Armed with forbidden pagan magic and infernal firearms as one of the Vatican’s elite preyers,  players will experience a world that adapts to their progress. The longer a preyer brazenly clings to life, amassing more power and a greater arsenal, the Witch will sense this growing threat and send forth deadly cataclysms and more powerful minions. Greater success means greater challenges to conquer. 

Preyers have the freedom to choose their methods of witch-hunting: a sharpshooter’s agile fingers, a tactician’s analytical mind, or the warlock’s eldritch might and magical relics. Select or combine these tactics to determine the most suitable path to victory. Furthermore, the preyer is not bound by time restrictions— you can rush into a huge mob of enemies, eliminate them one by one from afar, steer clear of a fight, or provoke more battles for bigger rewards. Only you decide which path to embark upon.

In Witchfire, a deadly war rages between powerful witches and the Church. In this alternate reality, witches are very real and very dangerous— but so is the witch hunter. Armed by Vatican sorcerers, players wield an ungodly array of guns and forbidden magic as they combat dark terrors on behalf of their shadowy benefactors.

Built in the Unreal Engine 4, Witchfire boasts AAA graphics made by an indie team of only nine people. Players explore gorgeous, semi open-world levels, featuring advanced photogrammetry and post-processing that create an immersive and realistic dark fantasy world.

The Astronauts just released Witch Mountain Early Access (Steam  / Epic Games Store) update, adding a labyrinthean level to explore, powerful new items, and scores of fixes.

Witch Mountain has long been casting a shadow on the world of Witchfire and now it’s finally the time to visit its ancient underbelly, allowing the players to discover the secrets lying within.

A brand new, winding maze awaits, along with a fresh set of challenges and gameplay mechanics.

Apart from giving players access to the largest level yet, the update introduces an array of new items enhancing the experience, including an often requested revolver that allows for an alternative firing style.

In addition to new content, the patch contains the biggest batch of improvements and bugfixes yet - many of them identified and tracked thanks to reports and comments made by the members of our community.

PATCH 0.6.0 (59794)

It’s been a while but new content should already be in the hands of early access supporters, both on Steam and on EGS. The list of all the changes is just below, but let’s start by listing some of the highlights:

• A brand new level: Witch Mountain – the descent and labyrinth for you to explore and conquer;
• Fallen Preyers 2.0 – a rework of the idea, they have evolved from being an often-forgotten button in the pause menu to a semi-autonomous NPCs who will help you in your struggle against the enemy.
• Shadow orbs – a new in-game device that will offer you challenges and rewards for meeting their requirements.
• New gearpack.

Duelist can be obtained by means of research in the Workshop. Twinshade, Miasma and Yew are hidden on the new map – go and explore it. Judgment is a reward for making it through the Labyrinth.

We also have a couple of new improvements and changes that could get lost among in the cornucopia of items below:

• Added a Witch Mountain navigation chart in the chamber beyond the room in which Dimacher resides;
• New OST pieces composed by Mikołaj Stroiński – new music is featured in the main menu of the game and accompanies players as they explore the Witch Mountain;
• A new feature: Witchmarks. These have been scattered all over the game world and will prove useful when exploring the Witch Mountain;
• Arcana bar on HUD is now hidden by default and can be re-enabled in the options menu.

Gear:

Whisper:

• Significant damage added to Whisper shots.

Designer Note: Even though Whisper worked very well as an “emergency button”, its inability to deal huge burst damage made it less attractive than other Demonic Weapons. Also, thanks to that 3 shotgun loadouts are a thing now.

Dynamo Ring:

• general rework.

Designer Note: Even though the previous iteration of Dynamo Ring was fun, we felt like it was a bit clunky and, what’s more important, didn’t fill a specific niche that would made you choose it over other rings.

Striga:

• Mysterium III: electric damage no longer scales with bonus Mysterium I damage.

Designer Note: Striga’s M3 was always supposed to be a bomb… but not a nuke. The interaction in question was never intended, and now Striga shouldn’t outperform Demonic Weapons

Parasite:

• Mysterium II: Decreased base jump range by 30%. Boosted range increase per enemy killed by 100%.

Designer Note: Parasite gameplay loop is all about feeding your pet and seeing it wreck shop. This should help with creating a good Parasite snowball, while not making it too easy to start it in a first place.

Echo:

• Mysterium III: lowered damage boost from 100% to 50%.

Designer Note: Previously the bigger damage boost coincided with higher ammo use. As it was removed in the previous patch, it felt overpowered to get so much extra power with no real drawbacks beside skillful play

Hangfire:

• Corrected the description of Second Mysterium to match the actions required to level up.
• Corrected an issue where Second Mysterium has a Fire elemental tag but does not deal fire damage.
• Mysteria activations only count when the explosive round was actually lodged in something.
• Increase Mysterium II bonus damage from 10% per bullet to 25% per bullet. That bonus now starts applying from the second target with logged bullet forwards.

Henbane:

• Mysterium I: Healing boost reduced from 75%/100/125% to 50%/60%/70%.
• Mysterium II: Damage reduction reduced ftom 60%/70% to 30%/40%.

Designer Note: Henbane has been overperforming for quite some time now, as it got a stealth buff when the amount of Elixir healing was increased in the Brewing update. These changes will hopefully make it more in line with the other Fetishes.

Echo:

• Fixed spread shot issue (railgun).
• Corrected Third Mysterium description.
• Fixed an issue where weapon caused enemies to burn at First Mysterium.

Frostbite:

• Fixed an issue where weapon is not affected by Fire Boost Arcana.
• Corrected stats to show that the real clip size is 6, not 8, as previously indicated.

Angelus – Mysterium II: slightly increase the parry window. Increased the after-parry damage boost by 40%.

Frostbite – the rifle no longer auto-reloads on empty clip.

Stigma Diabolicum – Fixed Mysterium I damage multiplier. Now shots to the cyst properly deal increased critical hit damage, not increased base damage.

Meteor Ring – Fixed an issue where fire by the item behaves oddly when looking at corpses.

Bulwark Incense – Fixed an issue where it does not provide a 30% chance to hold the shield provided by Belladonna.

Ring of Thorns – Added missing information about avoiding melee attacks to the description.

Angelus – Improved shooting animations blending.

Ring of Wings – Corrected the description.

Dynamo Ring – Corrected the incorrect description of stack kills.

Blight Cyst – cyst is now able to regrow anywhere, not only when attached to an enemy.

Fireballs – Fixed spell homing and the range of the projectile explosion.

Vulture – Homing to friendly targets is now disabled. Fixed missing VFX/SFX when hitting a target.

Parasite – fixed targeting friendly units like Rotten Fiend.

Arcana:

Critical Chain:

• Conjured bullets are not taken from weapon’s reserves.

Designer Note: Echo’s pellets no longer trigger this Arcana. Critical hits are now counted on a per-shot basis (not per-bullet basis), which means that one critically hit target per shot is enough to count towards the bonus (in case of multiple hits with Shotgun). Added SFX when the ammo is added to the magazine.

Empty of Magic – now correctly updated after equipping/unequipping spells.

Cascade – effect duration increased to account for the spell casting animation time.

Elemental Firerate – fixed missing effect on some weapon archetypes.

Chaos Reload – the applied element now correctly triggers its matching status on enemies (burn, freeze etc.). The effect is now removed when the Arcanum is disabled or rerolled.

Revenge – changed description to better reflect the desired behavior.

Reload Slide – added SFX when the ammo is added to the magazine.

Reload Dash – damage boost removed. Added SFX when the ammo is added to the magazine.

Safe Reload – added shield effect for the resistance duration.

Immunity Reload – added missing “Duration” charismata. Added shield effect for the immunity duration.

Adeptus Minor/Major – removed old charismata, fixed recharge values. Changed description and charismata text to better reflect the intended behavior.

Immunity Swap – added shield effect for the immunity duration.

Reload Swap – increased effect cooldown. Added SFX when the ammo is added to the magazine.

Kill Reload – reloaded ammo % is now displayed on th UI.

Phantom Bullets – no longer triggers for each of the Shotgun’s pellets. Returned bullets are not taken from weapon’s reserves. Added SFX when the ammo is added to the magazine.

Large Magazine – tweaked the value rounding after applying the Arcana effect.

Firearm Mastery – adjusted the displayed parameters to better reflect the actual changes.

Piercing Bullets – fixed piercing on Blunderbusser’s shield. When the enemy shield is pierced it now also takes damage, as it would normally when blocking (if the shield can be damaged at all).

Anti-Element – fixed conditions for the increased damage. Fixed incorrect 2nd level boost value.

Cleansing Fire – fixed incorrect damage multiplier. Fixed missing damage boost on Elite enemies.

Full Health Firepower – the effect is now reapplied correctly when Arcana level changes.

Pendulum – the effect is now applied correctly when activated and after weapon swap. Effect now scales correctly when changing Arcana level.

Fast Strafe – changed the effect to reduce movement speed penalties while strafing (regardless if player is aiming down sight or not).

Elemental Refresh – changed the effect to extend the active afflictions durations by a flat amount. No longer triggers when the same element is applied from different sources.

Lasting Element – fixed missing status duration scaling. Fixed scaling for Decay ticks.

Light/Heavy Spell Recharge – changed description to better reflect the intended behavior.

Extra Light Spell – charge is now correctly removed when the Arcana is removed/disabled.

Fast Light/Heavy Spell – Arcana effect is now correctly applied/removed when the respective spell charge changes.

Painful Recharge – fixed recharge for spells with charges.

Elemental Resistance – fixed missing effect removal when the enemy died while being affected by the elemental magic. 

Immunity Spellcast – added shield effect for the immunity duration.

Chaos Flame – fixed damage bonus calculation. Fixed chance for x2/x3 damage to be 50/50 percent.

Critical Burn – effect is now correctly applied/removed when the enemy starts/stops burning. Fixed damage calculation for forced critical hits.

Bonus Witchfire – restored the bonus Witchfire effect. Restored the increased Crystallized Witchfire drop chance – it now scales the drop chance multiplicatively, keeping the relative balance between different chances for different enemies.

Various arcana:

Decay Echo – fixed occasional crashes.

Parasite – fixed mysteriums not having a decay tag.

Corrected inconsistent spelling of BURN in mysterium descriptions.

Fixed an issue where some firearms do not return to their initial aim position after recoil.

Fixed an unintended shotgun interaction with Phantom Bullets.

Fixed an issue where the Striga did not destroy Wretch projectiles.

Tweaks of ADS when having Firearm Mastery arcana.

MAPS

Castle:

• Removed a floating head from the level.
• Fixed an issue where a firefly appears and disappears at the castle, leading nowhere.
• Fixed weak LOD on the mirage wall under the bridge at the Castle.
• Polished the edge of the waterfall.
• Fixed an collision issue at the Meteor Ring location.
• Fixed an issues where destroyed traps left glow vfx being displayed.
• Fixed the visibility of Braid of Seductress item.
• Fixed an issue with Restless Spirit leading to an incorrect location .

Scarlet Coast:

• Fixed an issue where players might get stuck at a tree near the mill.
• Corrected a stuck-spots on a trees.
• Fixed an issue where Galley Slave may not jump down into the pit.
• Corrected the excessive height players are thrown into the air by the Galley slave attack.
• Fixed an issue where the killing volume kills the player at the map border.
• Fixed a hole in the Galley Slave model.
• Fixed issues with enemies spawning in unintended places.
• Fixed issues with Galley Slave kick damage values.

Hermitorium:

• Fixed an issue where leftover collision interacts with bullets.
• Fixed an issue where rain penetrates the ceiling in the room with incense sticks.
• Fixed a problem with flickering lighting in the building.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes the Collector’s chest has a distorted model.
• Fixed an issue where tutorials do not update current key changes.
• Fixed an issue where a few floating weapons are present.
• Fixed an issue where hiding behind a pillar causes particles from the mirror to disappear.
• Fixed an issue with no collision at the back of the mirror, allowing entry.
• Fixed an issue where the player could fall OOB.
• Fixed multiple holes in rock assets.
• Player is no longer able to summon Grenadiers in Hermitorium. ;(
• Gnosis room lighting tweaks.
• Visual issues fixed during various day/night-time scenarios.

Island of the Damned:

• Fixed an issue where the supply chest model is not displayed correctly.
• Fixed sharp edged lighting at Tower’s entrance.
• Fixed missing ship parts at the coast.
• Fixed an issue with hitting Hollow Wretches (hitbox).
• Collision improvements around the ship.
• Improved FPS in the vault staircase.

Enemies:

• Fixed an issue where Axeman becomes invisible after teleporting.
• Flytraps now play the hissing warning sound much later

Designer Note: While Flytraps are meant to be easy tutorial traps, their over-eagerness to announce their presence made them toothless, which was weird for a plant with a mouth full of teeth.

UI:

Workshop:

• Re-organized research categories, and removed two of them, to better reflect the current design.

Inventory:

• Added support for Shadow Orbs in the Inventory screen: displaying their state (inactive / active / charged), displaying proper icon reflecting their state, displaying and updating their quests, support for scrapping etc.

HUD:

• Added new “Active Quests” slate on the right side of the screen, which lets you quickly and conveniently check the state of active quests during gameplay. It can be invoked by pressing X on KBM or d-pad right on gamepad. (Obviously, you can rebind these buttons in the Settings.) “Active Quests” slate is available only when there is at least one active quest at the moment.
• Added small icons tray at the right side of the screen, which lets you know what quests (and, if any at all) are active at any given moment, and reminds you which button you can use to see more details about them.
• Removed “Echoes for the flame” quest from displaying in the top-left corner of the screen, as it was significantly cluttering the HUD most of the time. It’s now available in the “Active Quests” slate.
• Added display of current active Shadow Orb quest to the “Active Quests” slate. There is no need to open inventory repeatedly and search for a proper item.
• Made Divine Essence counter be displayed on the screen not only in the Tower — as it’s now also available inside the Witch Mountain.
• Made Arcana icons, which were displayed on the bottom of the screen, hidden by default. You can re-enable them in the Settings -> Gameplay (they were moved to the “Experimental” section). We’re making this change, because they tended to clutter the HUD while being not-so-useful in the actual gameplay. As always, we’ll be listening to your feedback and we may rework this feature in the future.

Fallen Preyers:

• Added completely new Vestal Flame screen. Goodbye simple popup.

Map:

• Removed footers (with “Summon” action) from Fallen Preyers tooltips in the Map screen. You don’t summon Fallen Preyers anymore, they come to help you themselves, exactly when you need them.
• Added boons counter under Fallen Preyers portraits in the Map screen. It’s not displayed when you don’t have any bound Fallen Preyers.
• Added the Witch Mountain map.
• Alchemy station in the Hermitorium has a new icon: incense burner instead of a potion.

Starting new expedition:

• Witch Mountain is finally available from the portal in the Hermitorium. You need to have proper Navigation Chart though.
• Beams of light, which show the locations of the levels you can teleport to, now have also the secondary function: their appearance suggests current difficulty of a given area. Pay attention to their color and number of skulls around them. Keep in mind that increasing your Gnosis also increases difficulty of some of the levels.
• In the “Heading to” window, information about active incense won’t be displayed until you burn your first incense. This is to not overload fresh players with unnecessary information.
• New incense icon in the “Heading to” window. It now depicts incense burner instead of an old potion icon (which didn’t make sense since we changed the Alchemy system in the previous update).
• Added “Echo Quest” section to the “Heading to” window. It starts to be displayed when you unlock the Vestal Flame, and reminds you to activate “Echoes for the flame” quest before starting an expedition.
• Reworked “Heading to” window so that its layout and animations always adjust to the number of currently visible sections, meaning it should look right regardless of the order in which you unlock the sections.

Inspect Screen:

• Inspect Screen is now able to display different 3d models of the same type of item, depending on its state. It’s used to change the appearance of active / inactive Shadow Orb.
• Added button which lets you speed up the progress of current mysterium quest in exchange for a charged Shadow Orb. The button is displayed only when you have at least one charged Shadow Orb in the inventory.
• Slightly tweaked the layout of spells’ and magic items’ inspect screen.
• Fixed issue with “Power” description in the Inspect screen being too narrow in some cases. It resulted in strange haikus such as “Allows to Dash/mid-air” in Ring of Wings description. It’s no longer the case. (We’re sorry for all the players expecting more Japanese culture influences in Witchfire.)

Preyer Screen:

• The active incense widget in the Preyer Screen no longer reacts to clicks. There is no Easter Egg when you click it 420 times. Really. Don’t click it, you’ll be disappointed. I told you.

Other:

• Updated the credits.
• Pressing I on KBM now opens the Inventory (similar to M opening the Map). You can rebind this key in the Settings -> Controls -> KBM -> User Interface.

Technical:

• Fixed rarely occurring crash related to UI animations.
• All items icons (in the Inventory, Preyer Screen, Gunroom, and other places) are now loaded asynchronously. It should eliminate some of the hitches, especially if you play on a HDD.

Audio:

Music:

• Implemented a new Main Menu music track by Mikołaj Stroiński.
• Implemented new music pieces by Mikołaj Stroiński that play in the Witch Mountain.

SFX:

• Designed sounds for the new weapons.
• Designed sounds for the new spells.
• Designed sounds for the new version of the Fallen Preyers.
• Designed sounds for the new interactions with Shadow Orbs.
• Designed sounds and built a reverb layout for the Witch Mountain level.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue that prevented some of Frostbite’s reloading sounds from triggering in high combat situations.
• Redesigned some of Frostbite’s reloading sounds.
• Made Striga’s projectiles trigger their impact SFX when hitting Hollow Wretch projectiles.
• Redesigned the Shieldbearer’s barrier SFX.
• Redesigned the Dynamo Ring’s sound and included new ones to better illustrate its mechanics and make it more distinct and audible.
• Implemented missing SFX for the Meteor Ring’s fiery trail.
• Tackled an issue where Vulture does not always have impact SFX (does not explode upon every hit).
• Tweaked the range at which the Plant Traps warn sonically of their presence.
• Fixed an issue where Vulture does not always have impact SFX (does not explode upon every hit).
• Fixed an issue where a water sound effect is missing in Castle.
• Added missing slide SFX for the Meteor Ring.
• Corrected the early trigger of SFX Plant trap.
• Added Striga SFX when hitting Hollow Wretch projectiles.
• Fixed an issue with Frostbite reloading sounds not being played.
• Improved Shieldbearer barrier SFX.
• Made the Dynamo ring SFX more audible.

General:

• Moved the end of content message at the end of labirynth.
• Fixed an issue where radar and minimap freeze.
• Fixed an issue where Bonus Witchfire (Arcana) has no effect with high Metanoia stat.
• Updated the description of the herbalist’s Brew to include all the plants.
• Fixed an issue where alt-tab leads to game freeze (low reproducibility).
• Fixed an issue where players are able to use Demonic and Regular ammo packs in Hermitorium.
• Fixed an issue where Resilience Incense does not reduce damage by 50% during the effect of healing.
• Fixed a crash on opening inventory.
• Fixed an incorrect Woodsman egg texture.
• Fixed incorrect Bandit eyes flash VFX.
• Refactored Bolt Action Rifles animations and reload logic.
• Fixed flat healing incense’s effect on manifestations.
• Fixed incense providing armor while healing.
• 2nd Mysterium activations only count for explosions triggered on enemies.
• Fixed Whisper’s cone damage hit detection at close range.
• Shotgun misses no longer trigger for each pellet shot.
• Major improvements to AOE damage processing (spells, explosions, etc.).
• Fixed portals muffling sounds when closed.
• Fixed Prophet being recognised as a miniboss, he’s a big boi now.
• Fixed interaction prompts changing their texts during fade out.
• Small tweaks to selection of best aggro target. AI should now be less forgetful when a new foe approaches.
• Universal handling of hostile influence for projectiles. AI should now be able to figure out that enemy projectiles are going to hurt them.
• Added new Ogre Jump animations.
• A bunch of animation optimizations that should help with performance, especially with enemies occluded by geometry.
• Fixes to various AI projectiles to allow damaging other AI units.
• Optimization to enemy Melee logic.

Witchfire uses the photogrammetry tech The Astronauts previously used in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. This tech allows the devs to 3D scan real-life objects – even entire buildings! – and use them as digital assets in our games for unparalleled visual quality, and natural, organic look and feel. The Astronauts believe we can push the tech even further, with new tools, hardware, and all the experience we gathered during the development of their first game and can’t wait to bring you along on the ride.

Witchfire is coming to PC (Steam / Epic Games Store) in 2025.