How this guide is built: Witch It is a competitive multiplayer prop-hunt, which means it has no fixed answer key — and that changes what a useful walkthrough should even contain. Every round, the prop layout is different (each map has several variants), the hunters behave differently, and the map boundary moves. So the usual “Top 10 best hiding spots on map X” article is the wrong tool: it goes stale on the next layout rotation, and the moment it's popular every hunter checks those exact spots first — making you easier to catch and draining the fun. This guide teaches the durable thing instead: the systems and decisions — how a prop's health, size and weight trade off, how to blend by behaviour and sightline rather than by a “clever” spot, the full witch and hunter skill kits with the wiki's real numbers, the hunter's efficient-sweep method, and every game mode and map — so you can read any room on any map. It cross-checks the official Steam page, Barrel Roll Games' own tutorials, the long-running community Steam guides, and the Witch It Fandom wiki. Community-made custom modes are labelled as such, never sold as base-game rules.
What is Witch It?
Witch It is a multiplayer hide-and-seek (“prop hunt”) game from indie studio Barrel Roll Games, released in 1.0 on 22 October 2020 (after a long Early Access run) and still updated years later with seasonal events and big content drops like Dreamland and Mystic Sands. It's cheap — around $2.99 — bright, cartoony, and physics-driven.
The premise: witches have cursed a village and hide by disguising themselves as everyday objects — barrels, mugs, pumpkins, crates, anything in the scene. Hunters (chunky farmers) sweep the village to find and destroy them by pelting suspicious objects with thrown items. It ships with 15+ official maps, four base game modes, a Steam Workshop level editor, hundreds of cosmetics, full controller support and Family Sharing. Public servers track your progression; custom servers are a sandbox.
Why “best hiding spots” lists are the wrong tool
It's tempting to search for the one magic spot that wins every round. But in a live competitive game the spot is the least stable, least useful thing to memorise. Each map ships with multiple prop-layout variants, so the crate you hid in last match may not exist this match. Worse, a popular “best spots” list is self-defeating: once everyone has read it, it becomes the first place every hunter looks, so the better-known the spot, the faster you die in it.
What actually carries from round to round is how the game thinks: the way props differ in health, size and weight; the psychology of blending into a sightline; the cost and cooldown of every skill; and the hunter's sweep logic you're trying to beat. Learn those, and you can walk onto a map you've never seen and immediately find a good-enough disguise — which beats a “perfect” spot that the hunter already has bookmarked. So that's what this guide is: the grammar of prop hunt, not a coordinate dump.
The round, step by step
Every base mode follows the same shape:
- Hiding phase. Hunters are locked in a start room. Witches get a few seconds to scatter across the map and disguise as props.
- Seeking phase. Hunters are released and start throwing items (the iconic potato) at anything suspicious. A hit on a real witch makes that prop flash purple — that's the tell that an “object” is alive.
- The win. Hunters win by catching every witch before the timer ends; witches win if the seek timer runs out (or all hunters leave). Caught witches usually become spectators — except in Mobification, where they switch sides.
You find games through Quick Match (auto matchmaking), the Server List (official + community servers), or a Custom Match (private lobby). One thing to know up front: XP and cosmetic unlocks are earned on official servers only — custom servers are purely for fun.
Playing the witch: blend, don't just hide
New witches think the game is about finding a clever place. Good witches know it's about becoming an unremarkable object and behaving like one. Here's the system underneath that.
Becoming a prop
You disguise in one of two ways: clone the prop you're looking at, or use Possess to teleport into a specific prop's exact spot (it needs line of sight). Either way, morphing produces a sound and a sparkle — so never transform while a hunter can see or hear you. Change before they round the corner, not as they're staring at you.
The three numbers on every prop
This is the real decision in Witch It. Every prop has three attributes, and picking your disguise is a trade between them:
- Health is fixed per prop type — two witches hiding as the same Mug have identical HP. Bigger, heavier objects generally soak more hits before they pop.
- Size varies between individual props of the same type — the same object can spawn larger than a building or small enough to wedge into a cranny. Small props tuck away easily but look wrong if placed where that object would never sit; huge props are absurd but can hide in plain sight as scenery.
- Weight changes how you move: heavy props are slow to lift on the broom, jump lower, and get knocked back less. Weight can even be uneven within a prop (the Hammer is the classic example), which tilts how it tumbles.
The pro move that falls out of this: health carries over proportionally when you switch prop types, so you can shift from a low-HP prop to a higher-HP one to gain effective health mid-round. That's a feature, not an exploit — use it when you're hurt and have a moment unseen.
Interactive and behavioural props
Some props do something when a player presses E — a lamp lights, a gramophone plays. That cuts both ways: an interactive prop sitting where it shouldn't be lit is a giveaway, but you can also use it to bait a hunter into wasting attention. A handful of props also move on their own (a pillow corner stirring in the wind, a Caged Luaq that shakes); disguising as one of those means your own tiny twitches read as normal.
Blending is a behaviour, not a location
Put all of that together and the actual skill is simple to state and hard to master:
- Sit where the prop belongs. A barrel among barrels, a crate in a crate stack, a mug on a shelf of mugs. One barrel alone in a bedroom is an arrow pointing at you.
- Match the neighbours. Copy the count, spacing and orientation of nearby identical props. Hunters spot the odd one out, not the object itself.
- Hold still under a sweep, move on the turn. Stay frozen while a hunter scans your area; only reposition when their back is to you. Most witches die because they fidget.
- Have an exit. Pick spots near a roofline, spring pad, water or ice so that if you're spotted you can immediately Fly or parkour out instead of getting cornered.
Witch skills — the kit, with real numbers
You equip two skills. The numbers below are from the Witch It wiki; mana management is half the game, because Fly in particular burns it fast.
- Fly — broom flight to roofs, ledges and parkour escapes. Costs 2 mana to start and drains ~46 mana/second, so it's for short bursts: pop up to a spot a hunter can't follow, then re-prop before your mana empties.
- Decoy — a controllable clone (12 HP, blocks projectiles, lingers 4 s after you let go). 20 mana, ~3 mana/s, 1.5 s cooldown. Send it running one way as bait and slip the other.
- Possess — become a targeted prop and teleport to it (needs line of sight; your old prop dissolves after 5 s; unlocks at level 13). 50 mana, 1.5 s cooldown. Best used to drop into an identical cluster.
- Hexed Eye — a detached flying eye that scouts and can cast your other spells while your body stays hidden (mana regen is halved while you control it). 20 mana. Pure information — watch the hunter and act from safety.
- Clingy Luaq — a witch-only creature that grows faster and longer-ranged the longer it flies; on hitting a hunter it distracts them for up to 3 s. 70 mana, 1.5 s cooldown. Let it travel before it connects to earn the full distraction.
- Mushrooms — throw a toxic spore that splits into more; each mushroom covers 6 m, lasts 9 s, and applies Confusion for 3 s to a hunter who walks in. 70 mana, 3 s cooldown. Seed a doorway to area-deny during a getaway.
Playing the hunter: sweep efficiently, spend stamina wisely
Hunting looks like spamming potatoes at everything, and at low level it basically is. Higher up it's about economy and reading the scene.
- Your primary attack is a thrown item with unlimited range. A hit on a witch flashes it purple. Holding the button throws at a steady rate, but clicking repeatedly is faster — at the cost of stamina, which needs a brief rest to refill. Don't empty your stamina bar on a hunch and then have nothing for the real chase.
- Sweep room by room and read for the odd one out. Throw a test item at anything that's the wrong count, wrong place, wrong angle, faintly sparkling, or interactively lit when it shouldn't be. Listen, too — morphs and witch movement make noise.
- Use skills to flush, not to brute-force. Instead of hand-checking forty identical crates, drop a Chicken or Body Slam on the cluster and let the witch reveal itself by reacting.
Hunter skills — the kit
- Chicken — a thrown detector that reveals witches in a ~6.4 m aura (it clucks and shows a “!”), watching for 10 s before returning. 10 s cooldown. The single best information tool — lead with it on any cluster.
- Hook — grapple to roofs and high spots; deals 12 damage if it lands on a witch. 5 s cooldown. Vertical chase that doubles as a poke.
- Body Slam — a weighted ground-slam whose shockwave shoves props aside and damages witches (more from a higher fall). Passive bonus: +50% jump height and +500% air control. 2 s cooldown. Slam an identical-prop clump — the witch is the one that takes damage or flinches.
- Vacuum Trap — pulls and reveals every prop within 7 m and applies a 25% slow for 2 s. 8 s cooldown, drains 20 mana/second. Drag a runner back into melee range.
- Magic Blocker — a zone where no magic works; it cancels witch skills and destroys mushrooms and decoys. Lasts 10 s, range 8 m, 8 s cooldown. Drop it on a cornered witch to deny their Fly or Possess and force them to run on foot.
- Power Ball — become a fast, bouncy ball to chase, dealing 8–16 damage on impact. 5 s cooldown. Best in the open, where a witch's parkour can't shake your speed.
Power-ups
Power-ups are the comeback mechanic. Hunters get drops every few seconds; witches get one each time they die. They're customisable through Match Rules+ on custom servers.
- Witch: Mana Boost, Heal, Invisibility, Confusion Wave.
- Hunter: Rapid Fire, Speed Boost, Detection, Cooldown Reduction.
(For trivia: power-ups replaced the old “Magic Dust” system back in v0.8.5, and the four “advanced” ones — Invisibility, Confusion Wave, Detection, Cooldown Reduction — arrived with Match Rules+ customisation in v1.4.5.)
Secret props: the collector's meta
Beyond the ordinary objects, every map seeds secret props — special hidden ones that are collectibles, tracked under “Secret Props” in the Props Collection menu. They come in four flavours: enlarged or miniaturised versions of normal props, normal props with different labels, ordinary props that are simply hidden away, and completely original props you won't see anywhere else.
Most are tucked outside the map borders or inside a static object; a few just lie somewhere on the map. The catch is that a given secret prop usually appears on only one layout variant of one map, so collecting them means learning specific variants — which, conveniently, is the same knowledge that makes you a sharper hider, because you learn exactly where props naturally cluster. If you're hunting the collection, the community tool PropViewer.com maps secret-prop and event-prop locations with interactive overlays.
Game modes
The base game has four modes (plus a creative sandbox):
- Hide and Seek — the classic. A large group of hunters versus the witches; caught witches become spectators.
- Mobification — a small hunter group, but caught witches switch to the hunter side, so the mob snowballs as the round goes on. Surviving the late game is the whole challenge.
- Hunt a Hag — melee-only with skills restricted; a more even, scrappy brawl-and-chase where positioning and movement matter more than spells.
- Fill a Pot — an objective mode: witches must activate cauldrons/pots while hunters defend them. An asymmetric tug-of-war rather than pure hide-and-seek.
- Creative — a sandbox for editing map and prop layouts.
And then there's the community layer. Witch It's level editor plus the Match Rules+ system (from patch 1.4.0) let players build entire custom modes, and the catalogue is wild: an Among-Us-style “Imposturous” mode with tasks, sabotages and conference voting; Soccer refereed in Hunt a Hag; Escape Room, Ice Deathrun, Cannon Golf, Chase Tag, Parkour and more. These are player-made custom modes, not base-game rules — but they're a big part of why the game has stayed alive, and they're worth browsing on the Server List and Workshop once you know the fundamentals.
Use the environment
The village isn't just backdrop — it's movement tech for both sides:
- Spring pads launch you to roofs and ledges — great for a witch escape or a hunter shortcut.
- Water has buoyancy you can ride; ice has low traction, so you slide (use it to carry momentum, or expect to overshoot).
- Moving objects like chimneys shift the scene, which a witch can exploit to look like a natural moving prop.
- The map boundary is a moving purple wall — don't hide so far out that you end up out of bounds when it contracts.
Default controls are WASD + mouse with hotkeys for your two skills, and full controller support. For a witch, raw movement — broom control, parkour, momentum off springs and ice — is the real skill ceiling, more than any single hiding spot.
Quick-start tips
As a witch:
- Pick a prop that belongs in the room, match its neighbours' count and angle, and then hold still while hunters sweep.
- Never morph in view — the sparkle and sound give you away. Change disguises only when no one's looking, and use the chance to shift to a higher-HP prop if you're hurt.
- Hide with an exit in mind (roof, spring, water, ice). Keep enough mana for one Fly burst out.
- Use Decoy and Mushrooms to buy escape time when spotted; Hexed Eye to scout without exposing yourself.
As a hunter:
- Lead with the Chicken on any cluster and listen for the cluck; don't hand-check every object.
- Throw at the odd one out — wrong count, wrong place, faint sparkle, a light that shouldn't be on — and watch for the purple flash.
- Manage stamina: click-throw for speed, but rest before you're empty so you can finish the chase.
- Magic Blocker a cornered witch to kill their escape; Power Ball them down in open ground.
Watch it in motion
Frequently asked questions
Where are the best hiding spots?
Deliberately not in this guide — and not because we're holding out. Witch It maps ship with multiple prop-layout variants, so a fixed spot may not exist next round, and any spot a guide makes famous becomes the first place every hunter checks. The durable skill is blending: pick a prop that belongs, match its neighbours, hold still, and keep an exit. Do that and you'll out-hide someone running a memorised list.
How do witches actually disguise — can I become anything?
You disguise as props (objects in the scene), either by cloning the one you're looking at or by using Possess to teleport into a specific one. Each prop has fixed health, a random-per-instance size, and a weight that affects your movement, so choosing a disguise is a real trade-off, not just a costume.
What's the difference between the game modes?
Hide and Seek is the classic (caught witches spectate). Mobification turns caught witches into hunters, so the mob grows. Hunt a Hag is a melee-only, skills-off brawl. Fill a Pot is an objective mode over cauldrons. Anything beyond those — Imposturous, Soccer, Escape Room and so on — is a community custom mode built with the level editor and Match Rules+, not a base mode.
I keep getting found instantly as a witch. What am I doing wrong?
Usually one of three things: you morphed in view (the sparkle/sound gave you away), you picked a prop that doesn't belong in that room or doesn't match the count of nearby identical props, or you moved while a hunter was scanning. Fix those before you worry about spots. Also keep mana for a Fly escape and hide near a roofline.
Any fast way to find witches as a hunter?
Yes — the Chicken. Toss it into any suspicious cluster and it clucks when a witch is within about 6.4 m. Pair it with Body Slam or Vacuum Trap to flush a clump rather than hand-checking each object, and throw test items at anything that's the odd one out. Watch for the purple flash on a hit.
Is there a quick way to learn the maps and find secret props?
The community web tool PropViewer.com has interactive maps with prop and secret-prop locations and achievement guides. Secret props are collectibles hidden per map variant (often outside the borders or inside static objects), so they take map knowledge — which also makes you a better hider.
Should I use cheats?
No — and that's not just a moral note. In a hide-and-seek game built entirely on fair information, cheating instantly removes the only thing that's fun about it for everyone in the lobby. (One of the “cheat” guides floating around is a well-known joke whose only step is to uninstall the game.) Learn the systems above instead; they're what actually make you win.
Sources: official metadata, description and screenshots from the Steam store page (app 559650); the mechanics overview, modes, controls and progression from the community “Semi-Official Witch It Guide”; the secret-prop concept from the community Secret Props guide and the PropViewer tool; the custom-mode examples from community guides (Imposturous, Custom Game Modes); concrete skill, prop, power-up and map data from the Witch It Fandom wiki; and the embedded tutorial from Barrel Roll Games' official YouTube. Witch It is a live multiplayer game, so exact values and map layouts can change with patches — the systems and decisions above are the durable part. More co-op and puzzle walkthroughs are on 9puz.com.