Still playing Witchfire
I'm still playing Witchfire, and quite enjoying it - I am surprised, but this is the early access game I've played off and on for longest this year.
I tend to play early access games very intensely for a week or so, then put them aside until they release. I've been returning to Witchfire weekly since I got it, which is unusual for me.
Part of the reason I've done this, however, is that my save got corrupted about a month ago. No clue why that happened! I went to sleep one night and by the next evening my save was unplayable. Luckily, I wasn't TOO deep in to the content, and was able to scramble back to where I'd been before in only a couple sessions of play.
One thing I noticed in that process was that the gear unlock system is a bit frustrating on subsequent replays. Unlocking gear involves paying money to some mysterious "papal" workshop which rewards you, after a time, with random items. The first few unlocks for certain gear categories seem to be less subject to variation - the random draw pool is small when you first gain access to it - but as you level up, eventually you will be drawing from a pretty big pool of gear and won't have a lot of control over what stuff you get.
The process for even acquiring money to unlock gear was also pretty opaque to me. I believed during my first save that the most efficient way to get money for these unlocks was to open a lot of chests; I now believe that the most efficient way is to pick up "cursed" treasures in the world and rush back to my base with them on a pretty regular cadence. Picking up cursed gear is easiest if I spend "witchfire" on it, the currency you get from killing enemies; therefore, I'm also slowing down some of my witchfire-related unlocks in other game systems in order to de-curse this treasure and drag it home for use in the gear unlock system.
I spend a lot less time in the world per run now than I did before, and I push my luck a lot less. Now that I have a better understanding of what I'm doing, I feel that I am playing a lot less "heroically" and focusing a lot more on just wringing all the gear unlocks I can out of that workshop system.
Is this good? I don't know. I'm still playing! I just haven't beaten the boss on the second island yet, because I'm spending so much time unlocking guns I don't use, and leveling up so that I can unlock more guns.
This is one of those games with so many progression pathways that a freak like me can get truly lost in one of several unique sauces. I'm enjoying that, for now. I hope I eventually get my number-go-up madness under control long enough to beat that boss, though.