Battling the ebb and flow of the water, while maintained balance, gets tough. Not only is wind direction a thing, but the waves can be downright perilous at times during big storms. After building a ship by combining various parts like multiple hulls and types of sails together, you can set off on your own. Each island is procedurally generated, ensuring you won’t have the same adventure twice, so once you hunt all the creatures, gather all the resources, and exhaust what’s available you’ve got to move on and continue crossing the Forbidden Islands. So instead of farming the same areas for identical resources forever, Windbound requires you to stay mobile. There are hints of a really intriguing story here, or at least a well-realized setting that has room for lore expansion.įrom the very first island creatures are immediately outlandish and the game’s general focus on becoming a traveling nomad immediately fosters a sense of constant discovery, which is a welcomed change of pace for a genre that’s usually about doing the same things over and over again.
Within the first few minutes I had found an ancient, stone altar that imbued my necklace with powerful, glowing blue energy. Rather than simply scrounging for materials, there is a heavy ambiance of mystery and discovery at the core of Windbound. That’s not very original, but the execution is where it truly soars. The goal is to explore and adapt to the landscape around you and embark on perilous adventures. You’re hungry and ill-equipped to survive.
You awaken in a deserted region of the idyllic Forbidden Islands as Kara, an abandoned warrior, surrounded by stormy seas. Windbound begins much like many games of this type, but doesn’t take long to feel fresh and unique. I recently got the chance to go hands-on with the gorgeous survival game, featuring gameplay from the very start of Windbound and a midway save file to show some typical progression. It’s a bit like Raft and Wind Waker had a baby with a single-player version of Rust. It features sailing, ancient voices humming in the background, and whimsical themes further establishing the charm. Grounded is delivering a delightful new take on survival/crafting games with its inventive creativity and now Windbound is here to blow a breath of fresh air into the sails of a genre that started to feel like it was sinking.ĭeveloped by 5 Lives Studios, Windbound (out August 28 for PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and Stadia) is a single-player survival game with a stylized watercolor aesthetic reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. The tone and art style are typically realistic with a gritty flair, the gameplay loop is almost always the same, and they’re usually not polished enough to feel completed. At this point it’s starting to feel like if you’ve played one survival/crafting game, you’ve played them all.
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