Armed with strange weapons and forbidden pagan magic, hunt a powerful witch holding the key to your salvation.
Witchfire is a Dark Fantasy Roguelite First-Person Shooter developed by The Astronauts (consisting of former People Can Fly staff), which might seem like a complete 180ยบ for the studio, given the fact that their previous game was an Environmental Narrative Game, but it makes a lot more sense when you realise the same people where also involved with Painkiller and Bulletstorm.Witchfire takes place roughly during the period of the witch hunts, but witches are real and dangerous. Caught in a war between the Church and Witches, you play as a Preyer, an elite church Witch Hunter who commited a grave sin, but instead of being sent to Hell, was given a chance to atone by wandering the Earth, making use of forbidden pagan magic and consuming witchfire in order to stay alive.
The game was announced December 2017 and entered into Early Access on September 20, 2023, as a temporary Epic Games Store
exclusive.
Witchfire provides examples of the following tropes:
- Badass Longcoat: The Preyer is shown to have a leather duster with some metal adornments, as seen here.
- Coat, Hat, Mask: The Preyer uses a leather coat, a metal skull mask and a capotain (a witch hunter hat).
- Cool Mask: The Preyer uses a metal skull mask to conceal his Nightmare Face.
- Dark Fantasy: The game takes place during a war between the Church and Witches, a conflict of the Evil Versus Evil variety. The Preyer fights "willingly" on the side of the Church as an immortal witch hunter, being that he commited a grave sin as was given the choice of either going to hell or roaming the Earth consuming witchfire in order to remain alive.
- The game world is also littered with hanged corpses, collapsing villages and castles and the revived church soldiers that now serve as the Witch's undead goons.
- Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: The game's signature hand cannon has crosses etched into the back of the bullets, their glow indicates some form of enchantment.
- Early Game Hell: The developers describe the games as a "blend of souslike, extraction and roguelite gameplay", so anyone familiar with all three of those genres should expect this as a given. Befitting an extraction shooter, you start your first run with a pistol, one healing potion and literally nothing else, needing multiple runs and levels to access additional weapons and gear. As you'd expect from a soulslike basically every enemy in the game hits like a truck, getting hit is extremely punishing, and your defensive options are limited with long cooldowns. And as is common with rougelikes, you're expected to take a good deal of time learning enemy patterns and mastering game play intricacies via trial and error as you go. Generally speaking players should expect a lot of dying on their early runs to gather the knowledge and gear necessary to make even make a dent in the first boss.
- Fantastic Firearms: Though the game takes place during the time of the witch hunts, it features magic powered Second World War firearms.
- Fackler Scale of FPS Realism: Witchfire sits comfortably in the Semi-Classic category, sharing many staple mechanics of more modern games such as sprinting and aiming down sights that set it apart from the developer's previous work with Classic shooters Painkiller and Bulletstorm, while adhering to it's dark fantasy setting, such as featuring magic spells, teleport dodging and magic powered weapons far more advanced that what is typical of the game's time period.
- Gaslamp Fantasy: By the developer's own admission. Somewhat contrary to the game's mostly Sword and Sorcery look and feel and the witch hunt period theming, it features magic powered Second World War firearms, making it Gaslamp by definition, though a rather down played take on the genre.
- Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: The game's undead enemies all have magic glowing eyes, caused by the Witch's spell and the witchfire flowing within them.
- Hand Cannon: What have been shown off so far include the game's signature revolver, which has glowing crosses engraved on the back of the cartridges and a fan firing revolver that gets so hot it glows.
- Hell-Bent for Leather: The Preyer is dressed head to toe in brown leather, with the occasional metal accents, such as adornments to his coat, belt buckles and his signature skull mask. As can be seen here, he sports leather boots, pants, a duster, gloves and even a capotain (the stereotypical witch hunter hat), giving him the Coat, Hat, Mask setup.
- Keystone Army: In a short story feature on the developer's blog, the Preyer claims that the undead goons will be trapped in immortality until the Witch is defeated.
- "There was nothing I could do for the bandit leader now. As long as the witch was alive, he would continue to reanimate. From witchfire he had come, to witchfire he would return."
- Mage Marksman: The preyer uses both magic powered firearms and spells.
- Nightmare Face: The Preyer hints at this in a short story feature on the developer's blog. When told to remove his mask, he replies:
- "I wouldn't recommend it. The sight of my face can never be forgotten. Or endured. [...]"
- Night of the Living Mooks: The enemies of the game are -or rather, used to be- soldiers of the Church, sent to fight the Witch in her territory, but have since been killed and reanimated by her magic as her personal witchfire-filled army, which will continue to be reanimated until she is defeated.
-
Nintendo Hard: Even after you start unlocking useful research buffs and more powerful weaponry, the game remains incredibly unforgiving. You can get more powerful, but that power is predicated on you staying out of harm's way for as long as possible, as the opposite leads to harsh penalties on stamina, which is needed for your defensive options. And at any random moment (including during boss fights), a Calamity event can trigger, adding increasingly difficult objectives that can stack. - Recoiled Across the Room: A shotgun featured in trailers and various clips is shown to fling the Preyer backwards in a shockwave when fired.
- Resurrective Immortality: The Preyer can't permanently die in-game or in-lore. The Witch knows this, according to the official gameplay overview trailer, but continues to send overwhelming opposition to demoralize him so that he gives up on hunting her.
- The Witch Hunter: The Preyer is an agent sent by the Church specifically to hunt down powerful Witches their standard armies can't handle.
- Warrior Undead: Many of the Witch's goons, though undead, use basically any setting-appropriate weapon you can imagine. Swords, bows, farming implements, knives, blinding grenades, and firearms, even up to blunderbusses and cannons. Their tactics are appropriately varied as well. While some enemies will just run at you, assassins will skirt around the edges using throwing weapons, musket-men will keep their distance while looking for clear lines of sight, swordsmen will dash in before jumping away, often to your flanks or rear, and so on. All this is before even getting into things like enemy types that use magic, summon more enemies, and all manner of other nastiness.
- Witch Hunt: The game's setting takes place during a massive conflict between the Church and Witches, which seems to be of the Evil Versus Evil variety. Specifically, the game is set on an island that has been taken over by an abnormally powerful Witch that the Church's army has been largely ineffective against, prompting them to send in the Preyer.
