Witchspire is many things, but I believe it’s best summed up as a creature collecting survival adventure game, at its core. You’ll scavenge materials, craft and find equipable weapons and equipment to upgrade your character (and familiars), and level up everything along the way as you expand your exploration opportunities to nearby lands, fighting enemies and “bondable” creatures that you can recruit to your team (if you’re lucky!) Additionally, though I didn’t explore this side of the game as much, you’re able to design, construct, and decorate nearly wherever you want within the game through its building system. Through “Hearths” that you find and place within the lands, you’re able to move quickly around your chosen homes with fast travel, allowing for an impressive amount of customization when it comes to coming up with and creating your own witchy world in a functional or fantastic way. There’s also a story you discover through magical books dotted around the landscape that give you some history on what has befallen this land you magically find yourself in. The “end goal” of the campaign currently is to gather enough keys to try and enter the towering Witchspire that rises triumphantly into the sky and discover what dangers befell your friends and this universe.
The Beginning of the Journey
The game just released in Early Access, and my playing experiences all happened within the couple weeks before it officially released, so I want to preface my review by saying a few of the complaints that I have should be regarded as temporary and not necessarily issues that will remain in the 1.0 release of the game (or even by the time you read this review.) I’ll start off with what I really loved about Witchspire. Firstly, it is one of the most chill survival games I have played in a while, but without being -too- cozy. It was addictively easy to get wrapped into hours-long play sessions as I flew around on my broom, uncovering the map and its hidden chests, portals, and story beats along the way. It gave me the same feeling, on a smaller scale in both of these cases, as I had when first playing Immortals Fenyx Rising, a 2022 sleeper hit, or on occasion Palworld, with its roaming colorful creatures that you could tame and fight with interchangeably. I was also incredibly impressed with the sheer size of the experience that’s already available. I had no idea there was another set of floating lands beyond the original forestry world we first found ourselves on, and literally said, “What!” out loud when I laid eyes upon the “rest” of the game I had in front of me.
A Familiar Bond
The most enticing part of the entire experience for me, and what drew me in as a player, was the ability to bond, battle, and build with the wide variety of colorful animal-like creatures you can recruit to join you. You’re able to do this by having a chance for every defeated familiar to stick around as a glowing spirit orb that you can then pick up into your inventory. From there, these little (and sometimes large) familiars can do several things. Each one has their own set of two attacks and an upgrade tree, both of which can be used to more effectively dispatch enemies you face out in the world. You’re able to equip up to three at a time, and then during your adventuring you can instantly swap between them at-will. It took me a while to realize that sometimes my most effective combat strategy involved shuffling between all three familiars, launching their attacks between my own, and maximizing our damage output. The possibilities for this are exciting, and I’m sure there are abilities and combos that will take a while for the community to discover.
Fighting in the Fields
You’ll be able to upgrade your weapons and familiars by gaining experience points through clearing out enemies while pushing further and further out into unexplored territories. There is just enough to discover out in the world to keep things interesting, and with a huge skill tree to climb through, there’s a lot to unlock and look forward to as you put your hours of playtime in. Even with my server settings adjusted (another nice feature that allows you to adjust the difficulty and progression rates) it still felt like a wealth of building possibilities, weapon options, and creature maximizations were always on the horizon. Out on the floating lands, you’re able to find chests filled with materials, equipment, and other trinkets. Some of these are locked behind simple platform button puzzles, or through plinths you have to shoot with a certain element type. It’s not rocket science, but it makes you put a little forethought into how you assemble your team of familiars or equipped spells of your own before venturing out. It’s laid-back, still rewarding, and I feel like it will be the perfect pace for a certain section of the gaming populace. Thankfully, you’re still able to unlock achievements for the game with custom server settings on, truly allowing for the player to experience the game however they’d like (within the settings provided.) Plus, the ability to edit server settings at will, and it all being playable in single or multiplayer mode, with local servers, is fantastic. It’s easy to make backups to your files, too.
Combat within Witchspire feels less than magical, but serviceable, with the option to primarily use a spellblade, wand, or actual spells, all of which you can slot into an action bar that is swappable either through the use of number keys or your scroll wheel, and then through the use of the left and right mouse buttons to launch different attacks with them. It can get a bit hectic and “spammy” at times, especially with the amount of visual noise that surrounds the combat. Some enemies primarily attack by getting increasingly into your face, which makes using certain spells or familiar-based attacks pointless, as your projectiles will simply start just beyond the enemy that’s up against you, missing entirely. Other times, it was hard to tell exactly what was going on because of the amount of colorful slash effects, bursts, and chaos that was happening near me. The dodge system was interesting and unexpected, but in a good way, allowing for some dynamic, souls-like maneuvering from more damaging moves that some bosses employed.
Wanting to Dig Into Details
What’s a bit taxing is that simply leveling up yourself won’t improve your damage output. From what I experienced, the only way to continue facing tougher challenges was to find or craft better armor and weapons, along with leveling up my familiars (which luckily did increase their damage output with leveling.) This did help drive my gathering and searching expeditions, but the payoff for leveling up was surprisingly just a luminary point, from what I could tell. These points are used in the big upgrade tree that unlocks basically everything in the game, including new weapons, spells, crafting recipes, building styles, furniture, inventory, and more. You then use those points (which you can also find out in the world) to improve your skills, but only to a degree. The damage numbers are attached to your weapons or spells themselves, with bonuses from your character applied to them. You can view all of these numbers, and they glow green indicating…something, but you can’t dig into them like how I’m used to in other rpg games that employ a lot of percentile-based bonuses and upgrades. It’s sorta just a “trust us” situation, and you’re not really trying to min/max here. I also didn’t see a way to undo point allocations within your skill tree or familiars’ skill trees, so again, it’s much more of a casual experience than a hardcore one. It’s still in early access, too, as a reminder, so some of these things may still be in development. If not, I don’t think it hinders the game. It’s just a bit curious that the numbers and details related to your abilities are not more expounded upon within the game.
This extends to keeping track of the familiars themselves. As you collect more and more of them, there’s not a way to keep track of which ones you’ve found. This is a shame, since there is such a good amount of the cute and cool buddies, and they also have variants, rarities, and special versions you can seek out. They are simply presented and given as items that are moved around and slotted just the same as any other item, minus the ability to equip them on an active familiar bar so they can travel with you and attack. The roadmap for the early access title does show plans to have a compendium available so you can keep track, and I’m hopeful that this will be a deeper system so it’s easy to visualize which ones you have and what element type they all are. This info, specifically the element type, would be worth displaying someone on the familiar’s icon, since this info is important for counter elements and activating pillars in the world. But alas, we just get to see their level and how many skill points they have available to spend at the moment.
Seeking Sights
Witchspire ran exceptionally well on my computer, and traveling around the vast world went from simple to speedy once you unlocked the ability to use your broom in each new area. With such a vertically-driven world, you’re able to fly around, up, and down to a staggering degree, which causes the visual view distance to forcibly make some areas have that token “doughy” texture from far off, but the game still keeps its charm and style throughout the changing landscapes and high-rise escapades. The environments were very purpose-driven, and little areas felt hand-crafted for some of the familiars that inhabited them. It’s not the most densely populated or highly textured survival game out there, but it had its moments where I just had to take a screenshot to capture the scenery. I would’ve liked to have seen more than one boss battle arena, and if there was only going to be one, for it to be a bit more “magical” and epic than the one you find yourself jumping through a portal into for important fights. Sure, there are some pre-placed slightly bigger meanies out in the open world, but they don’t have as much of a punch as the ones that are amped up in the narrative. One of the later bosses that is out in the second land is pretty impressive, and gives me true faith that they’ll integrate more of those types of electric experiences in the future that encourage working on your combat skills more thoroughly.
Enjoying the Sounds
Audio-wise, Witchspire is fit for a fictional storybook. Its soundtrack is fanciful fantasy, with standard-fare music that adapts to the area or situation you’re in. Stepping into dangerous enemy territory is met with more impending beats, while flying through the air is light and wind instrument-filled. Your familiars will flap their wings, pad across the grass, and slide around on the ground all while letting out the occasional growl, hoot, or meow. Attacks are loud and bombastic, making the combat quite the scene, visually and audibly. Most notable in a positive sense is the focus the developers made to add natural environment sound to the experience, with lots of pleasing bug, bird, wind, water, and other well-delivered background noises filling the space while you play. There’s also a day and night cycle that delivers dynamically changing shadows, visuals, colors, and audio throughout the morning, day, evening, and night. My only change to audio would be some variety, as lots of the same songs and melodies noticeably accompanied my adventures.
Perfect for Early Access
Some improvements that I hope they make during early access that I sorely missed also included navigational assistance. There is an overworld map which you slowly reveal from the “fog of war” that is often employed in open world games, and there are also question markers throughout that lightly guide your exploration, which is otherwise unrestricted (minus the obvious need to fly to get to some areas.) However, you are unable to place your own markers or pins to help direct where you need to go, and objectives and important places only show up when you’re within a very close 200m distance, so more often than not, once I decided where I wanted to go I had to use the cardinal directions available on the top nav bar instead of any icons or beacons on the screen or nav bar itself. Additionally, there isn’t much guidance when it comes to the main quest objectives once the original voice line and description of what to do has passed. There isn’t a “completed quests” screen or the like, and there isn’t a system of side quests to go on or pursue. These aren’t necessities, but in addition to there not being a database of available familiars, there isn’t a saved list of notes you’ve found in the world, or a way to keep track in-game of where certain familiars, materials, or puzzles you may want to return to can be found. Some of these Quality of Life updates would make huge strides in keeping the game fun and functional in a gaming sense, rather than just a relax, explore, and build sense, which the game has going for it in spades.
In Conclusion
Witchspire isn’t a hardcore gaming experience, and is more so a chill, casual survival experience with more things to do and see than most. I debated strongly with a 4 for this game. It's more like a 3.5, with a few key changes needed to push it into a solid 4. I have full confidence its Early Access period will do just that. Switching from walking to flying was a breeze, and one that never lost its magical aura. So many good ideas made their way into the game, and I believe they have a solid plan to continue building upon their solid foundation. It’s a bit unpolished on the UI and progress-tracking side of things, but that’s hopefully what early access is used to iterate and improve upon. I did face a few bugs along the way, but the developers were quick to patch them and work with the community to solve issues as they arose. If the thought of magically building up your own budding coven by yourself or with a few friends and familiars sounds appealing, Witchspire will fit the bill admirably. It may just leave you wanting more, and luckily, more is on the way.
