| Witchfire | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | The Astronauts |
| Publisher(s) | The Astronauts |
| Director(s) | Adrian Chmielarz |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 4 [1] |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release | September 20, 2023 (early access) |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Witchfire is an upcoming first-person shooter video game developed and published by The Astronauts. The game was released for Windows PC in early access in September 2023.
Witchfire is to be an action-oriented, skill-based first-person shooter game with no cutscenes. [2] [3] It will also feature elements commonly found in roguelike games. [4]
During the initial development, beginning towards the end of 2015, the game was being designed as a post-apocalyptic, science fiction survival simulator code-named "Astro Project 2", before turning into a dark fantasy first-person shooter. [5] Witchfire was officially revealed at The Game Awards 2017. [6] The Astronauts announced in January 2022 that Witchfire would be released via early access in late 2022. [4] However, in October 2022, it was announced that the early access date has been postponed to early 2023. [7] The game was released for Windows PC through the Epic Games Store on September 20, 2023. [8]
As of 2019, the development team has nine full members with three contributors. [9] The game is unrelated to the director Adrian Chmielarz's earlier Doom -style Painkiller (2004) and was influenced by FromSoftware's Dark Souls and Bungie's Destiny series. [10] [11] Its art direction inspirations include works of American landscape painters such as Thomas Hill, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Edwin Church. [12]
Unreal Engine (UE) is a series of 3D computer graphics and game engines developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter video game Unreal. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of genres of games and has been adopted by other industries, most notably the film and television industry. Unreal Engine is written in C++ and features a high degree of portability, supporting a wide range of desktop, mobile, console, and virtual reality platforms.
A first-person shooter engine is a video game engine specialized for simulating 3D environments for use in a first-person shooter video game. First-person refers to the view where the players see the world from the eyes of their characters. Shooter refers to games which revolve primarily around wielding firearms and killing other entities in the game world, either non-player characters or other players.
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People Can Fly is a Polish video game developer based in Warsaw. The studio was founded in February 2002 by Adrian Chmielarz, previously the co-founder of Metropolis Software, together with acquaintances Michał Kosieradzki and Andrzej Poznański. The studio's first game was Painkiller (2004). Its success led to a deal with THQ for the game Come Midnight, which allowed the studio to expand. After the game was cancelled, People Can Fly found itself in financial trouble. Epic Games acquired a majority share in People Can Fly in August 2007 and collaborated with the studio on projects such as Bulletstorm (2011) and Gears of War: Judgment (2013).
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Adrian Chmielarz is a Polish video game designer, programmer, creative director, producer and writer specializing in adventure games and first-person shooters. Chmielarz has co-founded and led Metropolis Software, People Can Fly and The Astronauts. He is one of the most prominent Polish video gaming figures, and has been described as one of the "most divisive" figures in the industry.
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