On January 19 indie outfit The Astronauts unveiled several key details about Witchfire, their long-anticipated next game. Witchfire was first unveiled in 2017 with a lot of hype around it, but also a lot of ambiguity, leaving basic things like the game’s genre unknown. Then the studio went mostly dark aside from the occasional development deep-dive post. As we now know, Witchfire is a dark fantasy roguelite shooter. It is in the later stages of its incubation and will enter an early access period later in 2022.
As a first-person shooter in a dark fantasy setting, Witchfire may seem like a bit of a departure for the studio most known for the narrative-focused The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. However, key members of The Astronauts also worked on cult-hit Painkiller, and some of the old shooter’s aesthetics can already be seen reflected in Witchfire’s visuals. Witchfire will have random map generation and a focus on frenetic arena-style combat and loot collection. It notably only has a single difficulty setting, which the studio promises will be punishingly hard.
The current plan is for Witchfire to enter the early access stage in the last quarter of 2022, with a final release date to be determined later. The game will be available on PC, and there is no word yet on whether it will find its way to other platforms.
Published: Jan 19, 2022 04:36 pm