Witchfire GGU Diary 3: Iron Pineapple and the Opening Hours
Opening hours of a game are a design challenge
How did the video affect our daily numbers? – asked one of The Astronauts. I didn’t know. I didn’t check because I assumed it didn’t. The video I’m talking about is the one from Iron Pineapple, a YouTuber known for his reviews of Soulslike games. The video features Witchfire. Actually, Witchfire is the biggest segment […]
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Witchfire GGU Diary 2: Rambo, Time Stealers and Dark Fantasies
Explaining the design pillars of Witchfire
This isn’t the easiest blog post to write. No, nothing bad happened. It’s just that we had our Witchfire release party – hey, better late than never – last night. It started innocently enough… …but many bottles were opened that night and after the dinner we all went back to the studio and talked, accompanied […]
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Witchfire GGU Diary 1: Level Art and the Sunken Cost Fallacy
More Astronauts, more fun.
You know what is the common biggest mistake of a successful game studio? They start making multiple projects. I did it back in 1995. We – I co-owned a studio called Metropolis – just released Teenagent, that made us a lot of money, relatively speaking, of course. So we started the work on: It was […]
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Witchfire GGU Diary: Prologue
Why we stopped patching, what are the pillars of the first big update, and what is Valve Light?
In the episode zero of the diary about our first big update, I want share some light on why we stopped patching the current version, and what are the three pillars of the GGU (the codename for our first big update as described in the roadmap). Not a game exists that is bug-free. If we […]
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Witchfire Development Roadmap - October 2023
Trying to keep things spoiler-free...
Here it is, our (almost) spoiler-free, condensed vision for Witchfire. The things we will be working on until we reach 1.0. This vision is an amalgam of two different thoughts. One is ours, the designs we cook up and the worlds we want to bring to life. The other is yours, the players. We said […]
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The Good, the Bad and the Incredible – Two Weeks of Witchfire
The latest info, straight from the Vatican dungeons
Here’s a candid report on the first week of Witchfire. What went right, what went wrong, and what blew our minds. The Good The reception is phenomenal to us. Most – not all, to be clear – players and professional reviewers seem to like the game. Witchfire enters early access with a bright future ahead […]
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(sticky post) Witchfire Patch Notes
All of the patches, all of the notes
PATCH 0.2.3.50947 2024.04.15 PATCH 0.2.2.50919 2024.04.12 Highlights Other fixes, updates and tweaks PATCH 0.2.1.50866 HOTFIX 0.2.0.50804 Gameplay PATCH 0.2 – Ghost Galleon Update The detailed GGU patch notes are available in a special blog post here. PATCH 0.1.10.48090 Important announcement! First, unless a severe issue is found, this is the final patch until the GGU […]
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Witchfire Early Access FAQ
Almost Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Platforms, FoV, and Centered Crosshairs
“I won’t be able to squeeze that in” – said the programmer. “But it’s crucial it’s done. I cannot imagine the game without it.” – I replied. This went on for a while. I really wanted – no, needed! – a certain feature in the game. In my mind, it significantly enhanced the experience. Initially, […]
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Playtesting Witchfire, or Why Are Playtests Important
At GDE 2023, we showed the game to fellow developers and asked them to play it
You know that saying, „when the players tell you what’s wrong with your game, they’re always right, but when they tell you how to fix it, they’re always wrong”? There’s definitely some truth to it, but what if the feedback comes not from the players but from fellow game developers? Last week there was a […]
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