Soulslike shooter Witchfire gets massive early access update: New classes, content, events, and they finally fixed Calamities
Rather than going off on a tangent about how good Painkiller is (it's really good), I will open by simply saying that Witchfire, the new shooter from The Astronauts—founded in 2012 by the co-founders of People Can Fly—is really good too, but also very different: Studio co-founder and creative director Adrian Chmielarz said in 2023 that Witchfire is "much closer to Souls" than straight-up shooters like Doom, and having played it a good bit myself, I can say that's absolutely correct.
Witchfire has been in early access on the Epic Games Store since September 2023, and today it got its first major update, which adds a pile of new content and aims to address a couple of the biggest complaints about the game, difficulty scaling and «Calamities.»
Without getting into the deep lore, Witchfire's Calamity system is designed to keep players on their toes by occasionally unleashing hell (in a literal sense), forcing either a frenetic fight or a hasty retreat—although that latter option isn't always doable. It works within a defined system of rules, but the game really isn't clear about what those rules are, or when you're breaking them, and frankly it sometimes just comes off as spiteful. The update will add clarity to the system through the addition of a «calamity meter» that will give players a rough idea of when, and why, the trouble is coming.
«The threat of a Calamity is immense, but so is the reward,» Chmielarz said. «The witch tends to launch these assaults when players are wounded, at their weakest—which hasn’t always been well-received by players—but this design still feels exciting to me. So we’ve kept the soul of it, but redesigned it to feel more fair.
»It’s a feature that both teaches you how to play by pointing out mistakes, and motivates you to do better. Yet it’s also an element great players can abuse: trick the Witch into thinking you’re losing, then strike back and reap the rewards. This supports two main pillars of our design philosophy: competence and
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