If you look at my playlist, you'll see that I've invested literally thousands of hours into survival crafting games — it's one of my favorite genres. As such, I can spot the ones that have the juice, and the ones that might not have the magic to break out from the pack. Recently I sat down with Windrose, a survival crafting game that starts off with the usual beats – building a house out of thatch, making a bed, etc., but culminates in not only the construction but the piloting of a pirate ship! Swashbuckling, cannonading, and the Age of Piracy — let's talk about how this bold and ambitious game named Windrose just might be the breakout star in a very crowded survival-crafting space.
The character creator in Windrose.
Your character starts as a freelance corsair, working a routine job. Naturally, that goes completely sideways, your ship is boarded, and you're marooned on a beach with little more than the scraps you'll call clothes until you can do better.
Betrayed by my captain? We've all been there, right?
Following the usual beats you've come to expect, you'll pick up rocks, wood, and the grass to make a makeshift axe and pick. This will let you harvest trees and bust rocks. Trees and rocks can make wooden and stone structures using a system that's flexible and easy to use. It creates silhouette versions of the object; you stack and place them as you'd expect them to come together. There's a physics system backing them — something I discovered as I cut down a tree only to watch it crumble a chunk of my work when it impacted the side of my partially assembled structure. It's just complicated enough to allow you to make anything from simple structures to something very complex (and more parts are unlocked as you discover new tilesets and materials), and I can't wait to see what sort of player-made Port Royal, Jamaica they'll build. Actually...why wait? Redditor subwaygd has already exceeded anything I hope to achieve in the full game, and all in the demo.
Windrose can be played cooperatively, and frankly I see that being the best way to play as you'll eventually be looking to build and crew a full ship — something always best handled with friends. In the beginning, however, you have a different problem — you can only bring three additional real-world friends, and the first ship you'll crew requires seven more — it's time to mount a rescue!
Your escape isn't glamorous, but at least you can bring your friends!
The local pirates have captured what remains of the marooned crew from your old ship, holding them for ransom or other nefarious purposes. Between you and them are all manner of creatures: dodo birds, giant crabs, boars, pirates, and a dash of the undead to deal with. Let's talk about swashing some buckles.
Redditor DeaDBangeR has built an incredible town as well!
A quick check of the Steam page says that combat is "soulslite". You have light attacks, heavy attacks, and you can block or, with proper timing, perfect parry. I highly encourage you to learn that last bit as soon as possible, as the combat is also unforgiving. You also can use a pistol as a paired weapon with a rapier, though the challenge of both ammunition and gunpowder to craft makes that an expensive proposition. You can also dodge and employ oils and other consumables, but again — you'll have to lean into collection and crafting once again. There are boss battles to be had, so you'll also need to work through leveling up and picking up a few skills in the process.
Leveling is currently pretty slow. After 8.5 hours I had managed to get up to level 5. You get three points to apply to Strength, Agility, Precision, Mastery, Vitality, and Endurance per level in a similar fashion to games like Diablo, as you can see below:
Leveling up in Windrose allows you to raise your character stats and select talents.
You get three points per level, and a single trait point to assign to skills. At present, there are 39 skills to choose from. Some are simple bumps to stats, where others might add stamina, health, and other stats. These are just kicking off, so I suspect we'll see these evolve over time.
In a nod to games like Valheim, food helps control your overall health and stamina pools. In the beginning, you'll have access to basics like "put this meat on a fire until it doesn't give me worms", but better food like combining dodo eggs with a bit of steak will yield a little more health. Pick up spices, add peppers, and now you're starting to have something that tastes better than hardtack and just might keep you alive. Three slots lets you consume three different types of food or drink. Variety is the spice of life, and spices add spice to that life-spiced foodstuffs!
It's clear that the Windrose Crew (that's the dev team's name) have played a few games in this genre, and they've experienced the same challenges those of us who traffic in these titles have. Sorting your equipment and materials is always problematic, so seeing little things like the ability to place signs above or on the surface of the basket to indicate what it contains is useful, but also adding the ability to hit Q to drop similar items into the box without opening it is closing the loop. Even AAA titles like Dune: Awakening allow you to do the "add similar" task, but they lack any sort of labels, putting Windrose ahead on this front already. Other quality of life additions like the ability to craft from a basket, mass-transfer from boxes, and other little things make a world of difference in reducing the overall friction of managing your space. Similarly, the ability to place things like shelves that can be populated with jars of rum, stacks of bowls, cloth scraps, and much more. They not only spruce up your base, they improve the comfort score and more. The team has put a great deal of effort into ensuring the game is respecting your time and removing the things that frustrate.
Once you've established a base, you'll need to take your pickaxe and go find minerals to smelt into metals. Those metals will give you better tools to then use to farm more materials, but also provide metal for weapons and armor. These have a familiar RPG approach, with vendor trash giving way to better gear using the typical color coding. Looking forward to my Legendary Tricorn hat to throw on my head someday.
Building and decorating your base is incredibly simple in Windrose.
Eventually you'll have freed your crew and you'll be ready to take to the seas, and this is where where Windrose immediately distinguishes itself from its contemporaries. Land to sea transition is seamless, meaning you aren't spending all your time making impenetrable structures but instead working to build and then crew cutters, frigates, galleons and more. Loading them with cannons and shot, you'll hit the high seas, which is where the real adventure begins.
Windrose already showcases a lot of what made games like Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag special. Bombardment and shelling of coastal forts, broadsiding a ship, and then boarding it. It's not known if you'll be able to seize that ship, crew it with a secondary crew, and create an armada, but wow, just typing that sentence makes me want that very, very much!
Running a ship is tough work, and this is where Windrose wears another influence on its sleeve — Conan Exiles. You aren't clubbing your recruits and then breaking them on a pain wheel, but you are going to need to convince them to join your crew. Adding a management layer to the production loop, you'll bring new people into your employ as you begin to set up bases in other biomes. These spaces are procedurally generated, so I suspect you'll end up with many bases, each with their own functions—again, similar to Valheim. Given just how solid and how expansive this "demo" for the game is (it's easily 10 hours or more, even at a brisk pace), I suspect that Windrose is going to be absolutely MASSIVE. Combining the naval mechanics and then connecting the survival crafting loop is the wind in the sails, and these bases will be your anchors. Everything you build here helps power that pirate life, and I can't wait to see everything Windrose has to offer.
Tiny boats are just the beginning...
My wife is pretty picky about what games we play cooperatively, and she's adamant about not spending a great deal of time on a demo — she prefers to wait for the final release to invest her time. For Windrose she was asking repeatedly to jump back in and play — that's a great sign. Bringing co-captains to tackle naval battles, exploring, boss hunts, base building, and more sounds like this game could be our next co-op adventure!
While the game is still in development, it's already good looking and running well. Even the controller support, which the developer warned was still very much in flux, works fairly well. This may be the Windrose Team's first game, but you wouldn't know it. What once started as an MMO called Crosswind has been reborn as something that, judging by the fun I've had so far, is shaping up to be an amazing and exciting game.
Windrose has a demo available on Steam right now. Let us know in the comments if you'll be joining us on the open sea!
