Ladies, Start Your Brooms: The Crescent County Playable Demo Is Here
What do you get when you cross Kiki's Delivery Service, Ride 4, and Stardew Valley? You get a cute, fun, and rad little game called Crescent County. The brainchild of illustrator, game designer, and all-around creative powerhouse Anna Hollinrake, the game is the debut project from Electric Saint, the studio Hollinrake founded with their creative partner Pavle Mihajlovic. It tells the story of a messy young witch named Lu who tries to start a new life on a witch-tech island called Crescent County.
Once on the Island, it seems that Lu gets caught up with a group of like-minded young witches who spend their days working and their evenings flirting and racing motorbrooms — magical witch brooms fitted with motorcycle parts. A press release found on Electric Saint's website has this to say about the game's premise:
"Crash headfirst into this witch-tech open world, drifting and driving on the back of your new motorbroom. Make deliveries, trick out your broom, and race your new friends (and crushes) as the sun sets. Decorate your flat, sort your life out, and discover what it means to find home."
Okay, yeah. I'm in like Flynn. Sign me up.
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So, I spent about an hour with the demo and it's pretty great. You start off on a hill with your broom, and a short tutorial leads you through the basic controls. Then you're off to the races. As you ride along you notice different kinds of terrain — dirt/grass, gravel roads, paved roads, etc. — affect how fast your motorbroom moves and how it handles. Eventually you meet up with a couple of friends and the game takes you through some racing, how to use both your map and your phone (complete with witchy apps!), and how to modify your broom. That part of the tutorial ends with a shared pizza on a hillside and a job offer for Lu.
The next day, the second part of the tutorial, teaches you how to take on jobs and plan routes. You do three different jobs and get to explore the island a bit while you do so. While you make your deliveries, you learn more about the island, various technologies, and things like gliding and boosting. Once you do your deliveries, you have enough money to buy an upgrade for your motorbroom.
Motorbrooms have four stats — Top Speed, Hover, Off-Road Speed, and Handling — and the various mods you can buy from your new friend's garage affect those stats differently. For example, in my playthrough, I went with the LeyTech Offgrid mod which improves both Handling and Off-Road Speed (and looks like a motocross bike's saddle). From what little I saw of it, the game's upgrade system looks like a fun, lightweight version of Ride 4's (or Tourist Trophy's for you older bike nerds) upgrade and customization system.
Even in its incomplete state, Crescent County kinda rules. The backgrounds are gorgeous, the character design is charming, and the brooms handle well even in their base, unmodified state. The music is great, too, all dreamy electronica and woman-fronted indie rock. There's even an option to play your own Spotify playlists through the game instead of the built-in score. That's just thoughtful game design right there. From the press release:
"I've had Crescent County, and this world, living in my head since 2017. I need to make it. If I don't make it I will start peeling off wallpaper with my teeth." Hollinrake said in the Crescent County presser. "We're obsessed with building crunchy motorbroom gameplay with moreish home decoration and broom upgrade systems, whilst sticking a big vulnerable heart in the middle of it. We call it cozy-with-bite: making this beautiful, wholesome world people want to live in, and still have a tonne of fun, with challenge you can opt in to. Plus we want romance in there, but like, the messy kind."
I didn't get a chance to play all the way through the demo, but you can bet I'm going to. There's no word from Electric Saint yet on an official release date, but hopefully it's soon. I need to know everything about this setting, its people, and its technology STAT.
If you have some time to spare, I highly recommend giving Crescent County's demo a try.
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