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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Road to Revelations - Conversations, Narratives, Tools
We’re back with yet another chapter of revealing what’s coming to Witchfire in Revelations – this week, we’re taking a closer look at the way you will begin interacting with people and creatures in the game, and giving you a quick tour of the toys you will play with once the new update drops. So, let’s not shilly-shally and begin with…
Dialogue system
It’s good to talk – and now we’re finally giving you a chance to interact with the entities you meet along the way. Granted, the roster has not been too impressive up to this point, but we’re about to change that – not all in one go, but the seven Fallen Preyers are not our Last Word in that regard; more is coming, but that’s something you will have to discover on your own.
Over the past months, we have been conceptualising, prototyping, and building until we arrived at something we feel is modern, while paying homage to classics such as Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, Planescape: Torment, Disco Elysium, and other old-school RPGs. We want you to feel at home while immersing you in Witchfire’s somewhat alien alternative world. It may not seem too impressive yet, but it’s a solid base for multi-threaded dialogues and making choices that will impact your gameplay and story. Judgement of the Fallen Preyers, which we announced last week, is just one of these choices.
You won’t just talk to the characters you meet in the Hermitorium – you will also have a chance to converse with NPCs met during expeditions. They will be fully voiced in English – it’s a bit too soon to give you a taste of what’s coming, but it won’t be much longer before you will hear them with your own ears.
The narrative angle is – and has been for a while – in development, too: starting with Revelations, you will begin seeing cutscenes sprinkling the gameplay, and the very first one will welcome new players as soon as they acquire the key to the Cathedral. Those of you who already had a go at the game will likely encounter them at different places, but all in all, we’re working on them.
New Gearpack
Gearpacks are an essential item on the agenda of every major update, and Revelations is no different. You have already seen the Raygun – which, after careful consideration, has been renamed Tempest – and now it’s time to show you some other new toys. Hunger, Hangfire, and Duelist are quite popular among our players, and there have been calls for us to add another hand cannon.
Naturally, we ignored those requests.
We added three.
Heart Eater revolves (pardon the pun) around weak spots, and how skilfully hitting them in succession brings additional lightning damage.
Corpse Eater uses Decay to increase damage – in more than one way – and can apply elemental effects to more than one enemy.
Soul Eater – yet another new demonic weapon – allows you to see the soul sigil of every enemy around you, and enables you to stun them on demand.
Besides that, we’re adding two spells.
Pyre Skull, a light spell which – to put it simply – summons a skull that attacks enemies with fire damage:
And Winter Nail, a heavy spell conjuring massive icicles ready to fall from the sky to crush and freeze enemies unfortunate enough to stand where you aim:
A while ago, we also teased one of the new melee weapons:
But, truth be told, we have our fingers in so many pies, we’re not sure if they are going to make it into Revelations – we’ll confirm it at a later date. But even if they are not included in 0.9, they are not going to wait forever, and we may even release them in the Revelations patch-window, before 1.0. Stay tuned!
Hermitorium Archives:
Witch reaction corner
It’s been a while since we have shown you the witch, both in one of the dev diaries and in a separate post on our social media, so… What’s the reaction been like? Well, the sentiment can be roughly described in just four words:
I CAN FIX HER.
First of all, no, you can’t.
Second of all, there was a brief moment during which we considered a dating sim spin-off with the Witch, but it was a joke, and it still is just that, a joke.
We’re not going to do that.
In all seriousness, we enjoyed reading your takes on her – there is a lot more to learn and a lot more to see, and we’re thoroughly impressed by some of your ideas, but whether they are accurate is a completely different matter. One that will unfold with time.
The Chronicles of Witchfire
The game has been in development for quite a while now – apparently, for so long that chr_isso, one of the more prominent members of our community, decided to immortalise the past of Witchfire in a short docu-series, going through the major iterations of the game. He released a new episode just a week ago, this time taking a closer look at version 0.3; give it a watch below if you’re interested in how much the game has evolved over the past months and years.
Walking on sunshine
They are taking stupid walks for their stupid mental health.
It’s just one more sign that Revelations is quite close, but not quite here yet – we will let you know when all the new and exciting things become available to you next week in the next post, which will also be all about the new playground/danger zone, depending on your experience and your play style.
Marshland spotlight and the launch date of the new update – we hope that’s something worth looking forward to. And just to give you an additional teaser, here is a new screenshot from the map in question:
