Windrose is a lot better, and more original, than I thought it would be.
My girlfriend and I play a lot of survival crafting games. She really likes them, and I get a kick out of building bases.
I count myself among the group of gamers that get a distinct glaze over their eyes whenever I see a listing on steam with the tags:
”early access” | “open world” | “survival-crafting”
That’s not to say I think any of these games are “bad.” It’s simply that there are only so many new settings of Romeo and Juliet I can tolerate before I decide I’ve had my fill.
I suppose my weakness, like many another gamer, is pirates… for some reason. Sure you have “Pirates of the Caribbean” which I’ve been told transformed pirates from carnival caricatures to something a little more “savvy.”
There is an allure to pirate games that very few have been able to pull off successfully.
Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag came out of nowhere and managed to cement itself in gaming history not through it’s copy-and-pasted combat but through the surprisingly thorough sailing. You board and fight on your ship like you would expect. Your crew sings sea shanties, and it’s overall a great time.
Sea of Thieves is the second game that comes to mind. A fun multiplayer experience focusing on coordination on-ship and treasure hunting off-ship. It’s a game that is exceptionally fun while fresh, but lasts about as long as a home-made baguette.
See my essay on Sea of Thieves Here:
The connection between the two is plainly obvious. You need to have compelling gameplay on boat, and seamless transition off-boat. The two modes of transportation make for compelling contrast. You can emphasize this contrast even more by including a dingy.
I’m here to say that Windrose does a good job of nailing this contrast. The boat combat is lightweight, but fun (sea shanties included). The ground combat is difficult, and extremely frustrating at times but still visceral enough to be compelling. The addition of survival-crafting elements work more as a means to pad the game out, but I tend to appreciate these mechanics when they are done well.
The game has three biomes, and after about 24 hours we’ve just managed to hit the second one at a whopping lvl 8. That progression might be slow for some people, but I never really seem to notice.
I’d like to take a second to talk about systems in survival crafting that I like, because Windrose has almost everything on my wishlist. Namely having all chests act as a single base stockpile when you build or craft so you don’t have to take stuff out manually.
Your ship is summonable by hotkey, and adding teleport markers across the map is easy. It may be a little overpowered to be able to teleport to any location from your ship, but it does cut out much of the tedium. There’s plenty of sailing to be done regardless of how much you want to sail between places you’ve already been to.
So far I have two main gripes with the game:
The first one being the combat poise mechanics which are inconsistent and always tailored against the player. There is no combat turn-taking so if you get swarmed everyone attacks you whenever they feel like. If you swing mid-attack there is no attack cancel, and hitting an enemy during their animation does not stop their attack.
Second, is that the game advertises recruiting followers to your base. You can do that, but the followers are nothing more than upgrades to specific building types. They don’t actually do anything for you other than walk around.
I have been really enjoying Windrose, and if you’re interested its well worth picking up!
Thanks so much for reading!
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