Witchspire is a co-op open-world witch adventure where players explore, hone skills, and save the world from corruption. Read our review of its early-access build to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Everything We Know About Witchspire
Witchspire Plot
In this witchy, open-world adventure, players are the Chosen Ones, chosen by the Witchspire to save the world from corruption. They are tasked with honing their skills, getting more powerful and learning more about the world around them, until they are ready to face the mysterious Seeker, who appears to be the mastermind behind the corruption spreading throughout the planet.
Witchspire Gameplay
Witchspire’s gameplay primarily focuses on survival, creature collecting, and adventure. In this vast open world, players can gather resources, craft gear, cook dishes, battle against wild creatures and hostile enemies, and build a cozy homestead for survival.
And of course, what’s a witch without their familiar? Certain spirit creatures can be recruited and tamed, allowing players to bind with their spirits after being defeated in battle. They can be brought out into the field as allies or tasked with important jobs over at the home base.
While out in the world, a vast world awaits to be explored, either on foot or with a trusty flying broom—a witch’s essential vehicle. Islands are separated by land and sea, each with differing biomes and sights to see, as well as ancient ruins to discover.
Witchspire Release Date
Released on June 10, 2026, Witchspire is now available to be purchased in Early Access on Steam for $22.99.
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 Steam |
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| $22.99 |
Witchspire Review [Early Access]
Buggily Enchanting
Everyone surely has had dreams of being a witch or wizard sometime in their childhood, whether it be waiting for the Hogwarts letter that never came or somehow wishing that they could live as Chocolat or Vanilla from Sugar Sugar Rune (or was that just me?). Magic was a fantastical, beautiful thing, something that would definitely add spice to any poor old human’s life.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where none of that exists and we are nothing but painfully ordinary people with no mystical powers to speak of. And so, we hop onto the next best thing—video games that let you live out your fantasies.
Witchspire is one such game—it’s got base-building, combat, free-flying on a broom, and both adorable and powerful creatures to tame and become your familiars. This open-world adventure game has just the right blend of challenge and cozy vibes to cater to all types of gamers. While still greatly unpolished, it's got a good amount of engaging content to keep you going on this mystical journey to save the world from a certain doom.
Rising As The Chosen Ones
The prologue starts off with your character waking up in a strange, dreamlike world. A deep voice from an entity called Witchspire beckons you, the Chosen One, to awaken. The Witchspire lays out the groundwork of your task to save the world, that another being, The Seeker, will "find you in due time" and that you must prepare yourself. As always in these "world savior" type of games, it’s vague, it’s fragmented, but just interesting enough to keep you going.
You exit the dream world with a new familiar of your choosing in hand and set off on a magical journey. Additionally, you find out that several of your classmates from Thornveil Academy have already gone ahead in this unfamiliar world but have left notes scattered around for you to follow. Then, another disembodied voice calls out to you—one named Cirrus, who now takes over the Witchspire in teaching you all about the world you now reside in.
As you go through the main quest, you find out that the huge central tower in the distance is the Witchspire, a spire that harbors a tremendous amount of power. Cirrus instructs you to find the six keys hidden around the world to unlock it and harness its strength to save your classmates and many others, a journey that requires a lot of preparation and leveling.
And this is where your story truly begins.
Just A Little Bit Of Freedom in Everything
Witchspire has a little bit of everything, from survival to creature collecting to exploration. It plays similar to titles like Palworld and Grounded, with a bit of Valheim and Enshrouded in the mix. From the moment you step into it, its vast open world is ripe for the picking. Gather resources, craft gear, mix potions, cook dishes, and build your own lovely home base almost anywhere you want.
Survival mechanics are centered around resource management and gathering, base-building, and combat. There are no hunger or thirst meters in Witchspire, allowing for almost no-holds-barred exploration, day or night. Food and drink instead heal health and add bonuses such as extra stat percentages for a certain amount of time.
As you hone your skills in all aspects, you slowly progress through what is called the Luminary System and acquire more skills, bonuses, and recipes of gear and furniture. Starting from the bottom with just toasted berries and wooden houses and low-level gear, you’ll eventually make it to the big leagues with more powerful weapons, actual dishes, potions, and even creating your own flying broom.
The Luminary System relies entirely on the level of your Hearth, the core of your base and also your main fast travel point. Multiple Hearths (in limited quantity) can be found all over the Witchspire world, and you are free to place and build around them as you please.
It’s no surprise that it’s quite a grind to get all of these, but resource gathering is quite easy and doesn’t take as much time as it should compared to its contemporaries. In fact, it delves a bit into the cozy territory as well, especially when you start unlocking the more automated processes later on. I had a terribly fun time causing deforestation on the island with my magical ninja-like scythe blades just so I could build the log cabin of my dreams.
Gotta Catch All Of Them Familiars
No magical journey is ever complete without the trusty furry (or not furry) ally that follows you everywhere you go. In Witchspire, you can befriend up to 30 Familiars from all over the land, each with their own set of abilities, appearances, and elements. As said earlier, you get one for free during the prologue, but every other creature must be acquired the hard way—defeat them in battle and hope that their spirit likes you and lingers long enough to be recruited.
Early on, it feels like trying to find a needle in a haystack, with your chances of capturing a spirit abysmally low, so low that it would feel like a myth to catch. Even with incense, it’s not a guaranteed chance. For the longest time, I only had my buddy Bril with me because none of them stayed long enough to give me a chance (cue heartbreaking song here).
However, with the right amount of progression, farming, and perseverance, you’ll be rolling in familiars in no time. I now have a total of six familiars, one of them a Legendary one, which is a super-powered version of a common familiar, sometimes with a special name. In my roster, I have Peb, a strong, larger-than-average Rockling.
You can take a maximum of three with you out in the wild, with one on screen at all times, to assist you in solving puzzles and battling against enemies. Others can stay in the comfort of your home and help out with farming, crafting, or resource gathering.
Almost Free-For-All Base Building
And with your witchy familiar and perhaps a couple of friends (if you’re playing co-op), you’re set to go on a journey! But no one, not even a spell-slinging, hunger-less, thirst-less being like you, could just push on and on without stopping. Sometimes, you need a place to call home to rest your tired and weary bones.
Witchspire does all of that and with a little more. As mentioned earlier, when you place a found Hearth, you’re free to build around it—just the way you want. Build a sprawling house or a cozy cottage to your liking, and freely too. Build mode in this game makes use of astral projection, allowing for a complete 360-degree view of the entire thing, from left to right, and top to bottom. No need for those tricky loopholes or scaffolding to build the dastardly rooftop of your humble abode. For once, I’m not tearing my hair out at thinking of how to make my gosh-darn roof without causing fall damage (I’m looking at you, survival Minecraft and Valheim.)
What’s more, there are practically no limitations in placing most common items as well. You can embed chests into the walls, place them directly on top of each other, or have them float in midair if you so wanted to. Workstations can be a bit stricter in terms of needed boundaries, but they’re still quite free-placing in a way. Furniture and building items can be unlocked as the story progresses, allowing for more choices and functionality throughout.
It’s not customizable to a T, with no options to change color or add some paint (should be easy for a witch, right? But I digress), so manage your expectations—this isn’t The Sims or anything. Nevertheless, the set pieces appear nice and pleasing to the eye anyway, so you won’t have too much trouble making home look more like home.
Visually Appealing, Audio is Decent
Witchspire is quite gorgeous to look at, even at lower settings. Nothing amazing, but it’s got this cartoonish flair that’s perfect for what it's trying to be. Vibrant colors, fun enemy and creature designs, and almost seamlessly beautiful sceneries that don’t look out of place in a gallery. I find myself just cruising along in the air on my broom sometimes, just taking in the sights.
However, lags and random stutters do happen, especially in combat or when there are too many enemies on screen at one time—nothing out of the ordinary, but it has caused a crash or two. Players can also get stuck quite often, either with their foot on the ground or between rocks, but thankfully, the developers are well-aware of this, hence the Unstuck button.
Audio, on the other hand, is just serviceable. The background music is there, as are the sounds of nature and sound effects, but there’s often a lull of silence, and a long one at that. However, my main gripe is that the spoken voices are too faint even on 100% volume, especially Cirrus—for someone supposedly powerful and omnipresent and who appears to have a lot of lines in the game, their voice lines are faint, so much so that you might miss them sometimes.
Combat is A Hit or A Miss
But even with all that, there are places that need a bit of improvement. It’s in Early Access, so it’s a given that there are still a lot of crooked edges here and there. However, some of them can range from a mild annoyance to plainly frustrating.
For starters, combat can feel rather clunky. Of course, it’s not an action game, so I’m not expecting counters and parries and all that, but it doesn’t feel as tactile as it should be for a game that expects you to be doing it often—pacifist or not, you will be needing to fight against creatures for their resources to progress smoothly.
The targeting can feel a little strange at times. This is most evident when you primarily use Wands over Spellblades. Some attacks just don’t connect, even when the attack has clearly landed. This extends to the gathering tools, the logging scythe and the mining pickaxe, as well, with their attacks going off to the side without any explanation. A minor inconvenience for the tools, but for combat, that doesn’t seem great.
There is a dodge mechanic, but it doesn’t feel as polished. Many creatures will have bullet-type attacks that hone in on you even if you dodge them properly, which will make you, inevitably, take a few hits to the HP bar. And sometimes, even if you manage to know their pattern, it still manages to hit you. This feels a bit worse as a Spellblade user, making you face-tank some of those pesky bullets because you’re a melee warrior, and especially when the game throws several enemies at you in one go. At least my healing items are being used, but still—it feels frustrating when a dodge mechanic doesn’t…let me dodge the way I want it to. Perhaps it’s also just more evident when playing solo, but a solo playthrough shouldn’t be a reason for such.
Enemies may also have the tendency to glitch in and out, either being untargetable or having regenerating health because they’re out of bounds for their supposed area of effect. They also manage to seemingly pop in from out of nowhere—there were multiple times where I went into an Al’uun ruin or a Froblin camp with no enemies as far as the eye could see (and no, there are no invisibility mechanics as far as I know), only to suddenly get ambushed by a handful of Froblin Mages, Grunts, and Archers from all sides. Small fry, but they’re terrible when they’re a lot, and the clunky dodge won’t help you at all.
One thing I can't fault it on though, is how flashy and awesome it all looks. Look at that beautifully timed explosion. Yep, that's all me. I did that.
Needs Quality of Life Improvements
Witchspire has got its basics down and a decent amount of content to go through that will keep you entertained for hours. However, the overall experience could definitely be improved if a few tweaks were made to some of its basic functionalities.
Firstly, it would be good to have the option to respec the Luminary System points, especially if you’re leaning towards a certain kind of playstyle that’s different from the one you initially started with. It’s something that has become pretty commonplace for games of its genre.
I started the game relying on Spellblades more than Wands, so I put in some points in their damage output. However, as I progressed, I found myself just sticking to Wands and thus rendering Spellblades almost obsolete. The five or so points I used on Spellblade nodes could be used for something more substantial in my current playthrough.
Inventory management can be quite the tedious task for someone who prefers seeing their items organized at all times. There is no option to sort your inventory, even just by type. For that to happen, you’d need to do it…manually. It’s a daunting task for someone who has pretty much caused mass tree destruction and has piles upon piles of logs to sort through, clicking and dragging in an endless cycle. Erm, yes, that’s me.
Perhaps it’s a minor thing to most players, but in a game like this, where resource gathering and management are essential to progression, a bit of organization can go a long way. Every time you’re out in the wild, you’ll always come back with a bag full of loot. Things like a sorting button would do wonders for the overall game experience as well.
And, as a game still ironing out the creases in its overall gameplay, expect that there are a lot of things that just don’t work well or would need a loophole. An example I have is that I can’t just click on Peb’s skill tree in the menu—for some odd reason, I have to open up another familiar’s skill tree first and then click on Peb’s for it to work. And even when I fill up the nodes on it, they don’t reflect on the numbers. I’m pretty sure I have over 3 points in his added damage stat, but it still only reads as 1/5.
Some items refuse to be crafted unless you teleport out into another Hearth then come back to the workstation. It doesn’t fix itself through Unstuck or through reloading the game, and that’s the only "loophole" I’ve found to work. I’m glad I found a fix, as I would be pretty darned frustrated if I were locked out of an entire crafting line just because the game said I can’t craft the ritual candles. There are also a couple of other more minor things, although these seem to be the ones I am affected by the most.
Still Climbing to Its Peak
Witchspire is obviously still very rough around the edges, with most of them quite evident to the usual gamer. However, it has a solid foundation and a clear aspiration of what it wants to be in the future. Content-wise, it’s chock-full of fun things to do and discover, alongside a decently intriguing story—a little cliché, but it doesn’t take away from the overall experience.
Whether you’re here for the story, for the mage-witch gameplay, the cozy-like vibes of just building your perfect homestead, or just meeting all the cute creatures the game has to offer, Witchspire has something for everyone, and they do it well enough to keep you around for…maybe longer than you anticipated.
In the meantime, I’ll still be here, trying to get all of the familiars to love me while also creating the largest castle I can do.
Game8 Reviews
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Witchspire Product Information
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| Title | Witchspire |
|---|---|
| Release Date | June 10, 2026 (Early Access) |
| Developer | Envar Games |
| Publisher | Envar Games, Envar Publishing |
| Supported Platforms | Steam |
| Genre | Adventure, RPG, Simulation |
| Number of Players | 1-6 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Witchspire Official Website |
