Witchfire Dark Fantasy FPS to Debut as Early Access on September 20
At the Summer Game Fest 2023, Polish indie developer The Astronauts (The Vanishing of Ethan Carter) announced the early access release date for Witchfire. The dark fantasy first-person shooter game will debut on September 20th for PC as an Epic Games Store exclusive.
In an interview posted on the Epic Games blog, The Astronauts Co-Founder and Creative Director Adrian Chmielarz said that the early access debut is focused on gameplay rather than story. However, the developers worked extensively on the game's lore, and Chmielarz shared the two pillars of Witchfire world design, each inspired by an extremely famous author.
The first one is taken from Hemingway, particularly his Iceberg theory. Basically, the idea is that while we don’t reveal it all to the player, we have to know everything there is to know about this world. No shortcuts, no questions unanswered. So, for example, while the players of Witchfire might not learn why is it that only witches can use magic, we, the creators, need to know this and have the entire backstory ready.
The second pillar is Tolkien’s “distant mountains” approach. Let me quote him directly. In one of his letters, he said, “Part of the attraction of The L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed.”
As you can see, there’s a bit of that Hemingway’s Iceberg in his approach, with the conviction that some mystery needs to remain as such. But it’s also clear he believed having a “history in the background” makes the world that much more believable
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