Patch 0.5.1 is out with a Frostbite buff and a couple of fixes. It seems like doing the preview was a good idea as the actual release of The Brewing update is relatively nice and clean. A bow to all who played and reported, seems like it might be something to repeat in the future.

There a few known tiny issues but nothing that should affect the witch hunting too much. We are taking a Christmas & New Year break and will be back in the trenches on January 7th, picking up the work on the Witch Mountain and its L########. Thank you all for buying and playing Witchfire and being a great and lively community that helps the newbies, exchanges protips and builds and experiences, and digs into the lore. Have a fantastic holidays 💝🎄🥳


PATCH 0.5.1 (57565)

Frostbite:

• Reworded Mysterium II description to accurately describe its effects.
  
• Increased base damage by 10%

Designer Note: this makes bullets boosted by Mysterium I actually impactful, as they reach new damage breakpoints and require less bullets to kill most enemies

• Increased the maximum duration of Mysterium II freeze. The duration now increases much more for each bullet spent after the 3rd one
  
• Freeze duration boost increase from Mysterium II now also appllies to the frozen trail from Mysterium III
  
• Max magazine size have been decreased from 8 to 6 bullets, so it’s easier to maximize freeze duration

Designer Note: our plan for Frostbite was to make players choose between optimizing their damage and their freeze potential, based on when they decided to reload. Before, the freeze increases weren’t meaningful enough, and it rarely made sense not to reload after the boosted bullets were spent

• Changed Stigma Diabolicum damage multiplier from 1.6/1.7/1.75 to 1.2/1.3/1.35

Designer Notes: Stigma Diabolicum was always meant to deal around 25% more damage than ordinary weakspot (crits) hits. However, until recently it dealt around 25% more damage than a bodyshot instead. We fixed that, but mistakenly we did so on two fronts – the damage multiplier was increased, and the damage multiplier started using weakspot damage instead of bodyshot damage as its base.

• Fixed an bug that caused Siren’s Shell not to work when used in certain scenarios
  
• Heavily optimized Vendor’s UI refresh logic. Buying multiple items in quick succession should no longer affect your framerate.
  
• Angelus’ shield now correctly processes pushback from enemy attacks starting from 1st Mysterium (was: only on 2nd and 3rd).
  
• Actually changed Incense costs, as indicated in yesterday’s patch
  
• Fixed incorrect Siren’s Shell pickup prompt
  
• Toll Collector in the Castle has extra collision around his legs now and shouldn’t kick the player upwards when approached

Folks, just like we promised in the previous news, the Brewing Update is out for all of you. Over the past two days we have taken a deep dive into the pool of bugs (both detected on our own and reported by you – thank you for that!) and did our best to squash as many of them as possible. We fought gallantly and got rid of all the nasties. That doesn’t mean we’re done, so expect the final patch for this year to drop tomorrow, dealing with a few smaller issues.

Before that happens however, you may be pleased to hear that no shenanigans are required to access the new content; you may need to restart your Steam client to trigger the update, but when the fresh files are present, you’re good to go.

That is, unless you’re one of the people who played the preview – if you did, you need to change the branch back to default one, effectively reversing the process you completed when you opted in:

• Right-click on the game in your library, select "Properties...",
  
• Navigate to Betas,
  
• Expand the drop-down menu next to "Beta Participation",
  
• Select "None" from the list,
  
• Close the properties window.

It's also a good practice to restart steam at this point. You know the drill.

Now, if you have been playing the preview and you want to keep the progress from the past two days, you will need to tinker with the saves – please bear in mind that you’re doing it at your own responsibility. If you want to proceed, please:

• Head over the folder with your save files, by default it can be found at to C:\Users\[YourWindowsUserName]\AppData\Local\Witchfire\Saved\SaveGames,
  
• Copy all the files in the folder and paste them somewhere else on your disk – better safe than sorry, a backup is always a good idea,
  
• Open the “Preview” folder and copy its contents,
  
• Paste the contents in the main SaveGames folder,
  
• Voila!

This should (and I cannot stress it enough, you were playing a preview of an update of an Early Access game, please bear this in mind) import the saves from preview into the main game and allow you to continue right were you left off last time you played the preview.

As mentioned above, we are planning to release one more patch with additional fixes tomorrow, but please do keep the bug reports coming – the more info we have, the more bugs we can get rid of.

Oh, and we’re also part of the Steam Winter Sale – it’s your chance to grab the game at 10% off. We're extremely happy with the high praise you have given us in the recent (95% positive reviews in the past 30 days) and not so recent times (93% positive reviews all-time), and this may be a good moment to let your friends know that they can own the game at reduced cost. Thank you ːdemonheartː

That's it for today -- have fun playing, and don't hesitate to let us know if you encounter any bugs -- and we'll see you again soon.

Good things come to those who wait - the impatient ones can reach out for them on their own.

As you may know from the previous news, we decided to split the upcoming Witch Mountain into two parts - The Brewing is going to be released on the 19th of December, and the second part will be released early next year. We've decided to accelerate things a little bit, at least for those among you who are not afraid to get their hands dirty, and thus a preview of The Brewing is available right now.

We will obviously be fixing bugs, with planned patches dropping tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and on the 19th we're going to make The Brewing available for every owner of the game without the need to change anything at your end. For now, however, The Brewing is in a bit of an experimental mode, so you may encounter an occasional bug here and there (more than usual), and we decided it should be an opt-in kind of an update.

1. If you are on limited Internet, do not play the Preview. Opting in will download the patch, and going back will download the game again. No problem for those with fast unlimited net, but for everybody else, just please wait for the official patch on the 19th.
   
2. We are already aware of some bugs, so if you want the cleanest experience, just wait two days. Also, while you can clone and use your savegames from the main branch, anything you achieve when playing the Brewing Preview will NOT transfer back to the main game (at least not automatically, wink wink). So the Preview is just an early peek for fun, not an early release of The Brewing.

If you still want to play the Preview, in order to unlock it, please do the following:

• Restart Steam,
  
• Right-click on the game in your library, select "Properties...",
  
• Navigate to Betas,
  
• Expand the drop-down menu next to "Beta Participation",
  
• Select "preview - Public preview branch" from the list,
  
• Close the properties window.

Done! The game will update and you will be able to dive into the game and get your hands on Alchemy, new weapons and items, experience Hermitorium Moods and Boss Reshuffle. Here's a handy summary for those of you who would rather see things than read about them:

You can also wait and have a more polished experience this Thursday, but we know you like to be on the bleeding edge (Witchfire is in Early Access after all!), so... Have a blast!

P.S. We made a topic for the Preview feedback: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/3156770/discussions/0/561358509790283810/

Multiple studies have found that when asked “good news or bad news first?”, roughly four out of five people prefer the latter. So let’s get the bad news out of the way.

We have to split the Witch Mountain update into two parts. The first part, called The Brewing Update, will be released on December 19th, next week. The second part, still called the Witch Mountain Update, will be released early next year, as soon as possible.

Why?

Let me offer this summary of events:

• After the Steam Early Access, we started the work on the Witch Mountain.
  
• We also wanted to include other cool things, like Alchemy.
  
• Mid-dev, we realized we had a new, better idea for the Witch Mountain.
  
• We switched to the new design and pushed hard to still make it on time.
  
• Despite our best efforts, ultimately we had to admit we needed more time.
  
• What to do? Delay everything or release a smaller update now?
  
• We chose the latter.

It was not an obvious decision. We researched extensively to understand what makes a good Early Access update. What we found wasn’t surprising: people love content. What was surprising was what people consider content: new playable areas. We’ve seen with other games that players react most positively when updates include new levels, zones, regions, and the like. New gameplay features and even new gear or enemies were well-received, but not quite as exciting.

Ultimately, we decided to go with the smaller update even though it doesn’t include any new territory to conquer. We’ll see if it was the right move, but our motivation was simple: to give you something to enjoy during the holidays if you’re craving more Witchfire. After all, you’ve never fought the Ogre on the beach before…

Is the Witch Mountain delay worth it? Is this new idea for it so much better?

The honest answer is we don’t know. But that’s what makes it exciting. Because it’s terra incognita.

The original Witch Mountain was supposed to be a series of caves, each cave protected by the true version of the Familiars. See, the Familiars you’re fighting in the Scarlet Coast or the Irongate Castle are only weak echoes of true, more powerful bosses. These bosses guard the lair of the witch, and the idea was you had to kill them all in order to get to her. One notable feature was that once killed, the True Familiar would stay dead forever.

In other words, imagine a boss rush kind of level, with a series of caves full of hard encounters against more powerful versions of the Familiars. Conquer the Witch Mountain and you’re now facing the witch herself.

The problem is… you’ve played that before. If you soloed any Destiny 2 dungeon, or if you fought Bulletstorm or Borderlands or Doom bosses… you already kind of had that experience.

And there is nothing wrong with that, of course. Soloing Crota’s End on hard is probably in my top three gaming memories ever. It’s just that Karol got an idea for something very much different. Karol is the designer who brought you Prophecies, the Tower, the Prophet boss, and the Cursed Arcana — so you know he’s not short on creativity.

The new idea is risky as hell, but our internal tests and plays show that it can be fresh and exciting. I do not want to oversell it; it’s not that we are revolutionizing first-person shooters or anything—but it is something I have never experienced in Witchfire before. Here’s a teaser image that will tell you absolutely nothing about it, as it’s just the entrance to the [redacted].

We are working on this new version of Witch Mountain all the time, but even with a heavy crunch, it would not be ready in time. We are close, but we need a bit more time. We want to release it as soon as possible; it’s going to be all hands on deck after we return to the studio after the Christmas/New Year break.

But, as I said, and now it’s time for some good news, that update was to be accompanied by a couple of cool new things. And we’ve decided not to delay them and indeed release them next week, on December 19th.

Here is what’s coming.


Remember The Wishing Table from the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales? There’s now one in the Apothecary in the Hermitorium. It refills your potions and ammo each time you return from an expedition. Yep, no more potion crafting.

But potions and ammo are just the basics. For anything fancier—say, if you want to inhale something that improves healing abilities—you’ll need to use Alchemy. Find recipes, obtain ingredients, and craft your chosen incense. Use it before the expedition to enhance various healing features.


A feature promised some time ago, and now about to be delivered. Time stands still in the land of the witch, but the Hermitorium is free of her influence. Experience different times of day and night…and the mood that depends on how the expedition went down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYV5NB5kXuY

There will be a few small bonus surprises, too.


Preparing for Witch Mountain, we have now put the Familiars where they belong. The Galley Slave now rules the Scarlet Coast, and the Dimacher guards the Castle. The Shieldbearer becomes…you’ll see. All Familiars got updated with new moves.


As always, new toys to play with, including two new weapons.

And here is the summary image:

Last but not least, December 20th is our last day at the studio this year, and then we see each other back on January 7th. I and my two co-founders feel that the team deserves this extra break for all their hard work so far. And I will finally have the time to play Cyberpunk 2077, yay!

Since The Brewing Update releases on the 19th, we only have one day for patches or hotfixes, which isn’t enough. That’s why we’ll be releasing a beta version on Monday or Tuesday for those who want to enjoy it earlier and help us find bugs. Details coming soon.

Till next week!

Dylong on X: “@TheAstroCrew Is there a chance for polish language before the full release?” / X

Yes, but closer to release. It’s very simple: things change all the time, I keep rewriting descriptions and notifications and other text. Maintaining all those changes in multiple languages would take time I’d rather spend developing the game. But rest assured, Polish will be among the languages supported. We will probably do a localization pack anyway.

One of our players wrote this on Witchfire‘s Steam forum:

Early access is like asking a ton of unknowledgeable people that don’t cook into a kitchen to make food instead of an experienced chef – you’re not going to get a ton of good feedback in general and the good feedback will be buried in tons of useless nonsense or emotional things that have nothing to do with your game […].

Lots to unpack, as the kids say these days (do they still?).

But before I get to why Early Access works for the developer, let’s think for a second why some players like it and buy games that are in Early Access.

I think there are two major reasons.

Back in the 1990s, a friend who ran Poland’s biggest gaming magazine told me that most reader letters asked for behind-the-scenes content about game development. This is why they asked me to write a monthly dev diary of sorts for the mag, which I did for a couple of years.

So I think one reason why some people might buy Early Access games is to witness the evolution of a game. To participate in the discussions about it with devs and fellow players, to see and experience firsthand how the project changes, morphs, and grows. To see what it takes to bring the game to final quality and how to deal with the development and marketing.

The second major reason is simpler. There’s a saying in Poland, “the quality of your sleep depends on how well you made your bed.” I don’t think “as you make your bed, so you must lie in it” conveys it well, but “as a man sows, so shall he reap” does. In other words, if a player likes a genre or a game, participating in Early Access allows them to directly and indirectly influence the final shape of the game.

I can offer a perfect example. There was a brief period when Witchfire got a bit cartoonish – colorful, with looter shooter vibes:

2019. Placeholder HUD. Still… Ew…

Players were disappointed and told us this wasn’t what they wanted from the game they fell in love with through the moody dark fantasy teaser. We murdered that new look faster than John Wesley Hardin drew his Colt.

To tell you the truth, we had already come to the same conclusion ourselves, but the strength of the players’ reaction not only confirmed we weren’t wasting any more time on the cheery looter shooter vibes, but also made “dark fantasy, stupid!” a non-negotiable tentpole of the game.

Are there more reasons why people might buy an Early Access game? Sure. Wanting to be in the avant-garde, to taste something fresh before others. Wanting to have something that refreshes with each update, offering great value for money. We even have players who bought Witchfire now just to support us, and they are not touching it until the final release.

Sweet. Okay. But why would a developer want to go Early Access with their game?

The first and obvious answer is money. Most Early Access games come from indie developers, and Early Access is a way to keep the studio afloat.

In our case, we did not have an issue with organizing money, but it would come at the cost of having to sell some of the studio to investors. Going Early Access on EGS allowed us to keep 100% of our independence, and opening Early Access on Steam allowed us to secure the future and grow the studio.

The second reason is course corrections. Yes, individual feedback might get lost in the noise, but when it’s repeated, it will be heard. For example, players were crystal clear about how imbalanced the Calamities were a year ago. Their feedback made fixing that feature our priority, and the game is better for it.

Gnosis is an even more spectacular example: it exists because we needed to address the difficulty—and the cheesing of it—that players were vocal about.

Is this something regular testers would reveal, too? Maybe. Maybe not. Do studios really thoroughly test the game at every major stage of development, using hundreds of testers? Very few do. It’s a giant cost, and only some can afford it. Certainly not an indie studio.

But there’s more here. Something even more important.

The way you develop the game when in Early Access is very different from the way you develop the game the old school way. This could be an entire post in itself, so let me just give you the outline.

The old school way is developing and implementing multiple features at the same time, and actually, it’s quite blurry what the “stage” of such development is. There’s always something going on; the game is in a permanent work-in-progress stage.

With Early Access, not only is it easy to divide the game into stages, but you also keep it all clean to make sure the next update goes well. As a result, it is easier to see the big picture, as each stage is clearly defined both feature-wise and content-wise. Thus, it’s easier for us to understand what next steps would make the game better.

Better!...

The third reason is actually connected to the above: the keeping it clean part.

I cannot find the exact quote, but a Blizzard dev, when asked why a release was buggy despite the studio having access to hundreds of testers, replied that in the first hour after launch, the game was played by a thousand times more people than during the entire development.

Games are really complex now, and even if you’re the best developer in the world, once your game is out, someone will find something. Early Access helps us keep the project in a much cleaner state than the old school way of squashing the bugs right before the release.

The fourth reason is something I call a nudge. As a studio full of creative people, we do not suffer from a shortage of ideas. But people discussing things out loud on our Discord or Steam forum, or proposing this or that in the Suggestion section, do sway the needle. We often use quotes from the players or their general sentiment in our dev chats.

Actually, sometimes it all goes beyond nudging the design in a certain direction and directly spawns a feature that would not have existed otherwise.

Now let’s look again at the quote from the beginning of the post:

Early access is like asking a ton of unknowledgeable people that don’t cook into a kitchen to make food instead of an experienced chef – you’re not going to get a ton of good feedback in general and the good feedback will be buried in tons of useless nonsense or emotional things that have nothing to do with your game […].

It’s an interesting observation but I don’t think this is 100% correct.

First, logically, if there’s “good feedback” that gets “buried,” then we cannot say that only “unknowledgeable people” participate. In reality, it’s indeed a mix of players of every kind, from trolls to deeply knowledgeable, experienced veterans that intuitively understand game design.

Second, note how the first three major reasons I offered in favor of a developer going Early Access have nothing to do with the above quote. So even if the noise was indeed a big weakness of Early Access, there are more than enough reasons to still do it.

Third, yes, there’s noise. But we consider the feedback valuable enough that we have our QA guys monitor the Discord and forums and report daily, we have devs participating in discussions, and we have just hired a Community Manager to help with the matters even more: to distill the non-bug-related feedback and suggestions into a daily or weekly digest for the studio. Hopefully, he will be able to start in January.

Fourth, and I know this may sound surprising, but I believe that “useless nonsense or emotional things that have nothing to do with your game” is often feedback one needs to seriously and honestly consider. You will need to dig deeper to understand where this or that sentiment is coming from or why, say, something seemingly simple and innocent got an emotional response from the players, but quite often this is as important and as influential to the game as the regular “logical” feedback.

So yeah, there’s noise in Early Access — but in my opinion, it’s worth dealing with. Witchfire is a better game because of it.

And here’s my favorite argument for Early Access lately: Hades, developed this way, was an incredible success for Supergiant. They made mountains of money and earned players’ love and respect. They could have easily chosen to go the old-school development route with Hades 2, maybe just using more testers than your average indie studio can afford. But they didn’t. Hades 2 is also an Early Access game. That tells you something’s working well here, doesn’t it?

One last thing I want to add is that all of the above may not apply to every game and every developer. I’m not going to pretend like every Early Access game is developed with the best of intentions or that it will deliver joy to people looking to see how a game evolves or to taste it before it gets big. I am only speaking for us, The Astronauts. For us, Early Access and the involvement of players have been a blast — and we hope the game is a blast for you, too.

Next week, news on the WM update. Till then!


Good question. Somebody else asked about underusing Shift, too.

Generally, it’s not wise for us to use the “system” keys like Esc, Enter, Shift, etc. Not only this sometimes causes issues with Windows, it also clashes with some resident software — and PC players love their Shadowplay, TinyTask, overcloakers, Beeftext, ShareX and many more. So many more.

But we will look into it. After all, PCs are all about customization of the experience. If you have any other things you want done in this area, feel free to ping us on X or talk about it on our Discord[discord.gg].

Dear preyers,

Are the witch and her undead horde giving you trouble? Then this might be the perfect category. It's definitely not 'Sit Back and Relax' ...is it? Which other categories can you see Witchfire in?

This way or another, it's all in the name of good fun. Witchfire or not, The Steam Awards season is upon us -- so go ahead and choose your favorites!

P.S. Working on the next big update for Witchfire as fast and best as we can. Details soon!

The final hotfix for the High Stake update is is out, notes below. Seems like this is it and now we focus on the bigger December update codenamed WM!

• Ring of Thorns: Now properly grants Ice Arcana
  
• Ring of Thorns: Fixed an incorrect ability description on Mysterium II
  
• Sigma Diabolicum no longer grants Decay Arcana at Mysterium I
  
• Obelisk event no longer shows up in Madman’s Dream
  
• Obelisk event no longer activates from inside of the island’s Vault
  
• Lowered the Mysteria I activations for Psychopomp upgrade from 40 to 20
  
• Fixed a misaligned crosshair on the All Seeing Eye ADS that was causing it to aim at a lower point then all other weapons
  
• Tweaked the All Seeing Eye front sight to make it more visible
  
• Fixed Calamity objective UI showing a completed objective if you re-trigger calamity just after completing the previous one
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing player health drop below 0 if the Assassin calamity spawned in the same run in which Foul Stimulant was used, causing the inability to shoot and look up/down as well as other issues
  
• Text polish pass on the new stuff
  
• Fixed the Calamity’s double rewards bug
  
• Fixed visible crossbow’s projectile when interacting with the Collector or Gnosis book
  
• Witchfire Guard and Foul Stimulant are now mutually exclusive and cannot be used at the same time during expedition
  
• Fixed percentage bonus formatting of Firepower Boost Arcana

As promised in the road map, here is the Fast Response patch. Which turned out to be Medium Speed Response patch, as it took us three weeks instead of two, but at least it's finally done.

Unless a critical bug is found and a hotfix is needed, this will be the last patch until December, for which we have a bigger update planned: new content and all.

The patch today is mostly focused on balancing and bug fixing but there is a couple of interesting redesigns here and there. Also, extra ...things were added to the Island of the Damned. But to be 100% clear, this is not a big content update or anything. Just something to make sure the game is in a good state when we focus on the December update.

Here are the full patch notes:

• The Island now has a new Obelisk event, a mini-boss and a new area around the galleon with an extra event. A tease of upcoming new things hangs nearby.
  
  
• Experimental ːcoolstar2022ː: added Crosshair Spells Notifiers -- a widget which is displayed around the crosshair and notifies you when one of your spells recharges. This feature is experimental and hidden by default, you need to turn it on in Settings -> Gameplay -> Experimental section. (Please note that this feature isn't guaranteed to stay and may be removed in the future.) Tell us what you think, we'll be happy to read your feedback!

Ring of Thorns

• Ring of Thorns has undergone a thorough redesign.
  
• Designer note: Ring of Thorns requires a very risky gameplay style, and thus needed a much bigger reward for playing well – hence the redesign.

Whisper

• Whisper can once again stun Familiars and Faithfuls, but it takes a few shots, depending on the target's size

Hangfire

• Removed a hidden "Fourth Mysterium" from Hangfire, that ballooned its single target damage out of proportion.
  
• Designer's note: Early in Hangfire's design process, it had a different Mysterium II:"Explosions get stronger the more bullets are lodged in the same enemy."We changed it to the current version, not only because it wasn't particularly engaging and was pretty overpowered with the right setup, but we also found out that making Hangfire a more crowd-fighting oriented hand cannon gave it a stronger identity. The problem is...that Mysterium was accidentally never removed from the game, So both versions of Mysterium II activated when the gun was upgraded. Whoops.
  
• Hangfire had its single target explosion damage and stun damage adjusted: subsequent explosions on the same target deal less and less damage.
  
• Even with the "Fourth Mysterium" removed, Hangfire's single target damage and stun potential was still just a tad too high for its desired place in the combat sandbox. This feature was implemented so it could be reigned in without compromising its crowd-fighting capabilities
  
• Increased Hangfire explosions base stun damage on initial target by 300%, and lowered Hangfire's bullet stun damage by 20%.
  
• This makes Hangfire actually better at controlling spread-out crowds with explosions, while not being overpowered on single targets thanks to the new stun damage decrease on subsequent hits.
  
• Increased ammo reserves from 90 to 120

Flamebreath

• Increased Mysterium II bonus damage on Burning targets

Midas

• You can no longer trigger Mysterium III repeatedly by interrupting reloads.

All-Seeing Eye

• One more bullet in the clip community suggestion

White Raven's Feather

• Cost on Unveiling Arcana lowered from 2 to 1
  
• Slightly lowered the amount of Feathers dropped

Foul Stimulant

• Now grants +100% witchfire for the whole run duration, in exchange for lowering health and stamina by 50% and preventing the corpse from spawning on death.

Witchfire Guard

• Now protects all volatile witchfire on death, but there will be no corpse left behind to recover treasures from

Merchant's Stone

• Now grants a significant heal, but consumes three random treasures from the Inventory

• Fixed Stake Gun projectile launch location
  
• Fixed an issue that caused enemy pathing to fail following the target
  
• Fixed Buckler Swordsman collision to correctly reflect the mesh community request
  
• Fixed teleporting enemy losing the elemental status applied prior to teleport community request
  
• Removed some clutter from the Adventure Log, like mentions of locked supply chests
  
• Tweaked some enemy drops to be more appropriate to their difficulty
  
• Fixed a bug that caused "New Elixir slot unlocked" to display on incorrect levelup
  
• A thorough balance pass has been made on Arcana parameters
  
• Adeptus Major and Adeptus Minor had their description tweaked to better describe their use
  
• Adjusted some Mirror Lock switch locations that were unreasonably hard to pinpoint. Fixed reward chest that spawned turned the wrong way around
  
• Improved Rarog's Egg event rewards community request
  
• To avoid confusion, changed the Soultrap’s "Event Failed" notification to "Event Finished" when you fail to fill up the Soultrap before the timer runs out and only get partial Demonic Ammo rewards.
  
• Absorbing Manifestations now heals significantly more
  
• Potions now drop slightly less often from chests
  
• A malevolent being now watches for Manifestations left unused for too long…
  
• When inspecting the monk statue in the Tower, golden footsteps now lead you to the scepter making the statue puzzle easier
  
• Witchfire cost of cleaning areas with the scepter has been lowered from 5K to 2K
  
• Witchfire cost of Gnosis Upgrade has been raised to limit accidental upgrades
  
• Added the the second ship objective for Gnosis I to clear up any confusion
  
• Ambush at Tower Gate has been polished and is a bit more newbie friendly
  
• Fixed Ice Sphere and Heavy Gunner’s shield being valid targets for the stake
  
• Fixed Firebreath second mysterium always being active
  
• Fixed Firebreath second mysterium affecting enemies that weren't already on fire
  
• Fixed multiple gameplay related crashes
  
• Fixed broken spells inputs after switching spell casting mode back and forth in the settings
  
• Fixed locked dash direction on controller when switched dash mode for KBM
  
• Enemies no longer lose their elemental statuses when teleporting
  
• Severed Ear's reload trigger is no longer spammable due to reload interrupts
  
• Fixed conditions for 2nd Mysterium activations objective for Hypnosis
  
• Fixed sometimes incorrect notifications about available Ascension
  
• Rotten Fiend is no longer a valid target for lightning jumps between enemies
  
• Casting Rotten Fiend when another one is already active will correctly remove the previous one on any Mysterium, rather than only on the highest one
  
• Fixed Rotten Fiend's Decay aura
  
• Fixed a crash happening when some inputs were left unbound in the settings
  
• Fixed hidden weapon bug when trying to swap weapons and using Elixir at full health
  
• Fixed Silent Secondary corrupted Arcana preventing swap to Demonic weapon using Quick Swap input action
  
• Fixed loot drops for Sister, Devotee, Wretch and Sentinel enemies
  
• Trying to cast a Spell while dashing will now correctly cast it right after dash ends instead of failing
  
• Stun bar UI above enemy health should now correctly display its value after switching targets
  
• Spell cooldown icon no longer appears as ready when it's still recharging (micro cooldown bug)
  
• Increased the threshold required to change platform input icons using mouse or controller thumbstick
  
• Moving the cursor with thumbstick while pressing (A) will no longer display KBM icons on the UI
  
• Improved rebinding so that you can override other binds
  
• Added better Sharpen option (lets you restore the soft pre-patch look)
  
• When interacting with the Gunroom, you will now see notification icons (little stars) leading you to the new gear. No more guessing whether 'new gear' means new weapon, spell, relic, fetish, or ring. Little star (and corresponding objective: 'New gear awaits in the Gunroom') will disappear after you hover a new item with your cursor -- there's no need to equip it if you don't want to.
  
• Added a new objective displayed in the Hermitorium when it's possible to start researching a new gear (weapon / spell / magic item). This should help new players understand how Workshop Mirror works. It should also eliminate instances when you start a new expedition only to realize you forgot to start a new research. (However, please note that objective is only displayed when there's gear to be researched -- incantations are currently ignored, as they are not limited and can be researched infinitely.)
  
• Added safeguard in the logic of displaying map icons, which hopefully will fix the bug with the icon with empty name and description
  
• Settings / Controls: missing bindings are now displayed in red, making them easier to spot.
  
• Settings / Controls: added warning popup which is displayed when you try to go back from the settings, and some of your bidings are still missing
  
• Settings / Gameplay: changed the names of 'Screen effects' setting options to be more descriptive
  
• Adventure Log should no longer display duplicate messages
  
• Optimized Adventure Log memory footprint
  
• Updated credits
  
• Fixed mouse cursor hotspot being in wrong position across various screen sizes
  
• Fixed Striga's projectile sometimes phasing through enemies
  
• Better collision detection for Striga's projectile
  
• Slightly lowered tracking on Warrior Priest and Maceman attacks to make dodging them more viable in intense combat scenarios
  
• Slightly lowered aim leading for Devotee projectiles and made her more inclined to push closer to its target
  
• Fixed camera shake rotation on melee attacks from sides to better reflect hit impact direction
  
• Fixed All Seeing Eye position while aimed-down-sights community feedback
  
• Shieldbearer's Shield dome radius increased by roughly 20% to make staying in it a slightly more managable task

• Added ambient sounds to the Island of the Damned
  
• Designed sounds for the Obelisk scenario that occurs in the Island
  
• Replaced the All Seeing Eye’s radial damage sound
  
• Designed an additional radial damage sound for the All Seeing Eye’s decay shockwave
  
• Added a new sonic element to part of the reload sounds for Hangfire
  
• Tweaked the attenuation range of Hangfire’s explosions
  
• Improved the sonic transitions that occur when the preyer teleports in and out of the Wailing Tower
  
• Tweaked the End of Cooldown sounds for the Charged Melee, Light, and Heavy Spell abilities to make them more audible
  
• Tweaked the attenuation ranges of many of the Proximity Mine sounds
  
• Fixed a small issue present in the sound of the Proximity Mine’s explosions
  
• Made a change so that the Bells that anticipate a Calamity remain audible for players who mute the game’s music
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing Cornucopia's casting sound to get interrupted

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.

---

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