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0 Witchspire is an excellent game for those looking to collect cute critters and fly on a broom as a witch, even if it’s a little rough around the edges.
Envar Games may not be too popular, but its portfolio is fairly impressive. Known for co-developing games such as League of Legends and Overwatch 2, Witchspire is the first full-scale in-house project the studio has decided to tackle. Released in early access for PC via Steam, the game’s several flaws hide a relaxing and calming experience.
The Makings of a Magical World
The open-world survival genre has seen a massive boon in popularity recently, spawning tons of games that utilize similar crafting mechanics. Witchspire takes those mechanics and blends them with a witch-based cozy game that lets you soar in the sky, collect cute creatures, and unleash magical attacks.
Gameplay
Witchspire is an open-world action-survival game, though the survival aspect isn’t really too prominent. Mechanics such as hunger meters and mandatory rests aren’t present in this game, instead being replaced by recipes and abilities that restore your abilities. While this removes some of what makes a survival game actually about surviving, you’re still collecting materials to use in your recipes or while crafting.
The game lets you create your own character, with the character creation being somewhat decent. You then enter a magical open world with a looming ancient evil. In typical fantasy fashion, you have been chosen to rid the world of this evil by uncovering a mysterious civilization. This primarily happens through notes and grimoires left behind by others
While Witchspire’s opening tutorial and overall story are engaging enough to keep you occupied, the game’s combat is where it shines. You have access to all sorts of wands that you can use to utilize varying attacks. Different wands have two primary attacks. The first is the basic attack, while the second is a stronger attack that drains your magic meter. Fortunately, your magic automatically replenishes, adding a strategic gameplay loop to the mix.
Witchspire has a familiar system through which you can collect all sorts of creatures. The game features over thirty different species in its early access, and there’s a healthy mix of rarity, typing, and appearance to appeal to those who enjoy collecting creatures.
While you choose your first familiar at the start of the game, you have to defeat other potential familiars in combat. There’s a lot of RNG involved here, since creatures have a chance of dropping their souls when you beat them, letting you capture them. However, the game has ways to make this process easier, including incense.
Once you form a bond with a creature, you can use it for different things. Every creature has two attacks that you can utilize in combat, so you should expect to experiment a lot with which ones work for your playing style. The game lets you quickly rotate between multiple familiars, letting you benefit from type advantages and use familiars based on the situation at hand.
Like many other survival games, Witchspire lets you upgrade your character through the game’s RPG-like leveling system. Certain actions affect different stats, and repeating them eventually levels those stats. In addition to your character, every creature also has a differnet branching skill tree that you can utilize to strengthen your Luminaries even more.
Witchy Crafting Galore
Building in Witchspire doesn’t bring much to the table, at least on a surface level. You’re still looking for materials to craft all sorts of buildings and structures, whether it’s a house for you and your friends to live in or a workbench you can use to craft weapons.
However, every time you press the crafting button in this game, your character sends themselves to what seems to be an ethereal astral plane. You start levitating and can go through walls and structures, making crafting genuinely enjoyable and unique. You can comfortably reach high and hidden places to add that extra oomph to your more technical structures. This also combats the camera angle problem that many survival games face.
Graphics & Audio
Witchpire’s art style is charming, even if it may look somewhat familiar to some. It has a somewhat anime-like art style that’s reminiscent of games such as Genshin Impact. However, the character design is a definite highlight. Every NPC you come across or learn about looks unique, which isn’t common in most survival games.
The game has a healthy variety of creatures to collect. From tiny rocks to large animals, there’s no shortage of cute, cool, or even scary creatures that you can find in the game. This variety keeps things fresh, ensuring that there’s something for everyone.
Witchspire looks great, but the game does suffer from some performance drops in its early access stage. The most common of these issues is related to the FPS randomly dropping. While it isn’t common enough for you to lose immersion, facing FPS drops during combat can be annoying.
The game’s audio design is great, whether it’s the sound of casting a spell on an enemy or your character fainting. I was pleasantly surprised when the music that played during exploration reminded me of some of my all-time favorites, including The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It has been a while since I stopped moving my character in a game just to let the music sink in. I definitely wasn’t expecting Witchspire to be the one to do it. If the early access alone has such great tracks, the full game must hold some more awesome tunes.
Longevity
Witchspire’s story is engaging, but it isn’t anything that really stands out. Fortunately, Witchspire does have the longevity that you’d expect from a game of its type. The game lets you invite friends over to your server. This makes it more fun to craft buildings, combat creatures, complete quests, or even just fly around.
Speaking of flying, you must unlock the ability to fly in every region individually. This is done by collecting fly orbs to power the flight pillar of every area. This is clearly a side activity intended to have players work to unlock the best traversal ability in the game. But it’s also an awesome way to have players explore every new region.
The survival grind is replaced with the leveling grind, especially in the early game. You’re constantly trying to level your character so that you can take down higher-level enemies. This adds a nice objective-focused gameplay mechanic.
Witchspire’s world is large, but it admittedly feels very empty. The developer has confirmed that the plan is to fill up the areas with subsequent updates. That’s definitely something to look forward to. The game already has different biomes to explore. Therefore, it wouldn’t be surprising if Witchspire’s world eventually becomes one of the best in the genre.
Final Thoughts
Witchpire has all the makings of a great open-world survival crafting game. The team behind it has already followed up on multiple promises. I can’t wait to see what future updates and the complete release have in store for it.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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