Following last year’s reveal of their next game, Witchfire, Polish studio The Astronauts has finally shed a bit more light on the upcoming shooter via a new dev blog update.
In the update, the developer showed off various gameplay snippets (featured above and below), as well as confirmed their current team is only eight developers. While development has thus been a bit slow, they’re now going to post regular development updates on the game. This first update reveals more about the game’s world and threat.
“Witchfire is a first person shooter focused on challenge and mastery. We’re trying to make sure it’s accessible and there are many roads to the ultimate victory but you’ll still need to prove your witch-hunting skills if you’re after all of its secrets,” The Astronauts co-founder Adrian Chmielarz wrote.
You’ll be playing as a hand of the church in 15th century Europe, and you’re hunting actual witches. Judging from the snippets of gameplay and the blurb from Chmielarz, the focus will be totally on action and less “press X to awesome” cutscenes or set pieces.
“We have dozens of guns ready, they’re being animated at this very moment. We have enough modelled and animated enemy models to make a significant portion of the game, and one of us is currently finishing the work on the core AI that will govern them all,” the developer wrote.
“For two years now, the graphic artists have been working on the map assets mostly using the photogrammetry tech. The actual levels are being meshed. The main features have all been designed and just wait until their implementation time comes.”
There’s a bit more on the overall vision of the game, and its current scope:
“There’s lore to discover and decipher, but no cut-scenes to follow. A project like that—e.g. like Bulletstorm, a game that some of us directed—would be bordering on impossible for a tiny team like ours. More importantly, though, the heart of the game is somewhere else. We will talk about it more as soon as we’re ready.”
While a release date isn’t confirmed, The Astronauts said in the update they’re targeting a 2020 release, adding launching then “sounds reasonable.”
Witchfire will be releasing for Windows PC.
