Witchfire has been in development for nearly a decade at this point. But the "new" FPS from Painkiller creator Adrian Chmielarz has been gathering pace since its arrived on Steam in early access last year (following an initial launch on the Epic Store in 2023). The RPG-infused shooter has received two chunky content patches in the last seven months, and now developer The Astronauts has announced that its "biggest update yet" is brewing in the cauldron, and will be poured into players' mouths later in July.
This update is called Webgrave, which sounds like a cooler name for the Internet Archive. Webgrave adds a new region to the game called the blighted town, which The Astronauts is being cagey with details over, as well as several new weapons. These boomsticks include the oracle sniper rifle, which can shoot enemies through walls, and a lever-action rifle named nemesis. The Astronauts don't provide any specifics for this gun, but given Witchfire's FPS heritage, it probably does something weird.
Yet Webgrave brings more than these straightforward additions. It also extensively reworks many of Witchfire's core mechanics. The Astronauts has been explaining these via a series of detailed articles on its website over the last few weeks. I shall attempt to summarise these below.
First up is an overhaul to Witchfire's workshop, where players can research new gadgets in a system inspired by Bullfrog's 1993 classic Syndicate. "Syndicate had many brilliant mechanics, with its research system being one of them," writes Chmielarz in a blog post. "You could commission research on weapons or gear, which took a fair bit of time to complete. You could speed it up with cash, but that money was also needed for other critical things. Ahh, the thrill of waiting for those higher tier cybernetic legs to finish…"
Witchfire's workshop functions in a similar fashion, but where Syndicate let players research projects within specific categories, Witchfire only allows players to choose the category, with projects within that category completed in sequence.
Elsewhere, Webgrave reworks its stats system around six new core stats—flesh, blood, mind, witchery, arsenal, and faith. Stats influence your character's playstyle in different ways. Putting points into flesh and blood will improve your physical prowess, while increasing mind and witchery will make you more of a sorcerer.
Unlike the previous system, these stats no longer take precedence over the player's FPS skills: "We rebalanced stats to make them impactful without overpowering skill, manual or strategic," Chmielarz explains. "They’re definitely worth leveling up, but we want to ensure that player skill remains central."
Alongside this stat overhaul, Webgrave introduces a secondary stat system called the Rosary, which Chmielarz says works a bit like Bloodborne's caryll runes. Players can plug a limited number of magical beads into the rosary to unlock specific, powerful bonuses. But you'll only be able to slot a given bead if you meet its stat prerequisites.
The system is intended to reward players who commit to a specific playstyle a la Bloodborne and other FromSoft RPGs, but without forcing all players to make such commitments through the core stat system itself. "Witchfire is about failing and trying again with a new setup—not repeatedly hitting a wall with the one you’re stuck with," Chmielarz explains. "You can master one setup and beat the game, but if we do our job
This isn't everything coming to the Webgrave update either. Chmielarz suggests at least one more gun will be added to the roster, and there may be further additions too. "We know that 'the biggest update yet' is often overused and abused, but we really mean it," Chmielarz says.
Witchfire's Webgrave update launches on July 28.
