Marking the official Early Access launch of Witchfire on the Epic Games Store today, developer The Astronauts has provided a seven-minute overview trailer that provides a deep dive into the dark fantasy shooter. Chief among the details revealed are fresh insights into the narrative and gameplay mechanics, the latter of which absolutely seem to have a soulslike twist within what the team refers to as roguelite progression.
To begin with, though, we learn more about the conflict at the heart of Witchfire. It’s already well established that you play as a Preyer, a Vatican sorcerer charged with hunting down and killing witches. The video explains that your mission is to recover an artifact that has been lost for centuries and take down the witch controlling the region in the process, if you can.
You’ll do that by fighting through hordes of enemies using weapons and magical powers that are upgraded using a resource called Witchfire, which you gather by killing enemies. However, if you’re killed in the process, the enemies will respawn and you’ll have to fight your way through them again to reclaim any loot that you were carrying, which is where that soulslike twist is most keenly felt. Making things even more difficult is that the witch can influence the region at random through a mechanic called The Calamities. The video gives examples of raising the dead, amassing a fog, and summoning new enemy types and traps.
There’s much more about the lore of Witchfire and how that informs the progression mechanics in the deep dive video, so check it out for yourself:
Witchfire is available from today after first being announced way back in 2017. It’s expected to be in Early Access for around a year, after which it will launch on other PC storefronts and, it’s hoped, consoles. You can find out much more about the game by looking through our previous coverage, and check back for all the latest.
