Update! Witchspire has now received 200,000 wishlists and released a new gameplay trailer - watch it below.

A little over two years in development, Witchspire is a co-op open-world survival game that’s threading a tricky needle: to keep the best bits of the genre’s progression and peril, but make the moment-to-moment experience feel more cosily welcoming and less punishing to newcomers.

Witchspire is targeting Early Access in 2026. PC Games Insider caught up with Swedish team Envar last year for an early look and chatted about their philosophies and inspirations, and how they want to bring a sense of joy to a field more usually associated with grind.

“It’s set in a world of magic and wonder,” explains lead producer Liam O’Neill. “You play as a witch or wizard who’s been transported to a new world. You’ve accidentally reactivated an ancient monument called a Witchspire. It’s a conduit for travel between worlds, and now you need to try and find your way back home.”

What stood out in our demo wasn’t just the scale (floating islands, varied biomes, a sense of real distance), but how Envar is using witchcraft as both flavour and function. Base-building happens via astral projection, resource gathering leans on enchanted tools and rituals, and your collectable familiars aren’t just combat companions, they’re little workers you can slot into crafting stations back at home. Survival pressures, too, are pushed later into harsher regions rather than front-loaded as constant hunger-and-thirst drains.

Building with magic, not muscle

“A lot of survival games are grounded and gritty; you start naked on a beach with a rock,” says Envar’s game director Oliver Granlund. “Instead, we asked ourselves how to make this magical.”

Witchspire uses an astral projection concept instead of requiring your character to physically go around hammering things together. Your character leaves her body, and in astral form, you can build freely (“in a way reminiscent of creative mode in Minecraft,” adds Granlund).

You plug pieces together like LEGO blocks – and if you are attacked, you’re pulled back to the original character location. You’ll need resources to build with, and of course, they’re gathered magically too.

“It wouldn’t feel right if you were punching down a tree as a witch!” says O’Neill. “So we created magical tools that make it faster. [In a game like this] the first ten trees you chop down are satisfying, but the hundredth isn’t. So our tools speed things up. For example, one magic sickle pierces through trees to harvest several at once.”

And as you specialise in various types of witchcraft, you can regrow areas of the map that you’ve already harvested, even calling down magical seeds from the sky to instantly grow new forest areas. The goal is to make it feel fun, and even whimsical, while still being recognisably a survival loop.

“The world is big,” says O’Neill. “We want players to get lost in it. You can settle bases wherever you like, even multiple ones, and link them with portals. Some players will spend 100 hours building; others will just set up a camp and get back to boss fights. We want both to feel supported.”

Progression without punishment

As with any explore-and-survive game, traversal is important. How do you get around this huge place? It turns out, you can fly.

“You can’t have a witch without a broom!” jokes Oliver Granlund, showing how your character can take off and zoom high over the landscape.

You start in the friendlier grasslands before taking off on your broom – or through portals – to harsher biomes. “Later you’ll reach deserts and the crimson tundra,” explains Liam O’Neill, “There you’ll need special gear and potions, or you’ll freeze or burn. We don’t want to punish you just for existing but the idea is: when you push deeper into the world, the world pushes back.”

Oliver Granlund concurs: “It’s an ease-in approach, unlike Valheim, where you chop down a tree, and it falls on you, and you die! We want to invite players who might normally avoid survival games, without removing the edge.”

You level up as you explore and build, through “a mix of a traditional tech tree and skill-gated progression”. Granlund and O’Neill explain that as you gather and create, you’re unlocking skills like logging and mining, and although there is no class system per se, it is possible to specialise (in building, cooking, farming and so on).

“Familiars also level up,” says Granlund – some are rarer than others, and all can help unlock abilities. You can have up to three familiars equipped at a time, and station them to perform functions on your base. Familiars can also help in combat, where they have both an auto-attack mode and special abilities you can trigger. Familiar permadeath is an option for hardcore players.

Cosy worlds, dark edges

There is menace in this world of magic and mystery. There are “corruption events” where “a comet might strike anywhere in the world and create a dark bubble filled with corrupted creatures”, reveals Oliver Granlund. He points to corrupted wolves as an example of high-risk, high-reward encounters. “Cosy doesn’t have to mean utopia,” muses Granlund. “Think of Studio Ghibli: bright fields but also darkness and threat. That duality is key.”

And there’s a lot of that duality in the story itself. As well as the corruption events, you’ll also uncover hints of the lost civilisation that built ruins and dungeons across these magical landscapes. The world feels folkloric, but as with all fairy tales, there is a shadow at the heart; in this case, it’s the Witchspire itself.

Liam O’Neill tells us: “The overarching goal ties into the Witchspire itself. You see its silhouette in the background. You’re slowly reawakening the Witchspire. Why it chose you and what it means is part of the mystery.”

Elder Scrolls and Breath of the Wild are clearly inspirations in the way the lore of the world is told as you pass through it. “We want dungeons to combine narrative, combat, exploration, and puzzles,” says O’Neill. “It’s not narrative-centric, but the narrative is present.”

From outsourcing to original IP

Witchspire is an exciting move for Envar, which started as an outsourcing studio – its clients include the likes of Riot, Tencent, and Blizzard. This new game marks a drive to dedicate part of the company to developing its own IPs. They plan to self-publish Witchspire in 2026.

If you are developing or publishing PC games, remember you’re welcome at PG Connects London this month. It’s not just for mobile studios these days. There is a dedicated track for PC and console talks and panels on stage and an associated Big Indie Pitch for PC games (pre-registration required) on 20th January, as well as other sessions and roundtables relevant to all games industry professionals.