The premiere of Witchfire Early Access on Steam went well. Actually, it went better than we dreamed.

• We have over three thousand reviews with a 91% user score. For an Early Access game! We could not be more grateful. And thank you for reviewing; this really matters for the Steam algorithm.
  
  
• We have sold enough copies not only to secure the studio's future, but also to be able to invest more in the game and make our Witchfire dreams come true.
  
  
• Across Steam and EGS, we now have one million wishlists. Actually, as soon as we announced this, that number jumped to 1.1 million.

We've put a lot of passion and hard work into Witchfire. I want to use this opportunity to bow down to the team, who not only never lost its faith in the project nor ever left for greener pastures but continues to work as if the best is yet ahead of us. And they are right.

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Overall, since our EGS debut in September of 2023, I think everybody won.

Epic got a pretty unique, good-looking game for a year to strengthen their shop's presence. The deal with Epic allowed us to keep our independence and continue development without selling part of the studio. And last but not least, gamers who purchased the Epic version got to play a truly different version of Witchfire, one that will never be seen again. More brutal, raw, unforgiving.

And when we were ready for Steam, Steam players got a game that, sure, is still unfinished — that's what Early Access is — but is in a better state and has more content than the initial release. What's there not to like? I would genuinely recommend any indie studio that can go this route to go this route. I am glad we did. We have just copied what Supergiant has done with Hades, and it seems to have worked well.

As for Steam, we were content with the way things started, but then they started to get ...even better. Thanks to the Steam reviews from the players, our helpful Discord community, Steam forums, and a few prominent streamers and YouTubers who simply enjoyed the game, our player count more than doubled. We literally were throwing the number in our team chat every ten minutes or so, enjoying the news.

We are also impressed with the Steam algorithm. It really does seem to work. As an example, when the initial two-week 10% off promo ended, we expected the sales to cool down until the next big update or news or sale. But ...no. Daily sales are still great, relatively to where we are, of course.

Rest assured that the success of the Early Access premiere will neither slow us down nor make us complacent. We are the type of studio that quickly tunes out the praise and focuses on the critique, and we have a vision of Witchfire that we want to execute as soon as possible. So, good premiere, gg team, thank you players — but now it's back to work.

Is there anything new we've learned thanks to the Steam premiere?

We certainly did. We learned how and when to let go, and what happens when you respect your players.

Let's start with the former.

The most painful thing for any game developer is not when someone screams at you on X/Twitter or when people fight ugly over a feature on a Steam forum or when someone trolls the comments under your YouTube video. Sure, these are not fun, but the most painful thing is reading an unfair press review and seeing your Metacritic score go down, or reading an unfair Steam review and seeing your user score go down.

Whether we like it or not, Metacritic and OpenCritic matter. A simple example: you need an investment for a future project. When you explain to the potential investor that your game sold well, even though the Metacritic score was merely so-so, they will start to have doubts about your ability to deliver high quality and might even consider your great sales to be a lightning-in-a-bottle thing you might have trouble replicating. But if you say you had great sales and a fantastic Metacritic score, they will now be looking at something much tastier and worthy.

The Steam user score is even more important. Imagine someone decided to check out your game because Steam recommended it. The first thing to look at: user score. It sits at 79%. "Ain't nobody got time for that" — and the person leaves the page.

Also, the user score matters for the algorithm. It's obvious: Steam is more likely to recommend good games to you rather than bad games. That is how Valve earns money, by keeping people happy with great games and a great ecosystem.

Now, sure, we have seen commercially successful games with low MC and Steam user scores review-bombed to the 50s, but they are merely exceptions to the rule—not something you want to risk.

So when you read a bad review, it's not just a bad review. With how things are structured, its reach goes beyond just being a note on the game's fun factor and quality. Publishers are acutely aware[nichegamer.com] of the impact user scores can have on a game's success.

But while these are the reasons why getting a bad review hurts, getting an unfair bad review hurts even more. I am sure you read your share of troll or questionable reviews so you know what I am talking about here.

What can you do about it?

Nothing.

What should you do about it?

Nothing.

To be clear, I mean the reviews you might consider unfair. Legit critique, no matter how harsh, is simply the feedback you must consider.

This is actually what Valve recommends in their Steam developer guides. They warn you that no all reviews will be constructive, and they say that rather than lamenting about it, you should focus on your game and the actual feedback.

I thought about it for a while, and I got it. In Valve's mind, it's better to focus on making a better game, so you get more positive reviews that would effectively neuter the bad ones, regardless of their fairness level.

And so we've learned to let go. Unless something is clear disinformation, we just see if there is something we should learn from the review or not, then move on to work on it if there was. That's it.

What about the second thing, then? About what happens when you respect the players?

Well, we are gamers, too. Every person in the studio is a hardcore gamer. So we know what we want from a Steam game. This is why we invested a lot of time and effort into our Steam page, into posting regularly—like the thing you are reading right now—and into talking to the players directly. We spend extraordinary time on playtests, and the game's stability is our number one priority. We basically flipped the script on Early Access, with the game being relatively stable and with enough content for some people to claim, "this feels like a full game already."

And what happens then?

I don't really have enough time to reply to every thread on our Steam forum, but one day I've decided to spend the night doing just that. There were a couple of clearly angry posts, some weird claims, some questions... I rolled up my sleeves and got ready to reply and explain and discuss... except people did that for me already.

Well, not for me literally, of course, but people responded to every thread I wanted to respond to in a way I would respond myself: defending the game, explaining it, helping to solve a technical issue.

It was hard to believe for me, but I simply ended the evening writing nothing. There was no need.

Valve knows this.

Another thing they write in their guide for developers is not to engage in discussions unless you really need to and to focus on making the best game you can instead. Because if you make a great game, then your players will help you out.

It's one thing to read about it, and it was another to experience it. Who knew that if you make a decent game you clearly care about and communicate with the players often and honestly, they will have your back?

So these are my thoughts after the first month on Steam. Witchfire is doing great, and we're working on cool new stuff. The promised Fast Response patch is most likely going out tomorrow, and then we focus on a fat update for December.

I want to leave you with a review that got us all teary-eyed. We got so many lovely reviews and emails that it was hard for me to choose just one. We read them all and post select ones to our team chat. I could easily quote fifty. So I just chose the latest one we got.

Hello, Astronauts.

I'm a college senior from Egypt, and I've been following your game pretty much since the day it stepped foot on EGS's front page. [...] I did not have the means to buy it. I pirated the game for a few months, a little after the first GGU is when I stopped pirating/playing and waited for a steam release.

Coincidentally I also got a credit card, which is the only way to make international purchases in Egypt, so I was able to finally buy the game at what I thought was an okay price (Thank you for good regional pricing!) and got it on steam.

I've been playing the game daily for hours on end, for even more than I was when I had pirated the game. I think you guys got something special here, and I'm here to implore you to create a "Early Adopters" of sort DLC/Edition for the game that can only be bought before the game's official release. Exclusive cosmetics, story tidbits, a semi-exclusive class that can be unlocked later or a weapon, even, would be fine.

I am mainly asking this because I want to financially support the game's development further but I don't see a donation or Patreon button.

I hope you guys have wonderful success with the game leading up to and after official launch.

Have a good one.

Sincerely,

A random middle eastern fan.

I doubt we will ever do any form of a FOMO exclusive, but that's not the point here. What got us emotional was the idea that we brightened someone's day enough for them to send us ideas on how to make more money for the studio. Also, we appreciate the honesty. Although it's hard to beat a guy on our Discord who pirated the game and then bought three legit copies to atone for his sins. No, this really happened, just hop on our Discord and search for "I bought three".

But I digress.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you all again.

Till next time,
Adrian

I think there are a few interesting things to say about Witchfire's difficulty, but let's get this out of the way first:

• The player's level does not affect the difficulty. You can Ascend (level up) and grow in power as many times as you want, and the difficulty will stay the same.
  
  
• Only the player's Gnosis level affects the difficulty. Each time you increase the Gnosis level, the game becomes more difficult. New enemies, new traps, and other dangers are added to the pool.

Yes, we are sure. There is one very tiny exception to this, which is that the Drowned Captain mini-boss (a Faithful) appears after reaching level 10 instead of reaching a certain Gnosis level, but this will be changed in the next patch. Other than this, only Gnosis affects difficulty.


Because each time you level up, the witch reorganizes her defenses. It basically means that we re-roll each map. So the new layout (enemy placement, trap placement, the Warden route, etc.) might be a bigger challenge, even if simply by the fact that it's new and you need to adapt to it.

Also, the presence of some enemies or traps is not guaranteed. So you might have played without ever seeing enemy X or trap Y, but the level-up re-roll finally put them on the map.


It is impossible to finish the game without increasing Gnosis. For example, some areas are locked by the witch with a spell so advanced that it requires you to have a deeper knowledge of all things occult and esoteric. Meaning: higher Gnosis level.

Another example: each level-up costs more and more, and you might want to increase Gnosis because with each increase you get more witchfire off enemies.

So yeah, sooner or later, you will have to increase Gnosis. But -- it's 100% up to you when you want to do it. There are players who do it as soon as possible, and there are players who spend dozens of hours leveling up before they increase Gnosis. So you have to do it, but it is 100% your choice when.


Now that we've cleared up those misconceptions, let's talk more about how difficulty works in Witchfire.


Here's a fun fact about the game: the HP of our enemies is static and unrelated to the player level.

The vast majority of RPGs, action or not, increase the HP of enemies with the player level. This is why some Skyrim players first visit all the caves to trigger setting their difficulty level at their current level, and only then level up.

From Soft games do it too, in a way. A late-game skeleton looking slightly different than the early-game skeleton will have way more HP. Because the game knows you have made significant progress and compensates for your ever-growing powers with the ever-growing HP of enemies.

Witchfire's enemies have the exact same HP -- each their own, of course -- throughout the entire game.


And yet, the player grows in power through leveling up. Your health increases, you have more stamina, and you can cast spells more often...

So... the game should get easier with each level up, right? Enemy HP stays the same, the player grows in power; it's simple math.

The thing is, HP is just one of many factors that can increase the difficulty. Here are a few more:

• Indirect/hidden HP increase: Elite versions of Witchfire enemies have a witchfire shield that absorbs some of the damage. This effectively increases their HP.
  
  
• More enemies: Increasing the number of enemies directly impacts difficulty. Imagine fighting a challenging enemy—a sweaty but fair fight. Now imagine fighting five of them simultaneously. The mental load and complexity escalate significantly.
  
  
• New enemies: These are difficult because you need to figure them out and understand their patterns. As Thomas Fuller said, "All things are difficult before they are easy."
  
  
• New, harder enemies: They move faster, their attacks are harder to avoid, or they have more HP than average. This way or another, they require more effort from the player.
  
  
• Limited resources: Imagine we do all of the above... but we don't give you more ammo.

We have even more tools at our disposal, but this shows how we achieve the increase in difficulty without scaling the enemy HP to the player level.


New and more challenging enemies appear, sometimes in larger groups; old enemies get enhanced, and resources stay limited. This is what you are fighting against, but you have your own tricks. You grow your powers, find or research and enhance your gear, gain allies, and use [redacted] to affect your combat style.

In the end, Witchfire's difficulty system creates a dynamic tug of war between you and the witch. As you grow stronger, so do the challenges you face, creating a constantly evolving and (hopefully) engaging gameplay experience.

The highlights include the community's suggestion to reset Stamina when interacting with stations or sections of the Hermitorium — thanks for that!

What's next? Unless there's an emergency, this will be the last patch for the next two weeks. We're now focusing on the "Fast Response" patch, as outlined in the roadmap (see the last news). This update will include a slight redesign of the game's first hour, general improvements to the Island, and some UI updates and quality-of-life enhancements.

Next week, we'll recap the Steam launch, but it's already been incredible for us. Despite very limited marketing (and that’s putting it mildly...), your word of mouth has helped the game reach a much wider audience. Those big streamers playing Witchfire? That’s organic — they’re playing it because they like it, and they heard about the game from you. Thank you!

Here are the detailed patch notes:


QoL Hermitory Upgrade:

• All stations regenerate your stamina when interacted with (Community Suggestion)

Cursed Treasures:

• Fixed inaccessible Treasure locations
  
• Tweaked Treasure spawnpoints that were particularly hard to spot
  
• Tweaked Treasures’ look so they fit better with the environment
  
• Slightly lowered the chance that multiple treasures will spawn right next to each other

Others:

• Whisper no longer stuns Familiars / Faithfuls, knocks them back instead. Please note that technically this is not a nerf but a bugfix. The weapon always had “capable to stunning almost any enemy” in the description.
  
• Both open and locked supply chest now drop more White Raven Feathers
  
• Changed the order of early Light Spell research order, so the player gets access to more elemental variety earlier. (Note: This will not impact any in-progress player research)

• Fixed rare crashes caused by async saving requests
  
• Returned hit fx to mushrooms to make it clearer which ones deal damage
  
• Fixed a couple of typos
  
• Fixed a minor shader bugs on sights of both Sniper Rifles that was causing the sight of Basilisk to show a big red X while jumping with lowered crosshair
  
• Fixed enemies being able to see the player through a wall in a few obscure scenarios
  
• Submitted a potential fix to the audio stuttering problems present at the entrance to the Tower
  
• Re-established the priority settings for some audio cues
  
• Some general sound rebalancing

The witch hunt rages on! Dive into the Witchfire Early Access Roadmap and see what awaits:

Detailed description and the 4K version of the image can be found here[theastronauts.com] on our website.

Thank you for you feedback here on Steam as well as on our Discord[discord.gg]. We do take it seriously, that is how we understand the point of Early Access. The Fast Response patch that is coming in October is a direct result of his feedback, and we will talk about it more soon.

The first patch for Witchfire High Stakes update is out. It's a small patch, focused on bugfixing. Working on one more fix, out tomorrow, hopefully. Then we sit down to work on your feedback, suggestions and QoL updates.

Patch notes:

• Crash fixes

These crashes were rare but of course needed being taken care of. We have fixed two and safeguarded the third.

• Fixed a hole in terrain, killed floating rocks on the island
  
• Fixed a significant streaming hitch inside the Wailing Tower
  
• Fixed misaligned vfx on Hunger’s Mysterium I
  
• Removed buggy color randomization on Assassins
  
• Fixed the bugged Antimagic Rune particle effects
  
• Fixed existing Mushroom spawns on the island and doubled their number
  
• Striga’s Mysterium I no longer incorrectly adds fire-oriented Arcana to the pool
  
• Added lightning strike sounds when Ricochet’s Mysterium III triggers
  
• Tweaked the concurrency settings asset that affects all music tracks

Witchfire Early Access is out now on Steam—grab it with 10% off and join the witch hunt!

The promo price is valid for two weeks from now. The game now features three big updates that we've made since the Early Access started: The Ghost Galleon, The Wailing Tower, and High Stakes. You can find more details about the game, as well as the roadmap and the FAQ on our website[theastronauts.com].

Witchfire Early Access releases on Steam at 6 PM CEST / 9 AM PDT, September 23. See the map for more details and launch hours in your region:

When Witchfire debuts on Steam, it will feature the latest update, codenamed High Stakes. Here are the highlights:

🔸 Striga stake gun
🔸 Island of the Damned's Witch Vault
🔸 Stamina and Calamities redesigned
🔸 Mysteria Forge
🔸 Visual Clarity Boost
🔸 Achievements

More details about the update and these features can be found in the latest blog post on our page[www.theastronauts.com]. We dive deeper into the (kind of obvious ːsmileiː) inspiration behind Striga, and we explain how the gameplay changes affect the core loops.

Also, we have updated the Early Access FAQ[www.theastronauts.com]. Actually, we have written it from scratch. We start with the basics, like what is Witchfire, then answer the most common questions. Here[www.theastronauts.com] you can find the answers to questions like platforms, content, co-op, language support and more.

Only three days till release!

Get ready for an unforgettable journey! Our dark fantasy RPG shooter Witchfire is coming to Steam Early Access on September 23.

During the next two weeks to release we will be revealing more info, like a thank you surprise for all Early Access players, or the exact hour of the release in various parts of the world. But here's a quick Q&A:

- Will my EGS save work?
- Yes

- Will there be achievements?
- Yes

- Controller support?
- Yes

- Will it work on Steamdeck?
- Yes

More news soon, the next two weeks are going to be something else for us... ːsmileiː