Windrose is shaping up to be one of the more interesting pirate games on the horizon. After watching the trailer and diving into the newly released demo, it’s easy to see why some people are drawing comparisons to Skull and Bones and Valheim.
The upcoming survival RPG blends naval combat, base building and dungeon exploration into a single pirate adventure – and early gameplay suggests it might be aiming for a lot more than just ship battles.
What Is Windrose?
Windrose is a solo/co-op survival RPG. You and your friends will be able to sail the seven seas fighting and plundering, seeking adventure and Ancient Chests filled with booty (not that kind of booty calm down!). Windrose has naval battles which will see you go head to head against other ships not unlike Skull & Bones, unlike skull and bones though, boarding is actually a thing, which should put what’s remaining of Skull and Bones fanbase into somewhat of an excitable state. Naval battles without boarding is just… a fancy sailing simulator. Adding fairly deep character customisation options (beards – thanks for catching up Arc Raiders) before heading right on into battle against Blackbeards crew, you’ll learn how to navigate the battlefield (or battleship?) in land based combat until Blackbeard’s crew leaves you marooned on an island. From there it’s all on you. Build, explore, fight and probably die – I did, a lot.
When & Where Can I Play Windrose?
Well, Windrose won’t be releasing into early access like many ambitious indie titles, Windrose Crew will be holding out a little longer and going for full release, although a date hasn’t been announced yet. All hope is not lost though, you can play the Windrose demo now on Steam. Full release will see Windrose dropping on PC, with later releases on Playstation and Xbox.
Windrose recently dominated Steam Next Fest with the most wishlisted game, which means even after playing the demo, over 1 million players felt confident enough to add to their wishlists. Check out the Trailer and maybe you’ll see why.
This isn’t all though, future updates are already planned with boss fights, more weapons, new enemy types and UI updates, all we’ve seen in the demo is a slice of what we will be doing, with ports to explore and a storyline to follow, I’m sure Windrose won’t disappoint when it arrives, want to see more of what’s coming, check out this new trailer.
The demo so far has been received very well, with an all time peak of 22,000 players, it’s definitely been one of the more successful games out of Next Fest, with Marathon and Burglin’ Gnomes taking the top two spots of most played.
This proves once again, it doesn’t take a AAA publisher and development team to achieve great things.