In what will hopefully be a worthwhile decision, the development team at The Astronauts has decided to delay the release of their title Witchfire to 2023. This delay is due to the redesign in their combat from the originally designed arena-style combat to a new open-world style. This feature change is considered an upgrade by the developers and so it is likely to improve the expected experience.

If you are interested in a full reasoning for the chance, check out the latest Witchfire blog post by Creative Director and Co-Founder, Adrian Chmielarz. In short, he states, “The feature is now 95% implemented. It makes the game better. It is kind of hard for me to imagine the player did not have that freedom before. Sure, you can still be trapped by the witch in this or that spot, and some doors will be closed until you find a key, and it might be too dangerous to enter areas closer to the boss before you are ready– but the world is wide open for you to explore in almost any order, and you can both push forward and retreat as you please.”

They didn’t share a new trailer, so we still only have the gameplay revealed at Summer Game Fest 2022 to go off of, but at least the delay is only a few more months. Witchfire is still planned to release exclusively on the Epic Games Store and interested fans can wishlist the upcoming fantasy shooter title now. How do you feel about this redesign in combat? Are you more or less excited for the game now?