Shipwrecked alone on an uncharted island, explore, adapt and navigate the land and perilous seas to stay alive.Īs Kara, you are a warrior, caught at sea in a fierce storm, adrift from your tribe. I think it’s going to be an acquired taste for many gamers as they will need to be patient and forgiving lovers of rogue-likes, to find joy here.The Forbidden Islands are Calling, Unlock their Secrets Windbound will not however, have the broad appeal of Zelda. Which, let’s be honest is a great place to start. Windbound initially presents as a sort of paired down version of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The best of both worlds could have been catered for. I think if there had even been something as simple as a checkpoint system in the story mode everything would have felt more approachable. This is a fatal flaw in a game where death carries a heavy penalty. The aiming of bows is unwieldy and death in combat feels cheap. This is where the games beauty and the enjoyable sailing mechanics could not hide the failings under the hood. I had to start all over again gathering enough crap to push on. Kara woke up at the start of Chapter 4 again…but with No boat, No tools, No resources, No ammo and I had… No hope. Then a shark attacked and I could not fight him off with the weapons available and I died. I played for a good hour or so and ventured off to another island and hit rocks. Here is an example, I had made it to Chapter 4 with a fast trimaran boat, big sails, onboard cooking fires and baskets of hoarded resources. That said, everything collected amassed still vanished on death. The game is broken into Chapters and in the Survival Mode no matter how many hours put into the run, the game resets to Chapter 1! (madness, right!?) With Story Mode, death resets to the start of whatever chapter you have progressed too. It still has sizable penalties to pay upon death though. Instead of the “Survival Mode”, the “Story Mode” is a bit more forgiving. Yep, it just confirmed for me that I still hate rogue-likes. However after investing three hours, gathering resources, building weapons, boats and bags I died…….and had to start all over again with nothing. Now, I did have a go with the “proper” rouge-like mode. Secondly the art style, music and production levels are just gorgeous. Modes for all seasonsįirstly, it has a “Story Mode”, so I could partially opt-out of the start-over-on-death, rogue-like experience. But Windbound had two things going for it which made me brave the frustration zone of a rogue-likes. But don’t forget to make weapons and gather food to eat so you don’t starve. I gradually collected grass, sticks, skins and wood to build boats to get to the next island. Anyone who has played “Don’t Starve” will have a very good understanding of the design philosophy. Windbound is a survival game built around rouge-like mechanics and procedurally generated islands. I found it had little consequence to my actual adventure and the narrative was a bit too subtle for my tastes. There is a subtle background story driving Kara onwards to activate three towers per Chapter, to spawn a portal to access the next level. She has washed up on an island after a storm and must live off the land and build boats to navigate the procedurally generated archipelagos. Its beautiful art style and fun sailing mechanics, have been scuttled by the tough rogue-like penalties and clunky combat encounters. “a PS4 and a copy of Windbound”, alas I cannot. Stranded on a desert island, what do you bring? As much as I would love to say….
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