Witchfire (dark fantasy shooter)

polonyc2 said:
sounds like the developers played Elden Ring and decided to change the entire game...

Witchfire delayed to 2023

It's been five years since Polish studio The Astronauts announced Witchfire and it'll be a while yet before the game sees the light of day, as the studio announced today that the release planned for the end of this year has been delayed into early 2023...the delay has been caused by a major redesign that's changing the game from arena-style combat to open-world fighting

Creative director Adrian Chmielarz went into greater detail on the delay in a blog post in which he said the core experience of Witchfire remains the same, "but the way the player experiences the world has changed significantly" In the original design, players would "enter an area, fight some monsters, and then have a choice: take this reward and go left, or take that reward and go right." Under the new system, however, barriers separating different areas of the game have been removed, enabling players (with some limitations—Chmielarz described Witchfire now as a "semi-open world") to travel where they like, when they like

Chmielarz also addressed questions about Witchfire's release plan, saying it will debut in early access as an Epic Games Store exclusive but go to other storefronts at full release...

https://www.theastronauts.com/2022/10/redesigning-one-witchfire-feature/
Click to expand...
Not everything needs to be open world...
 
Armenius said:
Not everything needs to be open world...
Click to expand...

Precisely!! Not only that, but only so many devs can even pull off open world, and it's due to their evolution as a studio over the past decade or two. A studio that hasn't done this before, is going to go through the same growing pains, and problems adapting a game to the open world style, and still keeping it compelling. This studio is cool, and seems to have a lot of talent, but IMO this was the wrong move. I feel like their game may have just sprung a leak, and its soul is slowly leaking out into the atmosphere of dullness.
 
J3RK said:
Precisely!! Not only that, but only so many devs can even pull off open world, and it's due to their evolution as a studio over the past decade or two. A studio that hasn't done this before, is going to go through the same growing pains, and problems adapting a game to the open world style, and still keeping it compelling. This studio is cool, and seems to have a lot of talent, but IMO this was the wrong move. I feel like their game may have just sprung a leak, and its soul is slowly leaking out into the atmosphere of dullness.
Click to expand...
It's too soon to say anything about the game, really. It's hard to glean anything about the game from the piecemeal dev updates they have been releasing. Who knows, the open world design may actually work well in the game. The fact they're doing the design change over the course of a few months doesn't inspire confidence, though.
 
Armenius said:
It's too soon to say anything about the game, really. It's hard to glean anything about the game from the piecemeal dev updates they have been releasing. Who knows, the open world design may actually work well in the game. The fact they're doing the design change over the course of a few months doesn't inspire confidence, though.
Click to expand...

it's open world but the size of the world isn't as big as Elden Ring so it might be manageable to do in a few months...Witchfire always seemed like a small indie game like Vanishing of Ethan Carter
 
Armenius said:
It's too soon to say anything about the game, really. It's hard to glean anything about the game from the piecemeal dev updates they have been releasing. Who knows, the open world design may actually work well in the game. The fact they're doing the design change over the course of a few months doesn't inspire confidence, though.
Click to expand...

True, but it seems like they've already done a couple of smaller re-designs. I'm wondering how their sense of direction is. I'm typically very optimistic about things until they blow up in my face :D We'll see.
 
polonyc2 said:
Witchfire- Official Combat Gameplay Overview Trailer

Click to expand...

Looking much better now after some of the early rework trash they showed (floating hit markers, outlines, less grimdark etc).
Still going to wait for reviews/more info - movement looks sluggish, FOV looks terrible, and did they actually commit to an open-world setting?
 
I think I'll skip it plus it's on Epic. I had it on my Wishlist for a year. Atomic Heart looks more intresting.
 
Last edited:
polonyc2 said:
Witchfire- Official Gameplay Overview Trailer

Click to expand...


beautiful particle effects...I'm once again excited about the game...my only complaint is that the world looks pretty bare and empty...more enemies, NPC's etc would have been nice
 
polonyc2 said:
beautiful particle effects...I'm once again excited about the game...my only complaint is that the world looks pretty bare and empty...more enemies, NPC's etc would have been nice
Click to expand...
idk, to me that has got some of the best looking and most atmospheric area's I've ever seen. Great sense of scale/volume and yeah the particles and debris really set it off. Looking truly next gen, environment wise.

I'm just wondering if those areas off in the distance are fully explorable, like the huge castle up on cliff and what not. This is supposed to be an seamless open world map, correct? I would hope so rather than individual levels.
 
I was initially impressed with it, but at this point I bet it will be free on EGS within two years.
 
DogsofJune said:
Looks intriguing
Click to expand...
st,small,845x845-pad,1000x1000,f8f8f8.u2.jpg
 
polonyc2 said:
Witchfire Early Access Date Reveal

Early Access Launch: September 20th...

Click to expand...

Reminds me more and more of Painkiller the close it gets to release, which isn't a bad thing.
DogsofJune said:
View attachment 575596
Click to expand...
They did reveal the game when they just started working on it. Most studios don't show off a game they're working on until it is at least in the alpha stage (feature complete).
 
I wonder if I should wait for the Steam release I haven't bought an Epic game all year. I think Assassin's Creed Mirage is coming out around the same time on Epic.
 
the developers answered my biggest question- why an Early Access period?
-----------------------

What is the point of Early Access? Is it to get money to keep the studio alive and keep working on the game? For some studios, maybe, sure. For ours as well, but more to keep us 100% independent.

There is a more important reason for us, though. For us, and of course to many others as well. And that reason to go with Early Access is to make the best game possible before it's released.

We've done the classic development before. We've done that with games like Painkiller or Bulletstorm or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. But Early Access is an exciting new direction. Imagine: you make the best game you can, just as if this was the typical development process. But then, when all the core systems are in, but before the game is fully cooked and thus is still relatively easy to change, you give it to the players to toy with.

If the skeleton of your game is good, now you have a community that is full of testers and designers, critics and advisers. You have your own data and analyses, but you also get so much more...

https://www.theastronauts.com/2023/09/witchfire-early-access-faq/
 
the fact that the game is going to be in Early Access for 12+ months is not a good sign...the developers are using it to gauge reaction from gamers and if needed drastically change the game once again...it's better to just wait a year and play whatever the final version ends up being
 
polonyc2 said:
the fact that the game is going to be in Early Access for 12+ months is not a good sign...the developers are using it to gauge reaction from gamers and if needed drastically change the game once again...it's better to just wait a year and play whatever the final version ends up being
Click to expand...

Agreed, when I read it was going to be a year+, I was like WTF that's crazy long time away. So I need to pay them $40 now to beta test a couple maps of short gameplay. ugh. And worse it's on the Epic Games Store which I do not like, I much prefer all my games on Steam.
 
Looks cool. I would have played it if it came out a couple years ago. The graphics aren't as impressive anymore. The gameplay looks cool, but it's single player only and I have too much of a life to play SP games by myself unless it's a 10/10.
 
Looks interesting enough. I was super into Painkiller when it first came out.
 
polonyc2 said:
nice review...basically the core gameplay and visuals are excellent, the main negative is that the game is an unfinished Early Access game (only 2 of the 6 major areas are currently unlocked) plus it has a lot of bugs...

I Played 30 Hours of Witchfire- Hands-On Impressions


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY-fyeMOJq8
Click to expand...

Wow his game looks Epic too bad it's only on Epic. I just don't play games on Epic. The last game I binged on was Tiny Tina's Wonderland on Epic.
 
Last edited:
So this is in Early Access yet? Being saves could be deleted well that sucks. I looked up the guy in Charge of the game some Polish guy born in 1971 for the Astronaut studio.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top