Windbound proposes a charming and colorful adventure where we go to the sea with practically no resources, in the hope that our protagonist, Kara, will reunite with her tribe one day. It is a different game with a linear story and a cyclical open world, and although it has the flaws you expect from a small production, at the design and rhythm level it is a success that is worth trying.
Survival, ‘crafting’ and open world . See if you can name a more iconic trio than that. Coming from PC, over the last few years I have gotten used to seeing games of that kind day in and day out. I honestly think it’s one of the most stagnant genres out there, perhaps due to the lack of triple A’s that have the resources to dare to take them to the next level. But hey, that does not mean that there are no alternative proposals: we have Minecraft and other ‘builders’ and Windbound recently went on sale , rather focused on the sensations of exploration and adventure .
The first time I saw the title of 5 Lives Studios and Deep Silver in motion, I thought it was simply a clone of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , one of the most influential games of recent years due to its conceptualization of the open world and its systemic gameplay model. After putting myself at the controls, I would say that Windbound is clearly inspired by some aspects of Nintendo’s masterful game – aesthetics, animations, combat or even the parasail, to say a few – but make no mistake, it has a very, very different dynamic ; that you will not find in other titles of the genre either.
That is precisely the differentiating factor of Windbound. Here we do not have a huge world in which to lose ourselves for hours and hours, but a relatively small sea with a handful of islands that is renewed between the five chapters that make up its campaign of about 10 hours. It is a game of navigation and explorationwhere managing resources wisely outweighs being skilled at the controls, where a self-imposed challenge like “complete the game without eating meat” sounds like the perfect excuse to give it another try, where you can’t think too much in the long term because there won’t be any nothing to come back to in a few hours. No weapon lasts forever, your ship can break down, your food rots. It’s a game of thinking all the time about how to take the next step forward, no matter how far you’ve come.
With nothing, and towards the sea
The fun lies mainly in the fear of losing the whole teamIn Windbound we take on the role of Kara, a warrior girl who is separated from her tribe during a storm on the open sea. After the shipwreck , he wakes up on the sands of an unknown beach, without resources and the only help of a knife. But by collecting stones, sticks, herbs and killing some fish, you can make a bonfire and some grilled food. It does not take long to reach a mysterious watchtower with some kind of mystical connection that also gives us clues about the history of the world where we find ourselves, and also a kind of ancient rowing : a divine help that we will never lack, along with the knife. Everything else in our inventory can be lost over time.
Think of the progression of any video game. Most of them follow an inverted pyramid pattern where we start with the basics and as we progress, our possibilities expand with more and more things: new skills, new weapons, more toys with which to overcome tougher challenges. Windbound also has that progression because as we discover new materials and more complicated crafting recipes we can face greater challenges, but it has the peculiarity that almost everything is lost . In a game where you can make a spear out of a stick, breaking a “storm bow” that imbues the arrows it shoots with electricity can be a heavy blow, but one that can happen. And it’s not even the hardest.
Windbound analysis
Windbound Nintendo Switch
It is easy to improve our boat with more space, protection or accessories, but everything can be broken
I have lost half of my boat, which was carrying a basket full of materials from large monsters, because a megalodon appeared out of nowhere and before I could see where it was, I had it taken with my poor canoe. Annoying? Yes, but it’s part of the charm: Crafting recipes are n’t going anywhere until you finish the game and activate the NG + and they’re often pretty quick to make, not too deep, so you’re constantly thinking “okay, I need this right now, but if I find this metal or this monster I must remember to collect the materials I need for this other upgrade. ” The fun lies, mainly, in that coming and going of the equipment so fast, and the fear of losing everything if you hit something and your raft breaks.
You can be sure that you have to go to sea , because from the moment we receive the oar, our adventure has one objective: to find three watchtowers on different islands scattered around the sea. Once found and activated, we can go to a special construct marked with a golden beacon, unlock a short story sequence, and move on to the next chapter. Be careful : the intermissionIt becomes somewhat more intense between chapters, but when we finish it we can also buy an artifact or ancestral advantage of our liking: a bow that does not break, a lower consumption of resistance when running, the possibility of poisoning our opponents by attacking them melee body, things like that. They are the only upgrades that carry over from game to game.
Windbound
The progression of the game is one of its strengthsThe novelty is that every time we go through the chapter, the little explorable piece of seait changes, and with it, the islands we can access. The first ones are quite simple, with their piglets, their furrillos (they are called that, it’s not my thing) and their perfectly calm waters. A few hours later and without a level system through we ran into storms, fog, larger islands, monsters hidden in the treetops, predators, sharks, whitewater, lobsters that grab the boat to destroy it, swamps, jellyfish and other pearls of the style. If I place so much emphasis on the progression of the game, it is because I think it is one of its strengths, it has a different and interesting way of doing things and that is managed in a quite natural way: as your range of possibilities expands, there are also more complex mechanics around those same things. But logically,
For example, manufacturing . I’ve always hated the fact that in survival games you need all kinds of workbenches, one for each; and you often have so many materials that you lose track of how you can use them to your advantage. Windbound does a remarkable job of accessibility in that regard, because you have a fairly convenient menu that you can open at any time to create anything, and the ingredients are fairly reduced in complexity: a firepit can be expanded as a clothesline or as a clay oven, but there are no improvements that ask you for more than three types of materials that you can find anywhere. Technically it is possible to complete the game with the objects that you get from four or five raw materialsBut those who are willing to go a little further can make bone-tipped spears, more damaging than wooden spears; rafts and candles made with bamboo poles instead of braided grass; or armor sets that make them more stealthy.
Windbound Nintendo Switch
Windbound
So much so, that I would say that even adventure game fans who are not very into survival can have a good time with this title. Yes, it is true that there is a hunger meter constantly pressing us to return to the sea to find another island, but beyond that, the experience of discovering new places and sailing is quite satisfying. Most of the islands are very similar, but they are not procedural and that gives them something in favor of the design: there are some secrets and bits of history scattered here and there, as well as large creatures to deal with. The latter pose the first major drawback of the game, which is that combatit could be better. Not that it’s completely bad or anything, because each creature feels fresh and very different, but there aren’t many enemy types and the AI is pretty clunky. Some do not react no matter how much you hit them, or they run away in terror just before returning with a vengeance; And even the ones that can teleport or grab you with their tongues (Shadowcrawlers, they’re called) leave a lot to be desired in that regard.
Actually, I would say that the technical factor itself is the other big problem the game faces. A couple of weeks after launch, Windbound is still having some pretty blatant physics issues. During my live sessions from 3DJuegos, some viewers have been able to see how a monster flies away when it dies, without further ado, so that it is impossible to collect its materials. It also happens that when the ship sinks, our protagonist stays “glued” to it, that when going up to the deck she ends up on top of the mast for some reason, or even that the ‘prompt’ of accessing a basket from the boat can follow you even within the island, allowing you to access its contents. These are just a few examples, but the idea is that you need a few patches to fix these bugs.
Windbound Nintendo Switch
There are some hidden treasures that give us more health, stamina or money
Although the AI leaves something to be desired, the combat music transforms each encounter into something fierceCuriously, physics are at their best in the open sea. I can’t say if it’s a disaster or a genius, but the truth is that the sails of the ship are capricious as they are and can only be taut or loosen up to a point, which sometimes makes transport a negotiation exercise. You can go wherever you want, but if you take advantage of the tailwind, you run the risk that your boat will blow away at full speed and you will end up in the water; while if it goes straight ahead, you will have a really hard time moving forward. To top it off, the gentle, rhythmic melodiesthat accompany us on these kinds of trips sometimes intensify to warn us of the presence of a malicious shark that can easily make us capsize. It seems not, but if you complement that pressure with the fact that you can collide with rock formations, coral reefs or other small sea creatures can attack you, it gets on any of your nerves.
In fact, that sonic language is present throughout the game. Although the AI leaves a lot to be desired, the combat music transforms each encounter into something drastic, fierce, extremely intense. When our hearts are not beating, we can hear some well-imagined ambient themes, starting with the percussion of a single instrument in the most basic islands or more in the advanced ones. Tones that accompany well an artistic section of cel-shading cut in the line of that seen in BotW. As I said at the beginning of the analysis, Link’s latest adventure also marks a good part of Kara’s animations and the ‘shaders’ for the vegetation, among other things, although the moments where Windbound dares to bet on its own direction (between chapters , rather) is when it shines the most.
Windbound
Thus, the way back to the tribe is quite lonely, with no other intervention than some artistic fragments scattered around some specific islands and a mural located at the end of each chapter where we are told non-verbally what happened to the men of His world. Do not expect to understand everything even if you pay attention to the disjointed texts that you see for a few seconds in some locations, but I anticipate that it does have a certain spiritual link with other creatures that, again, it feels very good the few times it pulls that thread . But in general we are not talking about a game that lends itself a lot to history, but rather something like a script, necessary to make sense of the cycle of the sea and put an end to the campaign. After that tour, we are offered an NG + mode where we only keep the ancestral blessings and money to buy more.
Windbound Analysis
“Okay”Windbound
Its AI is clumsy like itself, it has some ridiculous bugs and sometimes it gets repetitive, but in general terms Windbound is a highly recommended adventure. Why? Well, simply because its multiple, small open worlds, the structure of the campaign and the rate at which you create things, get hungry or sail the sea are very well sewn and fun elements. Like and very much that a small game dares to mix different genres according to its own needs and that the result is so interesting.
An exquisite balance between crafting, survival and exploration, so much fun!
Very natural and accurate sense of progression, giving importance to learning
Having several small open worlds instead of just one big one suits you
The inventory system, although agile, is overwhelming in the last sections
Various obvious, frequent and sometimes serious technical problems
Little variety of islands, and therefore, of things to do
