Hunting A Witch

I am open about not playing Early Access games; I’d rather wait until the full 1.0 release, when all the kinks are fixed and updates have been applied to make for a full and complete experience. But recently, that changed.

I played Witchfire.

This first-person shooter comes from The Astronauts, the Poland-based studio behind 2014’s The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and it’s one of the best games I’ve played this year. Wilder still, Witchfire is not even complete. Now, I can’t ignore that I first played it weeks ago, nearly three years after its 2023 Early Access launch on the Epic Games Store, which was before its Early Access arrival on Steam the following year. I’m benefitting from the feedback of thousands of players who have helped the now-26 developers at The Astronauts make Witchfire the most compelling and promising shooter I’ve played in years.