During Summer Game Fest 2022, Polish indie studio The Astronauts announced that their new dark fantasy roguelite, Witchfire, will release into early access on the Epic Games Store later this year. A new gameplay trailer for the shooter, which you can watch below, was released alongside the announcement.
Witches with ill intent roam the world of Witchfire; luckily for its inhabitants, so too do witch hunters. The player takes on the role of one such hunter. As a witch hunter, players will be equipped with a variety of guns and forbidden magic to fight back against the dark forces terrorizing the land. Hunters are given these tools by Vatican sorcerers to participate in the ongoing war between witches and the church. However, Witchfire‘s trailers withhold any witch combat footage, opting instead to show the player fighting against an army of skeletal soldiers in varying sizes. The skeletons are all equipped with a number of different weapons.
These enemies and the environments around them are built utilizing Epic’s Unreal Engine 4. The dark fantasy influences become immediately apparent, with many of the levels in the trailer looking to be either in or around a medieval castle, among other environments. It is clear from the trailers that the Astronauts team is going for a more realistic style.
While The Astronauts have previously only released one game, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, the team has notable previous experience in the first-person shooter genre. Studio co-founders Adrian Chmielarz, Michał Kosieradzki, and Andrzej Poznański previously worked on the Painkiller and Bulletstorm franchises while still at People Can Fly.
Witchfire was first announced at the 2017 Game Awards, with little of the title shown since. Players can expect the release of an early access version later this year, exclusively on the Epic Games Store.
For more on Witchfire, stay tuned right here at GameLuster.
