We are a small independent game developer located in Warsaw, Poland. Before The Astronauts, some of us worked on games like Painkiller and Bulletstorm.
Our latest project is Witchfire, a dark fantasy first person shooter set in an alternative world in which witches are real and very dangerous – but so are you, witchhunter.
Our first game was a weird fiction mystery titled The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. The game has won many awards, including BAFTA, and we sold over one million copies. It’s available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. Click here for more details.
The gears of the machine are turning and we’re here for the third consecutive week with more information about the Webgrave update – we’re beginning by handing the mic to Adrian, who has something new to present…
THE ROSARY
Starting with the Webgrave update, your stats will matter more. Way more.
Here’s the problem we had to solve: Some people complained they didn’t feel any tangible change from leveling up stats. No real difference between, say, Witchery 14 and Witchery 15.
I was puzzled. In Soulsborne games, I was ecstatic about every level-up. The gains were minuscule, but they mattered. Ultimately, they made a difference. I remember grinding extra levels for Cainhurst Castle in Bloodborne just to finally be able to one-shot certain annoying virgins.
Meanwhile, in Witchfire, a game some consider difficult, our stats gave even greater benefits. With some upgraded to the max, you’re basically playing with cheats. Almost immortal. Yet, for some players, this wasn’t enough.
The whole thing got me thinking. But before I could pinpoint the real issue, a fan — whose name I’ve lost, so if this is you, ping me on Discord! — sent me a few pages of thoughts on stats and their role. Among all his insights, one fragment stood out clearly:
Originally, we wanted to have thresholds for stats. For example, something cool would unlock when reaching Witchery 25, 50, 75, and 100. But I felt this wasn’t enough and resembled a skill tree too closely, and I’m not a big fan of skill trees for several reasons.
Some of you, especially FromSoftware fans, already know where this is going. In their games, the world rewards specialization. Want that big-ass hammer? Great, but you’ll need Strength 27. Once achieved, the weapon’s damage scales with the stat, so it pays to keep investing. This effectively locks you out of using something like a sorcerer’s wand — but hey, you can swing a big-ass hammer!
Such an approach creates hard choices and forces you to live with their consequences. Yes, you can respec, but resources for that and weapon upgrades are scarce, requiring careful decisions.
This is exactly what players love about Soulsborne games. “A game is a series of interesting choices,” said Sid Meier, and choosing your path is among the most interesting ones there is.
The issue for me was, I didn’t want to bind our gear to specific stats. Witchfire is about failing and trying again with a new setup — not repeatedly hitting a wall with the one you’re stuck with. You can master one setup and beat the game, but if we do our job right, that’ll be for the most kinetically gifted players only.
The solution?
The Rosary.
For Bloodborne fans: beads are a bit like Caryll Runes, but tied to stats.
For everyone else: you’ll find magical beads that grant unique powers. Your Rosary has limited slots, so your first choice involves selecting beads that complement your build and playstyle from all the beads you discover or earn. Your second choice confirms whether the stats required by these beads align with your intended investment. Slotting a bead is free, but you must meet the bead’s stat requirement.
In short, we’re giving you awesome tools to do things otherwise impossible — at the cost of committing to a playstyle. You could grind every stat to max, but with Webgrave, that’ll be brutally tough, if not impossible, in a single playthrough. More on Stats 2.0 in next week’s post.
Wait, wait, wait… Didn’t I just say we want players juggling gear and builds to overcome challenges, but now I’m suggesting committing to certain stats for extra options?
Yes. The difference here is beads are designed to support your chosen playstyle, not individual pieces of gear. You’re committing to your role-played vision of the preyer rather than both playstyle and gear simultaneously. Plus, there’s still wiggle room to explore other directions, and of course, a respec option.
With Webgrave, we’re starting slow. Most beads you’ll initially find aren’t too wild, like extra health or an extended Dash. However, there are a few notable exceptions, such as immunity to all elemental ailments (yes, you can literally walk through fire unharmed) or an additional charge for your Light Spells (even for spells originally limited to a single charge). We’ll closely monitor your feedback and likely introduce more beads that push into unexpected territory — or perhaps not, because simplicity sometimes wins. Again, we’ll see!
Back to you, Spajk.
NEW WEAPON: ORACLE SNIPER RIFLE
There’s one more thing that usually comes with Witchfire updates, something I have, in fact, written about not that long ago: guns. We’re not slowing down – this update will also include new weapons, and today we’d like to show you one of them:
How about a gun that can see and shoot enemies through walls?
How about this being just the first Mysterium, with more craziness added on top of that in the remaining ones?
How do you balance a gun like that?
Coming with the Webgrave update soon.
The name of the weapon is the Oracle. We teased it a while ago, in the discord announcement posted by Adrian back in May. We tried to conceal the weapon’s unique trait a bit, but you managed to see through it (pardon the pun) in no time.
It’s the weapon mentioned by Andrzej in one of the latest posts when we were discussing weapons (namely: railguns), so we have been teasing it here and there for a while now. Congrats to everyone who guessed (TaedetOmnia takes the proverbial cake) what the big secret is and… Rest assured that we have learned our lesson, and future guessing games are going to be harder.
Or so we think – someone will likely come along and guess it again in five minutes anyway, but such is the way of life.
And now for something (not) completely different…
Hermitorium Archives
A response to a response.
Last week’s post seems to have generated a mixed bag of reactions. Some of you pointed out that the seemingly random nature of research in its current form was somewhat exciting, and you expressed doubts about Workshop 2.0 being an improvement.
Well, the thing is… it was never random – the order of research is pre-determined, and you only perceived it as incidental because we hadn’t yet revealed our cards or the inner workings of the system. Additionally, very few people conducted the entire research cycle enough times to spot the pattern buried in the data, but it has always been there.
Every now and then, a topic surfaces that generates considerable attention. A recent addition is this one, asking why Witchfire hasn’t yet become part of the mainstream. To be frank, it’s flattering that people think we deserve a bigger audience and wider recognition, but – as many pointed out in the thread – we’re still in Early Access, and there’s a lot of work ahead of us before release. We’re doing our best to make Witchfire a game that could stand proudly among the greats. The upcoming update is going to be an important part of this journey, and right now we’re deep in the trenches, creating, tuning, and tinkering. We’re happy you’re along for the ride – thanks!
The topic of War Priests being absolute menaces was raised a while ago when you discovered there is an optimal order for killing enemies: specifically, getting rid of War Priests before dealing with any other foes, since there’s virtually no limit to whom they can resurrect. That’s going to change, because in the upcoming update, we’re going to make some adjustments to their behaviour. We want our game to provide a challenge, but this mechanic – in its current shape – is genuinely more of an annoyance, so we’ll address it. I’ve mentioned it before, and I’ll say it again: we live and breathe Witchfire, and sometimes we lack the perspective that only you can provide. Keep that feedback coming!
Questions about post-launch support have already been raised in the past, so we thought it’d be a good idea to address them for the very first time. And the honest truth is… it remains to be seen. Right now, our focus is on making the fattest Witchfire possible. Releasing version 1.0 doesn’t necessarily mean we’re done – more content may follow. We might also decide “this is it, this is the game,” similar to what Supergiant did with Hades, and begin work on our next project. It all depends on about a million different factors, so we’ll have to wait and see. For now, our priority remains firmly set on version 1.0, with each update serving as a milestone into which we’re pouring our hearts and souls.
That’s it for this week – expect a fresh post in about seven days, we’re steaming ahead towards the release and there is more to share.
