Magical Girl Witch Trials

Magical Girl Witch Trials (Japanese: 魔法少女ノ魔女裁判, Hepburn: Mahō Shōjo no Majo Saiban) is a 2025 mystery adventure^[2] game by Re,AER, a scenario writing company. The game was released on Microsoft Windows. The Nintendo Switch version will be released in Spring 2026.^[3]

The game was developed by Acacia, a creative brand under Re,AER, featuring gothic visuals and a "dark magical girl" theme.^[4] It primarily follows Sakuraba Ema, Nikaido Hiro, and other eleven girls who have been identified as potential witches and imprisoned within a remote island prison mansion. Through a series of witch trials, players first control Ema, and then Hiro, to uncover and execute the hidden murderous witch. Following a 2024 crowdfunding campaign, the game got full voice acting and attracted attention in the Japanese online community.

Magical Girl Witch Trials was a commercial success and earned positive reviews for its characterization, storyline, and artwork. A manga adaptation began serialization in August 2025. Two related games, Haishin Shoujo no Uraaka Meikyuu and Magical Girl Custom Village^[a], are scheduled to be released in 2026.

Magical Girl Witch Trials is a mystery adventure game in which players first see events in the perspective of Sakuraba Ema, and then a different character in the second part of the story. The gameplay is similar to Danganronpa in flow.^[5]

The gameplay comes in cycles of four phases. In the first phase, the story continues with the magical girls interacting with each other. The character the player controls can choose rooms to go to, where a set of stories will play. During the dialogues, the controlled character may be prompted to choose an action to take out of two or more choices, in which all but one of the choices leads to a bad ending. In the second phase, one of the magical girls is found murdered by another, and the player searches for clues and collects testimonies. In the third phase, a Witch Trial is held to identify the murderer. There is a time limit on how many times dialogues can be repeated, and taking too much time results in an automatic game over. During this phase, the player has to actively interact with the trial to point out lies and inaccuracies, or the wrong magical girl will be executed, and the protagonist will die in various ways after the wrongful execution. The magical girl found guilty will be executed, and the gameplay reaches phase four, which directly connects with the first phase. The gameplay repeats until the scripted story reaches an end.^[1][2]

Sakuraba Ema, a supposed-to-be high school student, finds herself waking up in a prison cell, sharing the same room with Nikaido Hiro, who was one of her friends but the relationship soured. A total of 13 girls are jailed, and the warden informs them that they are jailed because they have elements of witch, posing threats to the public. The prison would galvanize them into actual immortal witches, who would be unable to withhold the impulse of murder and kill others. A witch trial will be held to determine the culprit and the identified girl would be executed and become immortal remains. The warden directs the prison guard to behead Nikaido Hiro, who dares to contradict them. The remaining 12 girls live on but murders happen nonetheless. By the end of the game only Sakuraba Ema and Hikami Meruru survive. Meruru reveals that she is in fact the executive party of the prison pretending to be a prisoner, whose goal is to seek out the great witch among the people. Meruru shows Ema the photograph of the great witch, which Ema surprisingly discovers to be Tsukishiro Yuki, a deceased friend of hers. Remembering her mental trauma, Ema awakens her magic power of killing witches and destroys the world.

At the end of the ending credits the game suddenly rewinds. Nikaido Hiro wakes up in the jail. Hiro’s magic is death rewinding. After being beheaded, she rewinds herself to the morning of her death. Hiro used to have close relationships with Ema and Yuki, but her relationship with Ema deteriorated after finding out that Ema was pretending to care for Yuki, even betrayed Yuki when she was abused by classmates, forcing Yuki to suicide. The second run features Nikaido Hiro as the protagonist, but murders still happen; Hikami Meruru even becomes the first murder victim. Hiro gradually becomes a witch under pressure, but also finds out that Yuki is not merely an abuse victim; she had been actively spreading the witch elements among humans with a conspiracy to kill all people. Hiro plans to apologize to Ema but Ema is murdered first. Hiro later learns from an arcane book that in order to summon the great witch, all 13 witches should hold a ceremony. She overcomes her mental trauma and commits suicide, returning to the very first day of confinement.

Nikaido Hiro wakes up in the jail as a witch barely withholding her desire to kill. She demands an immediate witch trial. During the trial Hiro manages to uncover everyone’s mental trauma and turns everyone into witches. The ceremony is held and the great witch Tsukishiro Yuki is summoned from the ashes. Yuki reveals herself as the only surviving native witch after humans’ active prosecution of the witches. She seeks revenge by spreading witch elements to all humans and activating the witch-killing magic to eliminate everyone. The girls persuade Yuki to give up her revenge plan and retract all witch elements. Yuki later commits suicide herself, with Meruru willingly dies with her. The girls and immortal remains of previous intakes gradually recovers and are finally allowed to leave the prison on their free wills.

The development of the game was partially funded by crowdfunding via CAMPFIRE, which aimed to increase the quality of the game.^[6] The crowdfunding began on April 19, 2024 and lasted until the end of June.^[7] It attracted attention on the Japanese internet and reached the initial target of 2 million yen within about an hour and a half after launching, also meeting all newly set stretch goals.^[8] Eventually, the crowdfunding reached approximately 33.4 times the amount needed, and the game received full voice acting as a result.^[9][10] Among the voice actors for the characters is Ryūsei Nakao, who has voiced Frieza.^[11] The development team has cited Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Danganronpa and Steins;Gate as inspiration.^[12]

Since its release, Magical Girl Witch Trials has received widespread acclaim for the characters' designs and the quality of artworks,^[13] rapidly gaining popularity in Japan and the Chinese-speaking world.^[14] Reviewers for the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu positively noted the unique characteristics of the girls, which made it easy to remember them. They also noted the guiltiness and satisfaction from the gameplay.^[2] A reviewer for Dengeki Online noted that the game properly reveals the details of characters who die early into the game, which is rare for death game scenarios. They also praised the emotional storyline and noted that they were immersed in the gameplay.^[15] On the other hand, Automaton stated the absence of mini-games or failure penalties during trials allows players to focus entirely on the narrative. The reviewer also praised the voice performances and duality of the characters.^[16]

The Steam version of the game was the second best-selling game in Japan after its release,^[17] and later rose to number one in the rankings on July 25.^[18] As of November 2025, it had sold over 300,000 units on the platform.^[19]

A manga adaptation written by Acacia and illustrated by Tokitou Setsuna was launched on August 28, 2025.^[20] Hiro, one of the characters in the game, was confirmed to make an appearance in Magical Girl Custom Village^[a], and in Haishin Shoujo no Uraaka Meikyuu, another related game in development by Acacia.^[21][22]

• Magical Girl Witch Trials at The Visual Novel Database