Sailing away

Looking at a trailer for Windbound immediately evokes feelings of a certain adventure from Nintendo. The art style and combat make it easy to draw comparisons, but diving in the game definitely changes perspective quickly. This is a survival game with inspirations from the aforementioned title. Players will quickly realize that the focal points here are to explore, craft, and survive. Still, if players can get past the initial culture shock they will discover a unique adventure with some truly inspiring moments along the way. Windbound is not the Zelda Xbox and PlayStation players were hoping for, but it is an adventure worth talking about.

Windbound is a third-person survival game on the surface. What it does to separate itself from the herd is create a linear story and levels to progress through. Every time a player starts up a game, a new set of procedural islands are created. Each level is a journey to move to the next section while performing the traditional survival tactics in between. The world is interesting and there is a mystery that drives players forward. Sadly though, the structure of the game quickly becomes apparent, making it feel like a poor combination.

MSRP: $29.99
Platforms: XB1 (reviewed), PS4, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $19.99

Since each area is procedurally generated navigating it can become cumbersome quickly. Kara has the normal hunger and stamina meters and depleting this on a long journey across a random area can feel frustrating. Thankfully, there are two difficulty modes, and the easier one lets players keep all their items upon death. Still, one bad move and it is back to the beginning, sometimes wiping out hours of progress. This is normal for the genre, but Windbound feels like it wants to lead players on a journey. Starting that journey over at every crucial mistake dilutes the adventure. Not to mention the world changes upon return.

Crafting is pretty straightforward. Picking up the correct items unlocks recipes without much effort. I have never been a fan of the stacking mechanic that Windbound uses though. Picking up grass only to make grass rope, which can then only be used to craft something else feels like an unnecessary step. I did however like the fact that resources are useful from beginning to end. So those rocks and twigs I collected early on were still just as useful in the late game.

Travelling across this world is a huge part of the game. Kara will craft a grass canoe early on, but as the game progresses, so does her vessel. Eventually the boat will become a floating fortress as she journeys across this beautiful world. I truly loved the environments, especially the ones in between each set of islands. There is a really interesting narrative here that would make a super interesting adventure game. Sadly, the front loaded survival aspects and randomized islands drag down the experience early on.

Combat is another tier of Windbound and it is perfectly serviceable. Kara can craft an array of weapons to help take down foes. The lock-on can be finicky at times, but it works. I really liked the creatures I would run into, but again with the danger of falling victim to one reset mistake, I was always cautious when running into one. I feel like this game wanted players to think it was a standard action adventure game due to its trailers, but the survival mechanics really feel like they take away from an otherwise interesting adventure. These pieces will keep a set of players from ever setting out or completing this journey, and that is this game’s biggest flaw.

Windbound is a fantastic adventure wrapped in a questionable package. I remember distinctly being super excited for this game from the trailers. I wanted it to be a Zelda-style adventure in the absence of titles like it recently. The mixture of mystique and survival though just doesn’t work well here. The things that make each of these genres interesting are not combined effectively most of the time. What I wanted to do in discovering Windbound’s mysteries felt at odds with its base mechanics. I wanted to love this title a lot more than I ended up doing.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.