'RPG shooter' Witchfire comes to Steam, and after a year of early access on Epic it's finally turning into the game I always wanted it to be

After a year as an Epic Games Store exclusive, the roguelike shooter Witchfire has made its way to Steam—and if you haven't played for a while, or you've been waiting for the early access game to cook a little more, I'm here to tell you that the past 12 months have seen it come a very long way in the right direction.

The Astronauts have been tuning Witchfire for a good while now with an eye toward making it less punishing: The initial release in 2023 showed all kinds of potential but the learning curve wasn't so much an arc as a brick wall with barbed wire on top, armed with a cricket bat and a bottle of Jack. 

That's changed, dramatically, in two ways. First, the addition in April of a new system called Gnosis, which replaced the original level-based difficulty with a wholly new mechanic that advances separately and much more slowly, and completely at the player's discretion. Certain aspects and areas of Witchfire require higher levels of Gnosis to access, so there is incentive to crank it up sooner or later, but you're now able to increase your character's attributes and push deeper into the game without digging yourself into a hole you can't get out of.

The other big step in approachability came in August with the release of the Wailing Tower update, which among other things added a new locale Island of the Damned. Despite the name, the Island is actually very (well, relatively) friendly to newcomers: Small and easy to navigate, not too many enemies, double resource drops, and no «calamities,» the semi-regular run-or-die interruptions that nobody likes. There's bigger trouble to be found as you explore and unlock the island's secrets, but overall it's a place where newcomers can rapidly improve their weapons and abilities, and more importantly get a feel for how Witchfire is played without having their asses mercilessly kicked.

Speaking of calamities, those have been nerfed even further in the pre-Steam High Stakes update. Essentially murderous storms of horror