June 24, 2026: It's actually six UK Prime Ministers now.
It feels like a hundred years since Chucklefish announced Witchbrook as an upcoming game that mixes all my favorite things: life-sim aspects, pixel graphics, and witchy vibes, bringing the coziness and maybe even a bit of spookiness. It first appeared in 2016. That was ten years ago.
Now, it's 2026, and I got bored, so I decided to make a list of what's occurred in the world since then. First, here's a timeline of Witchbrook events so far to refresh your memory. Chucklefish announced the magical school-centered game in 2016. Back then, it was called Project Spellbound, until March 2018, when it got officially renamed as Witchbrook.
Over the years, we've seen Witchbrook's social media pages appear, a newsletter called 'The Oracle' get sent out, and confirmation that "[the team] went full-on on the project in 2019" in a Knowledge newsletter this year. In April 2025, the game appeared in a Nintendo Direct, confirming that it was coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 in Winter 2025. Obviously, that date has now come and gone, and there's been no update on the expected release date.
It's now been seven years and counting since the dev team went "full-on" on Witchbrook, and an entire decade since its first announcement. While you wait for any scrap of information, join me as I round up some key events of the last ten years that may shock and surprise you.
In the gaming world, we saw the release of the Nintendo Switch in 2017 and the Nintendo Switch 2 in 2025. There's also been the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S - both released in 2020 - and the Steam Deck in 2022.
Pokémon Go hits its tenth anniversary this year, and OK, sure, it hasn't quite happened yet, but Witchbrook isn't coming out in the next three weeks, is it? Other notable releases include Disco Elysium (2019), Overwatch and Overwatch 2 (2016 and 2022), Fortnite (2017), and eleven different Call of Duty games.
World events that have happened since Witchbrook slash Spellbound's announcement include the announcement of Brexit (2016) and the UK leaving the EU (2020), five UK Prime Ministers coming and going, and three US Presidential elections taking place. We also lived through the entire COVID pandemic from the discovery of the disease to us largely beating it, and there have been three summer Olympics and three winter Olympics that took place.
To save us both from being here all day - as ten years is a LONG time to look through - here's a quickfire round of key happenings:
- Harambe was murdered
- Stranger Things started and finished
- Twitter was sold and rebranded to X
- TikTok launched
- AirPods first released
- Many entire ten-year-old people have been formed
- Dabbing came and went
- Tide Pod challenge came and went
- Fidget Spinners came and went
I hope that Witchbrook comes out before the end of the year, but at this point, I'm not very hopeful. It's not alone, though - there are a few games on my radar that seem like they're never coming out. So, I've predicted some things that might end up happening before we see the game release:
- Grand Theft Auto VI comes out
- The next Nintendo console will be announced
- I somehow manage to buy a house
- Persona 6 releases
- Persona 6 R, the updated version, releases
- At least one more President and Prime Minister
- The Witcher 4 releases
- Interstellar travel is normalized
- George R. R. Martin finishes the Game of Thrones series
- Heat death of the universe
As for why the game has taken so long, it's mostly due to studio Chucklefish sticking to its no-crunch rule, having less than 20 employees (as of February 2026), and game development just takes a while. Plus, changing the game to fit more modern consoles also likely pushes it back a bit. It also boils down to Chucklefish wanting to make sure the game is different enough from other experiences.
In the same Knowledge newsletter, as mentioned above, it states that "2026 will be the year Chucklefish finally releases Witchbrook after much delay". I sure hope so, but we'll see. While writing this, a new Dev Blog went live offering quite a lot of information about what we can expect in-game… but no sniff of a release date.
Well, that's all I had to say. It's all meant to be good fun, and I'm just killing time while manifesting a Witchbrook release date of any kind. Please, I just want to learn some spells and zoom around on a broom in a quaint magical town.