Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle is an ode to Game Books and human-made art

Leave it to some ex-Vanillaware talent to make "AI sucks" part of the pitch.

The story around Veritas Tales is just as cool, perhaps arguably even cooler, than the game itself. Yoshio Nishimura, longtime background artist at Vanillaware, left the company a few years ago and, to quote Veritas Tales’ own Steam page, “spent six years in a remote Japanese mountain village crafting this game on his own.” That goes incredibly hard, especially these days in the context of struggling publishers, return-to-office demands, and of course AI nonsense. This man left society and made a whole video game in conditions we’re all told are incorrect. What a king.

Anyway, Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle is a tribute to “Gamebooks,” something you might not be familiar with if you aren’t in tune with old-school RPG gaming history. Imagine a Choose Your Own Adventure book that comes with a Dungeons and Dragons-like character sheet. It’s CYOA with systems. These Gamebooks were popular in Japan at one point, even ones tied to IP like Castlevania. It makes sense we’re seeing a project like this localized despite missing the sort of minigame progenitor to this one in unlocalized Dragon’s Crown DLC, as the whole TTRPG space has exploded in popularity, even digitized takes on the formula. So while this is a different kind of thing, the language is similar.

Veritas Tales utilizes a tactile angle, in which the UI mimics the experience of going through a fantasy Gamebook on your own, at a table or desk in a dimly-lit room. The story is told through turned, numbered pages, and decisions are made that notate which page you turn to next. On the other side of the screen, you use a pencil and eraser to modify your character sheet as stuff happens during the adventure. It’s not so tactile you have to drag and drop and do the scribbling yourself (the game does it all for you), but watching it all unfold like you’re locked in on something you may not have experienced before first hand is pretty magical. I loved watching the little eraser and pencil update my hit points between combat rounds. It’s neat!

It helps that Veritas Tales looks gorgeous in motion. If you know what Vanillaware is (you should if you don’t), you know to expect massive, expressive, and highly-detailed drawings. That’s the case here, as your chosen character (either a warrior or mage) stands and sort of animate-wobbles as things progress, with emotes and reactions to events as needed. Other character portraits, from enemies to allies, are equally impressive, and have a deliberate roughness to accentuate their hand-drawn charm. There’s no massive digital cleanup or inking here - you can see the lines and imperfections on every drawing. That’s another selling point, expressed in the official descriptions to make sure we know Mr. Nishimura isn’t messing around. “This game has a soul that can only be found in something truly handmade.” Bars.

This experience isn’t just about righteous anti-AI sentiment and good feelings, though. This is old-school pen and paper stuff, and that means there’s friction. Veritas Tales isn’t afraid to beat you up, or even trick you. There’s a point in which temporary time limits are introduced, in which a diegetic timer is presented that tells you the story is getting intense, and you have three minutes to make it through the segment. One of the first things that happens afterwards is a choice between three options, and one of them saddles you up with a Lost Odyssey-sized short story, relevant to the themes of everything but hilariously long. If you take the time to read it you’ll realize it’ll take way longer than three minutes, and the panic that sets in as you begin to realize it (a few page turns later) is hilarious after the fact. Well played. Otherwise, you’re at the mercy of dice rolls, and you’ll take just as much damage as you can dish out. Weapons also have limited durability, and watching that fun eraser take those numbers away has a more sinister affect in contrast to when it helps with HP.

If you like RPGs and especially TTRPGs, definitely check out Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle. The demo is beefy enough, but is observably a small piece of a much grander adventure. If you aren’t familiar with Game Books at all, I recommend this even more strongly, as the experience will be both familiar and fresh at the same time. It’s a novel feeling to be able to experience a “new” twist on this genre that wasn’t readily available before depending on your circumstances. Between the cool premise and the amazing stubbornness of human creativity powering this thing, it almost feels like a moral duty to recommend this one. Especially in a Steam Next Fest so full of, well, AI Slop.

Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle is coming to PC sometime in 2026. This preview is based on a demo available as part of Steam Next Fest June 2026.

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