Wildflower Interactive’s debut ditches grand heroics for an intimate puzzle-platformer about an old witch, a strange creature, and the quiet magic between them. Here’s what Coven of the Chicken Foot’s reveal trailer tells us about its design, pacing, and PC scope.
Bruce Straley could have come back to games with another prestige blockbuster. Instead, the co-director of The Last of Us resurfaced at The Game Awards 2025 with something smaller, stranger, and far more personal: Coven of the Chicken Foot, a story-rich puzzle-platformer in development at his new indie studio, Wildflower Interactive, for PC via Steam.
This debut feels less like a victory lap and more like a thesis statement. Coven of the Chicken Foot takes the companion-driven ideas Straley helped define at Naughty Dog and shrinks them down into a quiet, witchy fantasy focused on one elderly witch and one evolving creature. From the reveal trailer alone, you can already see how its design, tone, and pacing are built around that relationship.
A post-heroic fantasy told in margins and murk
Coven of the Chicken Foot’s world is set after the age of heroes has already burned itself out. The reveal trailer lingers on overgrown ruins, looted tombs, and catacombs where the “legendary” gear is long gone. Gertie, the witch you play as, is not here to swing a sword or loot a dungeon. She shuffles through the leftovers of more traditional fantasy stories, poking at what was forgotten rather than what was celebrated.
That choice gives the game a tone that feels closer to a strange folk tale than a typical RPG. Backgrounds are painted like storybook illustrations soaked in moss and fog. Lantern light cuts through murky swamps, and crooked trees lean over crooked paths. There is whimsy in the shapes and colors, but it is undercut by a quiet melancholy. You are exploring a world that already moved on from its heroes, which makes Gertie’s quest feel intimate instead of grand.
The storytelling style doubles down on that intimacy. Both the trailer and accompanying descriptions emphasize wordless narrative. Instead of long dialogue scenes, you get body language, glances, and environmental hints. Gertie’s gestures to her companion, the ways she hesitates before a drop or pats the creature after solving a puzzle, are meant to carry as much weight as spoken lines. It is the kind of tone that rewards patience and close observation rather than bombast.
A puzzle-platformer built around one evolving bond
Mechanically, Coven of the Chicken Foot is billed as a puzzle-platformer, but it is the kind that uses traversal more like a conversation than an obstacle course. The reveal footage highlights small, deliberate movements: clambering up broken stonework, threading through bogs, navigating rickety wooden platforms. Rather than chase precision platforming or high-speed action, Wildflower seems interested in careful problem-solving.
The core of that design is Gertie’s oath-bound bond with her companion creature. Straley has a long history with AI partners, and here that experience is boiled down into a single focal point. The creature is not just a tagalong helper. It learns from you, adapts to your habits, and in doing so reshapes both traversal and puzzles.
That idea suggests levels that flex around the partnership. Early on, puzzles might be simple, like coaxing the creature across a gap or teaching it to hold a switch while Gertie climbs. As it gains new abilities and reacts to your playstyle, routes could open in different orders, or solutions might emerge that are only possible because of how the creature has learned to behave. Instead of a fixed “right answer,” the game hints at a spectrum of responses mediated by this evolving bond.
Crucially, the design framing around empathy and cooperation shifts the feel of every challenge. You are not simply using a tool to progress. You are teaching, nudging, and sometimes soothing a living companion. That turns each environmental puzzle into a miniature relationship test, and it keeps the platforming from collapsing into pure mechanical efficiency.
Companion AI as the main verb
In traditional puzzle-platformers, progression hinges on timing, pattern recognition, or physics. Coven of the Chicken Foot layers something else on top: long-term behavioral learning. The companion watches how you play, then subtly alters what it does and what it can do.
In practice that likely means sequences where you discover that a puzzle has become easier, harder, or simply different because of the habits you have reinforced. A player who often relies on the creature to scout might find it more eager and independent, opening shortcuts but also triggering dangers. A player who keeps it close might see more reactive support in tight platforming sections, but fewer bold options. That is speculative detail, but it is consistent with the game’s pitch of each playthrough feeling personal.
Designing around that kind of AI puts the companion at the center of the game’s verbs. You are not only running and jumping. You are modeling behavior, building trust, and gradually unlocking new types of interactions. The creature’s growth becomes both a narrative arc and a mechanical progression system, standing in for the skill trees or loot fountains that dominate larger fantasy titles.
Witchcraft as care, not combat
Gertie’s identity as a witch anchors the whole experience. From what Wildflower has shown so far, her witchcraft is less about flashy combat and more about ritual, remedy, and quiet intervention. Potions, charms, and little bursts of magic look like tools for interacting with the environment or protecting the creature rather than burning down hordes of enemies.
That aligns with the broader focus on empathy. The central conflict is not presented as a series of boss fights, but as a deeper mystery lurking underneath the promise Gertie makes to this creature. The fantasy trappings are still there, from ruins and bogs to dungeons and forgotten orders, but the power fantasy is inverted. Agency comes from nurturing and decoding, not dominating.
The result is a witchy tone that feels grounded in folk horror and cozy fantasy at the same time. Lanterns flare against skeletal roots. Ancient hero statues loom over tiny acts of kindness. Gertie moves slowly, sometimes a little hunched, yet the quiet rituals she performs carry more dramatic weight than any victory pose.
Pacing that favors stillness and slow burn
The reveal trailer sends a clear message about pacing. Shots linger on Gertie climbing, pausing, and looking around. The camera hangs in place while the creature sniffs at the environment or tests the edge of a platform. Music swells and fades instead of driving constant forward motion.
That suggests a game structured around short but dense stretches of play. Expect puzzles that give you time to think, with a rhythm closer to a chaptered storybook than a speedrun course. Each area, whether it is a bog, catacomb, or overgrown dungeon, looks designed to tell a small, self-contained story. You move through a sequence of handcrafted vignettes rather than sprawling open zones.
The emphasis on wordless storytelling also shapes how moments are allowed to breathe. Without dialogue to rush through, quiet beats can stretch longer. A solved puzzle might lead to a silent scene where Gertie and the creature simply exist together for a few seconds, reinforcing their bond and giving you a break from problem-solving. On PC, where players are used to marathon sessions, this slower tempo could make Coven of the Chicken Foot feel like something you savor in smaller sittings.
Scope and focus on PC
Wildflower has been clear that Coven of the Chicken Foot is a focused project. There is no hint of live-service hooks, procedural sprawl, or endless checklists in what has been shown. The Steam positioning emphasizes a handcrafted, story-rich adventure built to be finished, not farmed.
On PC, that scope becomes a strength. Puzzle-platformers thrive when their ideas stay sharp from beginning to end, and an intimate runtime gives Wildflower room to iterate on its companion AI without padding. Visuals lean into a painterly aesthetic that favors strong composition over high-end spectacle, making it easier to scale across a range of hardware while still looking distinctive.
Being PC-first also opens the door for thoughtful accessibility and control options. Slower pacing pairs well with customizable input, remapping, and aids for planning jumps or reading visual cues. While those specifics are still to be detailed, the kind of player-facing care Straley has championed in the past fits naturally with this scope.
Why Bruce Straley’s indie debut matters
Coven of the Chicken Foot is not just notable because of who is directing it, but because of what it represents. After years of high-budget, cinematic blockbusters pushing toward louder and bigger experiences, here is a veteran filmmaker of games pivoting to something intimate, mechanical, and weird.
By centering a single evolving creature and an elderly witch, Wildflower is using its smaller scale the way a good short story does. The reveal trailer hints at a compact adventure where design, tone, and pacing all orbit one idea: that the most powerful thing in a fantasy world might not be a legendary sword, but the fragile promise between two unlikely partners.
For now, Coven of the Chicken Foot has no release window, but it is already carving out a clear identity on PC. It is a puzzle-platformer where slow steps matter, where every solved puzzle deepens a relationship, and where the magic is not in saving the world, but in learning how to share it.