There is a vast world of survival games available these days, whether you prefer a realistic and realistic version, a fantasy setting like Enshrouded, mythological games with Valheim or Palworld as it contains Pokémon-like creatures. That means there’s no shortage of games waiting for you to chop down trees and refine materials – two of the most uninteresting tasks in a game – which is why any game that can make that more engaging is worth a try. Enter Witchspire.
Witchspire is another survival game, sure, but this time it’s magical. I’m not talking about a little magic here and there, but a constant flow of magic. Literally everything you do is magical, whether it’s attacking enemies with wands and spell blades, felling trees with summoned sickles, or mining mines using ethereal pickaxes. You use magic to do everything except take out your number two, which speeds up a lot of boring stuff. This, to me, is the key to being a more interesting survival game at this point.
The other big appeal here is the fact that you have lots of little companions to run with. You can capture most enemies you fight, provided their souls decide to linger, and each of them can not only be upgraded, but they can also have different rarities, give passive buffs, and help out at your base by cutting down trees, speeding up crafting, and more.
It’s not like that’s all Witchspire does right. Despite being in Early Access, this game is absurdly pretty. The magical aesthetic is just incredibly pleasing to the eye, with even the enemies being rather cute to look at, despite their attempts to end your life. While you’re sort of let loose in this beautiful world, you’re given tasks quite consistently to move you forward in different areas and tasks.
Your main goal, to begin with, is to find other people. You woke up from a dream where you were chosen, and that’s all well and good and all, but everyone is gone. Traces of it can be found here and there in the form of magical journals, but not much else. It makes for a fun little mystery, and while it doesn’t reinvent the narrative, it’s enough to justify running around and building a base or two.
This all comes together to create a very enjoyable single-player experience, but you can also play cooperatively. It’s a simple way to elevate many games, but unfortunately it’s missing something, in my opinion. While you can jump into a game with a friend quite easily, the character you use is tied entirely to that world, not your own account. This means you can’t use it otherwise, and on top of that, the chests you can find only give loot to whoever opens them, giving this adorable co-op experience a weird competitive spike. These issues can certainly be overcome as the game is updated, and I’d at least like to see them take inspiration from Pokémon Pokopia, where co-op players’ inventories can be viewed and retrieved by the host from a central cache. Otherwise, your gaming sessions will forever end with cooperative friends spitting their items all over the floor.
Despite this bug, Witchspire is an enjoyable and incredibly pretty survival game that does a lot of cool things. The ability to fly on a broomstick, for example, allows for fantastic exploration, as does the ability to unlock multiple jumps, your awesome teleport sprint, and clever geometry too. It’s definitely a place worth keeping an eye out for, and if you like the vibe then getting there early might be a big shout too.
