Windbound - Review
Games where resources are scarce always appeal to me for some reason, maybe it’s the constant never knowing if I will make it the whole way through, or perhaps it is just a pure challenge thing, but they draw me in. Windbound caught my eye with its sailing, giving a very Wind Waker type feeling, but combined with the survival aspect, it was something that I was very excited to play, having played it though, the question is, is this a breezy day on the ocean, or rough seas ahead?
The story of Windbound, well I can’t tell you, as there is not a lot of exposition on things, you play as Kara, a member of an unnamed tribe of ocean travellers, who is thrown from her craft in some stormy seas and is sinking beneath the waves. Then a flash of light happens as Kara finds herself standing in a large void, a massive stargate like portal lies ahead of her and walking through it, she finds herself transported to an unknown island and that is it. Well, I will rephrase that, it is as far as the set up goes, the rest of the story is given out in bites and these are microscopic bites as you play through, but the larger chunks are given when you enter the crossing points, but there are no words here, so it is all up to interpretation of what you see, so I am sticking with the Golden Tentacruel as the mystical creature. Story is not a big thing though, the exploration and discovery of new islands is where the game puts the effort and while a more explained narrative, or even the ability to read the little bits of on screen text you get from a journal or something, would be nice, I don’t feel that you are missing out on anything if you pay no attention to it.
As I said before, one of the elements that drew me to the game was initially the sailing, there has always been something cathartic about open ocean sailing, it is why I love Wind Waker and Sea of Thieves. But Sailing is only one third of the game, the other two are exploration and resource discovery and management, and while I would love to say that they are evenly balanced, they are not and the why is really easy to see, the last two are very underdeveloped. I say that, not to be mean about them, as they both have some fun things to discover within each of them, but there are elements missing that make them feel incomplete, let’s start with exploration first. Each time you enter a new world, you will have to sail around for islands, there will usually be one located in front of you, each island will vary in size, from small to massive and while some of the larger ones tend not to appear until later in the game, you can still encounter some good size ones on each. In order to progress to the next area, you have to activate three beacons, in order to unlock a portal atop a tower, also located somewhere, the catch is there are more islands than beacons, so it might take away.
All that sounds fine, until you realise that in order to survive from island to island, you need supplies and some islands are just barren, with maybe one bushel of grass to be found and while thankfully that is usually on the smaller islands, it is a problem. Even some of the larger islands can have little resources on them, there are usually some creatures to hunt, but that also requires resources, which again can be hard to obtain. In order to carry the items, you need a bag, your bag can only hold so much, and it wasn’t until I first encountered the third area, where I could craft a new bag to hold more. As you discover new materials, you will automatically learn what you can make with them, but in order to make some of the cooler items, you need animal parts and you won’t get them easy and some you won’t get for a long time. This is the problem with the games resources, there is no inconsistency to them, some you can get everywhere like grass and rocks, but some, which should be common like bones or meat, are random in their drops from the various creatures you can kill.
The problem is that there are limits to how long things last, except if they are rare items you either find in game or acquire at the end of the crossing sections and the worst problem is meat. When you obtain meat it can be large or small, but regardless once you pick it up, it starts to decompose, and if you eat it raw, it will poison you for a bit, so cooking is required, but even then cooked meat will still degrade overtime. There is a special bag you can make that gives it a longer period of time before it falls apart, but that requires some parts that are hard to come by at the best of times. There were times I would be sailing across the oceans, my food going off, but I didn’t need to eat it and by the time I made land again, it was rotten, which becomes pretty useless, making the process of obtaining it pretty moot. The bigger problem, when I would need food, in order to not die, it was hard to locate and when making land on an island, only to find it has one or two mushrooms and that’s about it, stung even worse. The reason why all this was important, was that stamina was vital, you needed it to do big attacks, run and swim, no stamina means no actions and while big attacks or running don’t sound that bad, if you run out of stamina while swimming, you drown. The problem is, you might think you can go without it and for a while you can, but once your stamina is done, you start taking damage, like constant damage and there were times when I would be in the middle of the water, trying to find an island and hope there was something to eat near the shore, in order to not die, because dying means you start over.
Of course, one of the larger parts of the game is sailing and there are times when it is amazing and other times where it is a mess, let’s talk about the good first. There are two basic principles behind it, first is that you need the wind to blow in your sail and the second is you can manipulate the sail to catch the wind, and the second is very important. You can change how the sail reacts in two ways, the first is the height of the sail, the more you raise it, the more wind you can catch, which will in turn increase your speed, the second is how tight the sail is, to tight and you might not get the breeze, but too lose and you might not go in the direction you want. Once you start to master those two parts, when you have the wind at your back, sailing is amazing and it is easy to get some speed, just ensure your boat has been upgraded with some weight, because if you are too lite, you might find yourself soaring, through the air. The downside is that the wind is not something you can control, at least I have not found some mystical device to let me change its direction, like a baton if you will and there were rare moments where the wind was in the direction I needed. Most of the time, I would find myself zig zagging back and forth, like some kind of sewing machine pattern, in order to try and squeeze just a little more speed from vessel, or worse, I would go in the wrong direction entirely.
The worse part comes from when things don’t mix right at all, and you find yourself being thrown from the boat, I say thrown, but the game doesn’t do it often, in that it tried, but you just get stuck in the deck. I can’t begin to count the number of times where I was stuck, failing about like a fish on dry land and I couldn’t do anything, because the game refused to register, I was stuck. Sometimes, it would reset me back in the ocean, other times, I would just have to wait until I hit a rock, or something hit me. Of course, I can’t forget about the giant swells that would appear if you got close to the edge of the map, something which, theoretically looks amazing, but gameplay wise, is a pain in the ass. The number of times my boat would be launched into the air, after cresting a massive wave, only to flip on landing and have me try and swim back to it, all the while attempting to avoid some dangerous sea life, or not drown, it was just too numerous to mention. If you have a larger boat, the chance of that can be lowered, but it is not a certainty, so making your boat as big as you can is something you might aim for and hope for the best.
On the presentation side of things, there are some really nice things and some odd choices, thankfully, nothing is inherently bad, just weird. On the upside, the games visual choice is a mix of cel-shading and realistic and it gives it a unique look, while not the prettiest around, there are times when it really shines. Those rough seas I mentioned before, they look amazing and it was a nice little bonus for being thrown around, heck even some of the quieter waters look great. Islands are decent, there is enough randomness to them that even if you encounter the same sized islands in a row, they won’t standout. The game does a weird thing where some islands, with the swamp ones for example, a haze is applied to the screen and I can understand it, swamps are filled with some bad things at times and a haze helps sell that danger. The problem is it comes up over seconds and vanishes just as fast and it happens the moment you enter the radius of the land, a more subtle approach would have been welcomed. Kara as a character is fine, she feels very generic, though I do appreciate the white hair, and while you can equip new armour in the later worlds, the overall look doesn’t change to drastically.
The sounds are a bit weird, there is some solid music to enough, especially when you hit the open waters and start sailing proper, something again that Wind Waker also does very well. It always felt good to me, as it was a nice indicator that I had done things right and was off on a new adventure, the music on land though was not that interesting. I say that, but I don’t mean it was bad, it just never really felt like it was doing anything fun, at least when compared to the satisfaction of sailing. That is not to say there are no sounds when on land, there are a lot of nature sounds, wind, grass and the occasional beastie, depending on the island, and occasionally, you will get some percussions sounds, which due to the emptiness of people, feel a bit out of place. A nice touch is that when morning rolls around, you will hear some classic Australian birds, much like I have heard for years and to me, it helped sell that sense of morning, as that is when I hear them out my window.
Windbound is a game that I can suggest to diehards of exploration or rogue-like games, but the constant need for resources that are not found in the area you are in, would make it a tough one. The resource scavenging and item management systems are ok, but feel incomplete and then combine it with sailing that can be more frustrating than fun and it can easily become a chore. There is some charm here, the game has plenty of potential and some easy changes should make it better across the board, but until then, maybe enjoy the view from the dock, rather than setting sail on this one.
The Score
7.0
Review code provided by Deep Silver
The Pros
+Once you understand the concepts of sailing, it can be really fun, more so when you just avoid that dangerous reef
+The random nature of the game means with each restart, you are challenged again
+Being able to expand your boat, can make things easier and the time it takes, makes it rewarding
The Cons
+Resources are scarce across the board and sometimes back in older areas, plus they can expire quickly
+Platform is not the greatest, which is a pain when you have to climb up towers a lot
+There are issues with the sailing, getting stuck in the boat for exmaple
