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.
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The Reckoning Dev Diary: Release Date, Torments, Surges
Adrian here with even more news about the content of our next big update, The Reckoning. Let’s talk about Torments, Surges, a couple of smaller things and a big one: the release date.
New Look
Let’s start with one of these “smaller things” — see something different about the Preyer Menu screen in the Gunroom?
A redesign was needed because of the Melee Weapons. A good opportunity to make things a bit clearer, too.
And now for the juiciest parts of this post…
Codex Maleficarum and Torments
Centuries ago, the Church commissioned a book called the Codex Maleficarum: a compendium of known witches. The pages are heavy, smelling of dust and old blood. On one side of each page is a hand-painted portrait of a witch. On the other, a list of her sins against God, and a lesson to be learned.
The artist and writer was Brother Ignatius, a man the Church considered a saintly scholar. Ignatius spent his life hunting the truth, believing he was cataloging the enemy to aid in their destruction. He thought he was doing the Lord’s work.
He was wrong.
The witches whispered through his ink, guiding his hand to create not a record, but a ritual.
With The Reckoning update, you can now perform that ritual.
The Profane Study
When you find the key and your Gnosis reaches the right threshold, you will be able to unlock a new room in the Hermitorium: the Profane Study. It’s a dedicated chamber for the Codex Maleficarum.
The book, however, is incomplete. Most of its pages are lost forever, but some have survived, scattered across the Witch’s lands — torn out, misplaced, or perhaps deliberately hidden by those who realized the truth too late.
As you explore, you can recover these lost pages and bring them back to the Study for further examination..
Torments
You will discover that certain sets of pages form a Torment.
A Torment is a hard, intense gameplay challenge that tests your mastery of the mechanics and arsenal. It is the witches’ attempt to crush the challenger with the very trap Ignatius built. But if you survive the trial, then the prize will be more than worth the pain.
Beware, though. By collecting the pages of the Codex and accepting the Torments, you are reassembling a ritual and opening a door that quite possibly should have stayed locked.
This feature is designed for those who have mastered the basic loop and are hungry for a spike in difficulty. It’s optional, it’s dangerous, and it’s the only way to earn some of the most potent rewards we’ve added to the game..
Surges
If you follow the lore of our game, you know that witchfire isn’t just a currency. It’s a substance. It’s the corrupt ether, the fuel of magic, the binding agent of reality.
The Witch’s minions are vessels for this power. But like any cheap vessel, they can be overfilled.
With The Reckoning update, you will start encountering enemies saturated with witchfire. These aren’t necessarily elites or bosses, they are simply overflowing with volatile magic. When you kill them, that extra energy drops to the ground as a Surge.
Think of a Surge as a raw, unstable battery. Or, in mechanical terms, a power-up not unlike Quake’s Quad Damage.
The effect is immediate and violent. You briefly transcend your already inhuman limits and break the rules of the game in your favor. We’re talking infinite Stamina, accelerated spell cooldowns that let you spam heavy magic, or weapons that suddenly hit like siege artillery.
It changes the rhythm of combat instantly. One moment you are backpedaling, counting your bullets, desperately dodging — and the next, you grab a Surge, and suddenly you are the one who knocks.
You can find these Surges manifesting in the wild, too…
…but usually, you’ll be ripping them out of the Witch’s servants. It’s another layer of “sanctified heresy.”
To kill the Witch, you have to be willing to touch the fire.
Steam Deck Verification
Something a bit more mundane but hopefully just as cool: Witchfire is now Steam Deck Verified. We’ve added the scalable UI and a few other things and voilà:
Tribunal
Last but not least, here’s the third weapon we’re adding to the game with The Reckoning. You wanted a triple-barreled shotgun, and your dark rituals worked. Perhaps not in the way you expected — but isn’t that always the price for dealing in the occult?
You have Judgment, and now you have Tribunal, too. It’s not about shooting all barrels at the same time, though. It’s about striking more than one target with a single shot. You will be able to taste that power very soon…
December 12th.
Over to you, Spajk.
Hermitorium Archives
As Reckoning is around the corner, let’s begin with something formal:
FAQ condensed.
There are three questions that are being asked on pretty much a daily basis in the Witchfire social media bubble, and I realised that answering them (again) in one of the posts has a greater reach than replying to individual comments/tweets/queries. So, here goes:
Co-op/multiplayer is not really on the table. The game is at a stage of development during which a sudden pivot would not make an ounce of sense. Witchfire has been designed as a single-player game and we’re laser-focused on bringing that vision to life. Moreover, the finish line is in sight.
Localizations are being worked on as much as they can be worked on at this stage – we’re a small team, we don’t have an infinite money cheat enabled. Paying for translation services only for the source material to change at a later stage is just not viable. We’re laying the groundwork, we’ve assembled a team of experts to bring other languages to Witchfire, and the translations are coming – stay tuned for more info.
Consoles – this is the main reason I decided to create the mini-faq: not a post goes by without someone (often multiple people) asking about Witchfire coming to consoles. This year we expanded the team by adding people who are already working on optimizing the game with consoles in mind (PC is already profiting from it), so yes, they are definitely happening. “Which ones?” is a question that has to remain unanswered at this moment – sorry, no spoilers.
Builds!
The team has always known that the game has huge potential when it comes to build-crafting (a well-deserved shoutout to witchfire randomizer), but it really brings me joy when I see you swapping ideas and exchanging experiences.
Such a topic appeared on our subreddit a few days ago – if you’re struggling and not sure what gear you should pick, give it a read. And don’t be afraid to visit the build forum on our Discord – it is the place to discuss all things build-related.
This is not a low-key teaser or an announcement of Familiars, I repeat, this is not a low-key teaser or an announcement of Familiars. It’s a mere bug (or Jenny is an in-game reincarnation of Steve Irwin), but we will have to take another look at the birds – they have been… problematic in the past. At one stage they completely disappeared from the game, because they had a mind of their own and defied the laws of physics – they have since returned and are flying high once again.
Hopefully, this glitch will be fixed in no time, but until that happens, approach with caution and pet da crow.
We cannot comment on rumours and speculations (Sure you can, you just don’t want to — Adrian), but we can (and will) take a moment to share awesome art with you.
This piece has been crafted by Todor and it may be teasing something coming in the future. For now, don’t worry about it too much, just enjoy the picture.
This is – in a way – an extension of the segment about conquering the Wailing Tower from the previous dev diary, and something that comes back every so often: we design the levels so that there is more than one way to cross them. The method of going around the toll carriage is known to many (but a refresher is always nice).
Labonski has shown a way of getting to the gate without lowering the bridge some time ago, and these are just examples from Irongate Castle – there are plenty to find in the game.
In fact, remarkably, just this week we had a heated debate about entering the Velmorne Vault in a not-so-orthodox way and the jury is still out on whether we’re going to ban it. Guess you will have to try to get your way inside this Friday.
Indestructible?
There have been concerns that the enemy we announced last week, a handsome fella made of stone, is going to be indestructible. These worries have been popping up here and there, so let me grab a reply published by Adrian on Steam to make it not-so-clear:
Truth is: the Golem can be killed. Numerous games have made the design choice to implement invincible enemies, and while we understand people exercising their right to create whatever they want, it just didn’t sit right with us and with Witchfire.
So yeah, the Golem won’t be bugging you forever, you can get rid of him. I dare to predict that another part of World Corruption will make some people write angry posts on discussion groups and subreddits – before you do, allow me to let you in onto a little secret: the [redacted] were 10x worse when they didn’t just strike once.
And on that absolutely shameless teaser, it’s time to end.
The Reckoning comes to Witchfire (on Steam and EGS alike) this Friday, the 12th of December. Brace yourselves.
