental puzzles, survives supernatural memory loops, and returns each woman’s personal memento to a wall bearing their names. Freeing a spirit gives Hannah one of her abilities and one piece of a final outfit, so her transformation happens gradually through the stories and belongings of the women who came before her.
The game is a noncombat colonial-gothic adventure focused on exploration, climbing, puzzles, emotional storytelling, and supernatural powers rather than fighting. The atmosphere is dark, painterly, and intimate—warm hearthlight and ordinary village life surrounded by caves, judgment, buried history, and religious fear.
The central twist is that none of the seven women were truly witches. Their persecution, deaths, and shared connection complete something beneath Alderford—and when Hannah becomes the eighth victim, she doesn’t simply inherit their suffering. By reclaiming their stories and bringing the Seven together, she becomes the first real witch.
At its heart, Coven is about recovering the truth from people who tried to erase it, transforming inherited pain into power, and gaining self-possession without becoming consumed by revenge.