![]() You’ll have to navigate the perilous seas surrounding the Forbidden Islands, all while adapting to the dangerous paradise surrounding you. Tons of sailing experience is not necessarily required, as it’s just a game, but it’ll definitely be appreciated.Įvery week, the Epic Games Store gives away a full game for free to anyone who has Epic’s launcher installed, and next week is the nautical adventure Windbound. The Forbidden Islands are our destination in Windbound, a survival game with plenty of secrets on the islands we’re exploring, and the tickets there will be completely free next week on the Epic Games Store. If you didn’t manage to snag the game for free already, there are dozens of better games out there that are of better value for your money.Sailing the seven seas for free sounds like a jolly good time for me, and the Epic Games Store will oblige all us gamers with the sea legs to go on an aquatic adventure. It has next to no replayability, and I don’t actually recommend its punishing “survival” mode if you are just interested in progressing through the game. Ultimately, Windbound is an acceptable, free survival appetizer to hold you over for a better meal. So, so many resources and inventory slots saved from not having to re-craft spears throughout my journey. Early on I was able to purchase Ancestral Spear, for example, which means I always had a spear available that never broke. Some are wildly more useful than others, and it is largely RNG that determines which ones are available. These can be used to purchase Blessings at the end of each chapter, which then can be “slotted” on your character in the same area. ![]() One element of persistent progress comes from collecting Sea Shards. Reminds me of Valheim a bit with wind direction being important, although I think you can be a little fancier in this game with “tightening” your sails and catching some forward movement even while slightly into the wind. You start off building a canoe and paddling around from island to island, but eventually you can get bamboo or wood and construct larger craft with sails and onboard tanning racks and clay ovens and so on. The sailing portion of the game was good fun. The devs clearly intended you to dodge+attack or parry every move. You can craft a sling and bow later on, but ranged damage even with the best gear/ammo is super weak and breaks enemy lock-on, which means Spacebar becomes Jump instead of dodge. While you can dodge-roll, timing is critical, and you can get locked into animations if you aren’t careful. On the very first island, you can face off with a boar that has a standard sort of charge attack which takes off about a third of your HP. Having said that, combat is frequently very unforgiving. Later on, you unlock additional combat moves, some of which become required to defeat later enemies, but overall ends up making most combat trivial. Enemies have maybe 2-3 moves and become straight-forward to dispatch once you have learned the tells. But there are not a whole lot of different enemy types, or food options, or tech trees, or similar fluff. Not easy, mind you, especially if you play on Survival Mode in which a single death means starting back over in Chapter 1 no matter how far you progressed. The game is… well, fundamentally really simple. You have a HP and Stamina bar, with the latter decreasing at intervals until you eat food from creatures loath to give you their flesh. After swimming a short distance to another island, you set off to collect resources, build a boat, and ultimately activate three mysterious pillars scattered across your circular map so you can be transported to the next chapter area. The essential premise is that you wake up on an island with nothing to your name, after being attacked by a sea creature. Overall? The mixed reviews are earned, although I enjoyed my own journey. Realizing I got Windbound for free from Epic back in February, I downloaded and booted it up and went sailing. After getting the itch to replay Raft only to realize there was a final update coming soon, I decided to play something a least thematically similar. As a connoisseur of sorts for survival and roguelike games, I had a sideways eye out for the otherwise poorly-reviewed Windbound.
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