I cannot imagine the game without it.” – I replied. Built for roguelites lovers and those who hate 'em, Witchfire is a promising FPS offering a nightmarish change of pace.“I won’t be able to squeeze that in” – said the programmer. There's a sharp compulsion derived from the core components which bodes well for future expansion and iteration, with The Astronauts targeting another year of refinement before final release.

What's important is that the assembled bones of Witchfire are taking shape. These are points of friction which can be eased over time.

It's convoluted, and its placement slightly above the horizontal axis necessitates the pulling of crosshairs into unnatural ground – a problem shared with certain heavy spells, with the act of tolling the Cursed Bell coming at a heavy sacrificial cost to situational awareness in crowded combat encounters. Once there, dashing with an enemy in your sightline will spawn a 'soul sigil' which, if hit, will enact a stagger. I also struggle to get a real handle on the layered Stamina mechanic killing enemies increases the gauge maximum, eventually allowing entrance to a Focus state. A greater variety in objective type would be welcomed too, as the continuing return to the same handful of locations becomes increasingly tiresome without anything to do that doesn't necessitate bloodshed – The Astronauts has a keen handle on atmosphere, it just needs to do something with it. The binding of healing elixirs to the collection of herbs feels misplaced, with these integral resources nearly imperceptible across the environments. With that in mind, there's an increased importance on visibility and ingenuity, two areas which are in desperate need of improvement as Witchfire fights its way through Early Access. With these cycles in place, success is often found scribbled in the margins instead of being tied to progression through large maps or a lightweight narrative frame. In fact, the decision to strip away any accuracy penalties from hip-fire is a smart one, pushing further prominence to sharp movement and quickfire crowd control. While Witchfire encourages you to aim-down-sights, extending the range of many of your weapons, it isn't required to survive.

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