I especially love the fact that each creature in the game bears its own musical cues that play as Kara gets close to them – after being ambushed by vicious Silkmaws a few too many times I learned to recognise the faintly saucy salsa beats that warned me to keep my eye on the treelines. I appreciated how well-integrated the game’s species are into their environments, and how their visual designs and their behaviours actually play a role in when and how Kara should approach them.
There’s a great variety in atmospheres, even if the island layouts start to feel a tad too familiar by the end, and the menagerie of creature designs is excellent. Kara is a capable adventurer and exploring the world’s many islands, foraging and hunting for resources and uncovering secrets is a lot of fun. For starters, this is a game that will feel very familiar to anyone who’s played 3D adventure games in the vein of Breath of the Wild, which will no doubt appeal to a lot of players. I’ll expand on that in a bit, but first let’s talk about what Windbound does well. Despite the looming threat that dying would reset my progress back to the beginning of the game (though playing in ‘Storyteller’ mode disables this) my first playthrough was an absolute breeze, which feels oddly wrong. Unfortunately, it’s the simplicity in this equation that is Windbound’s slight undoing, which is a far cry from my anxious expectations going in as a genre rookie. It’s an interesting dichotomy, giving players a freshly-generated world to discover with each new section while tying it to rigid and simple goals, and it almost works. There’s a particular rhythm to progress, with each chapter requiring the activation of three shrines in order to pass through a gateway into the next, but the seas and islands contained within that framework in each chapter are procedurally generated.
Set across five chapters, Kara’s journey in Windbound walks a fine line between open-world survival game and narrative adventure. This forms the game’s central goal, and underpins the survival elements, as Kara hops from island to island, collecting resources and upgrading her boat and equipment to ultimately find a way home and learn the truth behind her fate along the way. With little recollection of events and no clue as to where she is, Kara must use her survival and sailing skills to keep herself alive and build the tools and craft to venture out into the open sea and find her way home.
Windbound centres around Kara, a girl who finds herself stranded alone on an island after a storm separates her from the rest of her clan. Suckered in by the almost Wind Waker- meets- Breath of the Wild vibes, I decided to cast aside my trepidations and set sail. Enter Windbound, a gorgeous-looking indie adventure developed in our very own city of Brisbane at 5 Lives Studios that promises to bridge the gap between hardcore survival and more narrative-focused journey.
#Windbound ps4 review skin
I understand the appeal, but the idea of playing something for hours to potentially fail and lose a ton of progress makes my skin crawl. I’ve never been drawn to the open-world/survival genre that’s seen immense growth this generation with titles like ARK, Conan Exiles, Subnautica and the like.
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