Witchfire is a gorgeous, moody game. Everything is dripping with style. The movement is tight and every gun is creative and feels great to use. It's mind-boggling (and disappointing) just how little fun I have when playing it.


A well-designed game will comprise a balance of incentives and punishments. You're incentivized to kill enemies through XP drops; you're punished for ignoring enemies when you run yourself into a dead end and have a gaggle of foes on your tail.

It should go without saying that getting hit is something you want to avoid; you can only do it so many times before it's a game-over, In theory, no further punishment is necessary -- death is its own punishment because it ends your play session and you lose the progress you've been working towards. Surely, then, taking damage should be its own punishment. The Astronauts appear to disagree.

So what happens when you take damage in Witchfire? The first and most immediate effect is that you lose your ability to see sigils, an additional weak point that can be used to immobilize enemies, interrupt attacks, and boost damage. You lose this ability instantly and can only regain it by absorbing witchfire (i.e. killing enemies). You are punished for taking damage by losing access to a powerful ability that could help you turn a bad situation around. The game gets harder temporarily.

The next thing that happens is that you lose max stamina. Stamina which is used for every action in the game -- shooting, sprinting, jumping, dashing. You now have less leeway. Every action you take must be more considered. You're not able to dodge as often or to shoot for as long. The game gets harder permanently.

All this pales in comparison to the Calamity mechanic. There's a system in the game, which nobody seems to really understand, where making mistakes (of which "taking damage" seems to be one) will alert The Witch to your presence and she'll cast a curse on you. This curse can take the form of a flying pirate ship that shoots homing balls of energy, or a powerful knight who was actually just an area boss in the previous patch.

Yes, dear reader: taking damage from a boss can trigger the approach of another boss in addition -- one which will slowly drain your sanity and kill you regardless of your remaining health. The game gets an insane difficulty spike once it already has you on the ropes.

The developers have explicitly designed the game to work this way. They want you to be at your weakest before the Calamity appears. They think this is fun and that it makes sense in The Lore.

I think I don't care about how much sense it makes.

I almost never play early access games but I've been looking forward to this since the first teaser trailer back in 2018, and I bought it as soon as it was available on Steam. I've played both major updates and unfortunately the design ethos doesn't feel like it'll ever crystalize into a game I enjoy. Lots of people seem to love it (and will relentlessly tell you "git gud" in response to any feedback, despite the game ostensibly being still in development). I think I've given it enough chances to prove itself to me and will not be playing more.