Indie developer DDreams Games released a playable demo for their upcoming adventure-puzzle game, The Button Witch. The free demo arrives ahead of the game’s late 2020 launch on Steam for PC.

You can download the free demo, however, from over on the DDreams Games itch.io page.

It looks like a typical RPG Maker MV title, but instead of being yet another turn-based grind-fest themed around a coming of age tale that involves the chronically tried and true clash of good versus evil, the developers decided to go with something a little more grounded and insular.

The Button Witch centers around a young chick named Ellen who hopes to complete an internship at a witch academy. Players will have to help guide Ellen through a variety of obstacles, challenges, puzzles, and traps in order to complete the tasks at hand and eventually become a full-fledged witch.

You can check out an hour’s worth of gameplay footage courtesy of Driftwood Gaming.

I have to say that The Button Witch has a surprisingly clean art-style, and the overall aesthetic design is quite charming, if I must say so myself.

The actual gameplay consists of exploration, item gathering, and puzzle solving.

There’s no combat present, so if you were hoping for a hack-and-slash title, or a traditional JRPG, you won’t find it here.

Puzzles range from scavenging for items to unlock new pathways, to finding numerical passcodes, to completing logic equations, and all manner of other mental exercises in between.

It’s a throwback to classical PC adventure games of old, only it’s packaged and presented like an RPG Maker title.

I imagine there’s niche appeal for something like this, but if you were interested in checking it out you can grab the demo from the itch.io page. Alternatively you can wait for the full game to launch in late 2020 or wishlist it over on the Steam store page.