In August, the game development team called The Astronauts announced that Witchfire, their dark fantasy first-person shooter, would finally launch on Steam in Early Access sometime in the fourth quarter of 2024. The game was first released, again in Early Access, on the Epic Games Store in September 2023.
Well, as it turns out, it looks like Witchfire will be released much sooner than expected on Steam. The Astronauts have confirmed that the game will make its debut on Valve"s PC game store this Monday, September 23. A post on the game"s Steam page shows that Witchfire will launch on Steam at Noon Eastern time (9 am Pacific time) on Monday.
As it turns out, The Astronauts originally thought the game would make its Valve debut in November or even December 2024. However, in a recent blog post, the team said they decided to move up the Witchfire Steam release for two reasons. One was their Epic Game Store exclusivity period that ended on September 20, and the other was that the fall and holiday season was packed with "so much competition from big AAA games." So, it was decided to move up the Witchfire release.
Along with its Steam debut, the game will get a small but still solid free content update on Monday that will also be applied to the Epic Games Store version. Witchfire will finally add achievements for the first time with this update, and there will be a new witch vault to explore in the game"s Island of the Damned location.
Also, anyone who buys the game in Early Access will now get the Striga stake gun. The blog post states:
It pins enemies to walls or tears them apart, and the projectile ignites mid-flight. But there are new elements, too—new Mysteria. We’ll let you discover these for yourselves.
The new weapon is an homage to the stake gun in Painkiller, the game that many of The Astronauts team members worked on when they were at People Can Fly. When the final version of Witchfire is launched in late 2025, this weapon will be available for new players much later.