If you've ever wanted to live the life of a Witcher; hunting monsters, getting into arguments with villagers, and doing other things we can't mention to keep this news story PG-13, then you can, as The Witcher: Monster Slayer is out.
However you might find the monster-hunting experience is a lot more 'looking at error messages' and a lot less 'following creature tracks' than you were expecting.
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First announced in 2020, The Witcher mobile game is essentially a Pokémon Go-style augmented reality (AR) game where you wander around collecting resources, bumping into monsters, and catching - sorry, slaying - them, you know the drill. We actually wrote an in-depth feature on the game you can check out here.
We've seen this type of game plenty of times before: there was Minecraft Earth, Jurassic Park: Alive, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, but only Pokémon Go has stood the test of time. We'll have to wait to see if The Witcher: Monster Slayer will, and you can download it on the App Store here or the Play Store here.
The Glitcher
Don't get too excited to download the game and start playing straight away, though, because The Witcher mobile game is currently going through some serious difficulties.
At the time of writing, a good few hours into launch day, we've been totally unable to start up the game. Every time we try, we get an error message highlighting ongoing maintenance; a prospective end time is shown, but this keeps getting pushed back.
We're not the only ones suffering from this issue. In the reviews section of the Play Store listing for the game, many commenters are discussing how they're having connection difficulties. So it seems the game is pretty hard to access right now.
So what's going on? Well, the same thing that happens every time a big launch like this happens in the mobile (or wider) gaming world - server issues. Too many people are trying to play the game all at once, and the servers are getting overloaded.
It's an annoying turn of events for Witcher fans, but we'd recommend waiting a few hours or a day, and you might find it much easier to play.
In the meantime, you can also download apps for other popular Witcher-related things like card games Gwent and Thronebreaker, Netflix with The Witcher TV show, or Google Play Books or Kindle where you can read Andrzej Sapkowski's original novels that kicked this whole thing off.
