Development of Dark Fantasy Shooter Witchfire Pleases the Fans; Devs Present Roadmap
Witchfire's early access period is indeed to be only a foretaste of what the new work of The Astronauts will offer. By the release of the full version, the game will receive much more content and quite a few fixes.
Cyberpunk 2077 DLC undeniably stole the show in September, but the new work by The Astronauts also generated a lot of interest. Now, its creators have laid out plans for the development of Witchfire in early access, including content that is expected to hit the game by the time of its full release.
Early access better than in-house testing
The Poles laid out their vision as part of an extensive post on the studio's official website, although it's still supposed to be a "condensed and (almost) spoiler-free" version. At the same time, the developers stipulated that they have no experience with "roadmaps," so the current schedule is better treated as a preliminary sketch than the developer's final plans.
This is partly due to the fact that the developers are approaching early access as co-created with the players. Seemingly obvious, but testing the game inside the studio is different from letting "unsupervised" players do it, and the latter provide valuable feedback on Witchfire. The studio admitted that while the team could come to some conclusions on its own (including improvements to the progression system and disasters), many other things would escape.
Witchfire 1.0
The developer plans to release larger updates for Witchfire every two months, but these are only preliminary estimates. The studio currently consists of 12 people ("half of the team that developed Painkiller", as the developers put it), and on top of that, for 1-2 weeks after each major early access expansion, the Poles will focus on patches and small updates.
Nevertheless, for the moment this is what the game's content is expected to look like after the release of version 1.0:
- 6 maps (currently 2, with three of the four new ones not revealed);
- at least 6 bosses and 46 enemies (currently 2 and 22 respectively);
- no less than 31 weapons, 24 magic items and 20 spells (at the moment: 7 weapons with 9 items and spells each);
- an undetermined number of traps, events, disasters and NPCs (the latter are currently not present in the game at all).
Priorities...
In addition to new content, improvements to gameplay mechanics and elements already present in the game will be important. We mentioned catastrophes, which in The Astronauts' vision were supposed to be "exciting spectacles," but turned out to be a tedious task and appearing at the worst moments. For now, it has only been confirmed that at least the latter inconvenience will be corrected - players will have more control over when catastophes occur.
However, earlier, either in November or December, the first major update is expected to come out for The Witchfire. No details were given, but the idea is that GGU (working name) will refresh the game and make those who have been playing the title since its release rediscover it.
Other priorities for the developers include the progression system (more specifically: balance of difficulty scaling and the player's character level) and a "boost" for the Arcane upgrade system.
... and plans for the further future
Going forward, the studio will take on the game's beginning, optimization, story background, mini-tasks, collectibles, a handful of Metroidvania-like elements and much, much more (i.e., as much as can be prepared for the game to be released "in a reasonable time", i.e., in 12-18 months).
As you can see, The Astronauts still has a lot of work ahead of it, and those waiting for the debut of version 1.0 must be patient. Nevertheless, players appreciated the honest entry of the developers and praise the announced direction of changes (via threads on Reddit / Discord). We can only hope that the developers will not disappoint and the first update will actually change Witchfire for the better.
