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.
