Windbound

Developer: 5 Live Studios

For anyone who enjoyed the sailing aspect of Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, but preferred the style of Breath of the Wild, Windbound has you covered.

Windbound is a survival game without a lot of overly deep mechanics and micromanaging. There are also elements of a roguelike, but we’ll come back to that. For now, meet Kara, a young woman whose boat has been caught in a terrible storm and destroyed, leaving her stranded on an island with only her trusty knife and crafting know–how to get by on. You’ll spend a lot of time harvesting crafting materials on the myriad procedurally generated island dotted about. Hack up a few trees and rocks, put together a spear, and you’ll be able to hack up a few of the creatures too. The most important crafting you’ll do, however, is your new boat. It acts as not only your transport, but your home. 

As you build up your boat - increasing its size, adding extra storage, or menacing animal skulls that shoot lightning (as a warning to anyone that tries to mess with you), you’ll become quite attached to it. And you should be, because if that boat is lost to, say, one of the sharks looking for a ready meal, it’s all gone. Anything that’s on it goes down with the ship, and there’s no guarantee you’re going to be able to find some of those special parts again. 

Even if you survive the attack, if you can’t make it to land you’re going to drown at sea, so make it your priority to sail away. Thankfully death isn’t quite permanent, but having to start again with a basic raft slows the pacing down a little. You’re not thrown right back to the start, but it’s going to take you some time to get a decent store built back up again. 

The sailing mechanic is done quite well. But the wind, like the sea, is not your friend. If you’re relying on your sails to move you to land, or away from certain death, you’d best hope it’s in your favour. Otherwise, I hope you didn’t skip lift day, because you’ll be doing some paddling. Your sailing ability is also put to the test in the level transitions. To get from one series of islands to another, you have to activate several towers, and then traverse an increasingly difficult and turbulent water passage via portals that open when you’ve completed the level objective. These areas are also where the story is delivered. The game is entirely without dialogue, so it’s a case of piecing together what’s going on through in-game paintings and inference. It’s relatively simple, but not without its charm. This isn’t a very heavily narrative-based game, but it’s nice to have some link between areas and a reason for what you’re doing.

Updates to the game added ‘Free Sailing’ mode, allowing you to craft a boat from all parts, and just cruise the open seas. They also added new combat moves, enemies, items, outfits, and new types of towers (with harder puzzles required to activate). You can also explore the beauty of the game using photo mode. There have also been a number of bug fixes and tweaks, which are always welcome after release.

There aren’t very many survival games that are primarily set on a boat. Wind Waker used it as a means of traversal and puzzle solving, and some AAA games have used it as a central theme (Assassins Creed: IV: Black Flag), but none quite in this way. It’s also good to see a concept taken and run with. Windbound is a purer exploration of the concept that, whilst not hugely engaging in story, does have enough flesh on the bones to make it worth a play.