Bartski
Gold Member
A date, a feature, an indie drama and the biggest Q&A yet!
As promised last week... https://twitter.com/TheAstroCrew/status/1481353032705134596 …here’s the update on Witchfire. We will discuss the release date, a certain core feature of t...
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A ROGUELITE
Armed with strange weapons and forbidden pagan magic, hunt a powerful witch holding the key to your salvation. Witchfire is a dark fantasy roguelite shooter from the creators of Painkiller, Bulletstorm, and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.
That is our current logline (a brief summary of the game that shows the main theme, character and conflict). It might change. I am using it here as a vague reminder of what the game is. For now, let’s focus on why we call Witchfire a “roguelite”.
The terminology is kind of messy. There are roguelike games, and roguelite games. Theoretically, the first kind is just like a certain ancient game called Rogue. Meaning features like “procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death” are obligatory.
The second kind is more or less anything that vaguely resembles a roguelike. But in real life, we’ve seen roguelites called roguelikes and vice versa. No wonder, literally just a letter of difference.
From our perspective, the best reason we found to call a game a roguelite is a certain level of forgiveness, usually in the form of the so-called persistence layer. In human language it means that you don’t lose everything when you die.
A few examples from some better known roguelites… In Hades, you lose gold but keep gems, keys, and many other things that allow you to upgrade your hero and weapons. In Returnal, you lose your personal upgrades but not the upgrades on the guns. In Dead Cells, you can keep some of the gold instead of losing it all and all the unlocks are persistent.
To sum it up, hard-core roguelikes are saying: “when you die, you lose everything, but hopefully you also learn a lesson”. Meanwhile, roguelites are saying: “when you die, we do punish you for it, but we also let you keep some stuff so you can unlock and upgrade cool shit that might help you in the future.”
We’re like that. And more. Our persistence layer is big enough for us to consider calling the game a dark fantasy RPG shooter instead of dark fantasy roguelite shooter. But, at least for now, we’re totally fine with the latter. Roguelite it is.
“My name is Witchfire. Prepare to die.”