Witchfire is nearly a year old, and while a lot has changed since it first hit Early Access on the Epic Games Store, it remains one of the most interesting genre mashups you can play today. The game’s latest update – which is now live – further cements its status as one of the most unique shooters in the space.

Before today’s launch, I spent a few hours playing a version of the game with this latest update. It’s called “The Wailing Tower,” and it’s Witchfire’s largest tower since its release last year. The main addition is the game’s first new area, which offers a very different atmosphere to the existing map.

I’m a huge fan of Witchfire, so I was excited to get what the astronauts described as a big update. And that was an accurate description. I spent most of my time on the build in the new area – the eponymous Wailing Tower – but the systemic and mechanical changes here impact the entire game.

I was a little disappointed with the new map, though. While it has a different narrative theme than the rest, it retains the game’s autumnal aesthetic and somewhat muted color tones. It’s one of my favorite looks in games, so that shouldn’t be seen as a complaint, but I was expecting something, well… something different.

The new area features a few interesting fights, including a big one – as you’d expect from Witchfire. And like all the others, it also has some secrets (though I didn’t seem to find many compared to the original starting map). Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, or maybe The Astronauts has gotten better at hiding them. After playing over a dozen hours on the original map, I started to see the patterns, but I didn’t get the same feeling with The Wailing Tower yet.

Aside from all the new content – including new enemies, weapons, abilities, and so on – the update’s other big change is a major rebalancing and overhaul of the in-run flow. This so-called Arcana 2.0 touches every moment of in-run power progression. I played the launch version last year and have logged into Witchfire a few times since then, and the difference is immediately clear. Now the game feels much, much better.

I started with a new character initially because I remember how brutal the early game was at launch. Those early hours have been made more inviting, which was a little surprising. The challenge is certainly still there, but the transition from calm to chaos is smoother. Witchfire in particular is now more eager to equip you with powerful spells and unlock passives early and quickly.

While in the launch version I avoided fights that I knew could end my run, this new flow actively encourages you to seek out the challenge. Some of the random encounters have also been reduced, which contributed greatly to the difficulty initially.

I wouldn’t call Witchfire easy today, but back then the challenge was clearly expected from the start. This latest version spreads it out a bit more evenly, and the wider range of options available to you simply means you have more ways to solve problems. I never really ran into situations where I was forced to extract because I’d simply exhausted all the options available. Before, that was a key part of the loop. The cadence of the whole thing is just better now.

However, the changes really start to get interesting in the late game. On one hand, the smoother starting curve means you get to where you want to go much quicker, but it also means there’s a side to the game you might not expect if you’re completely new to it. Your home base now has more rooms to unlock and there’s an NPC you can trade with. This effectively creates something like an economy in Witchfire, a feature that really needed it.

The developer has provided some high-level character saves in this preview window, which showed me a different side of Witchfire. Playing with a level 80+ character means juggling powerful options to survive against powerful enemies. This creates its own challenges, and these are very different from the initial struggle to survive. More money, more problems, and so on.

Most of all, though, returning to Witchfire reminded me why I love it and showed me how underrated it is among shooter fans. Perhaps that’s a side effect of it being exclusive to the Epic Games Store (though not for long). Store preferences aside, Witchfire’s successful marriage of roguelites, extraction games, RPGs, and shooters is truly something special. If you want the thrill of extraction games with the surprises and scares of roguelites and the satisfying combat of great shooters, there really isn’t another game that does this better.