Witchfire Devs Confirm Game Will Kinda Be (But Not) A Looter Shooter

Ever since The Vanishing of Ethan Carter released and rocked my world, Polish-based developer The Astronauts has been a team on my must-watch list. The announcement for their follow-up game Witchfire proved this line of thinking with its crazy-good looking trailer, and although the game is still a while off (or so it seems) I have been keeping close tabs on its development progress.

Another reason why I enjoy following The Astronauts and their work is just how open and transparent they are, with the team, usually Adrian Chmielarz, posting blog updates that explain the game’s direction and respond to concerns and questions posed by fans. The latest blog post addresses the ‘concerns’ that Witchfire will be nothing more than a looter shooter, something that Chmielarz explains deeply. It’s a very interesting post and well worth a read.

Chmielarz starts by giving an overview of what a looter shooter is and what people dislike about them (spoiler alert: it’s mostly the business model and not the genre itself).

Hard not to agree the above is a disgrace unless you’re a suit that doesn’t give a fuck about games but likes his new yacht and calf implants.

The creative director then talks about what makes a good looter shooter and why they can work. It’s here he addresses the burning question: Is Witchfire a looter shooter?

Well, yes, but actually no.

Here’s the thing. While we don’t have any of the “business model” bullshit, we do have loot. We have bits of RNG. We have role-playing aspects. We have playability/replayability pretexts, a lot of them.

Technically, then, I guess one can call the game a looter shooter.

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However, in our case the emphasis, the core and heart of our work is the challenge itself. The loot is a tool, not the goal. You still need to master the game to be able to finish it, a good RNG won’t do the job for you. Actually, RNG mostly exists to fine tune your weapons, not to redefine them.

In other words, it’s on you to master your weapons and abilities, to come up with a plan and builds that support it, to execute that plan, to adapt and overcome. The witch won’t go down just because you hit a jackpot drop.

While I am not big on looter shooters, the idea that Chmielarz talks about sounds compelling. I just hope that Witchfire doesn’t forgo its story elements in exchange for ‘looter shooter’ game design. Either way I am keen to see how Witchfire continues to evolve and can’t wait for the team to show more.