Roaming the skyward islands of Windscape, you'll find yourself descending into a perpetual state of explorative calm. This is a world of monsters and ne'er do wells, much like any other fantasy setting with a splash of the medieval, but roaming its semi-cartoonish lands often invokes the sedate pace of Firewatch and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture more than it does, say, the snowy peaks of Skyrim. It's certainly channelling a certain amount of The Elder Scrolls, but without that rigid need to level up and grind experience. It's a game that gives you a single quest and lets you go out and see where that quest might lead you, even if it's off the beaten path, on your own terms.
In that regard, Windscape is a resounding success. The brainchild of one developer, Hamburg-based indie designer Dennis Witte, this semi-open-world is an attempt to break away from many of the constrictive tropes that have hindered action-RPGs and sandbox creation games for so long, while attempting to channel some of the intrinsically magical qualities that makes some of them – such as The Legend of Zelda series – so timeless and universally beloved. And while it does fall into some of the same traps as these genres have along the way, the result is something that pushes player agency and freedom to explore to the very forefront.
You play as Ida, a young girl who lives on a farm with her parents in a fantastical realm where towns, villages, forests and mountains sit atop a series of floating islands. Her adventure begins innocently enough, simply gathering ingredients to make food at the stove. It's here we're introduced to a crafting system that attempts to simplify the rigmarole of crafting into a more homogeneous format. The entire hand-crafted world is filled with resources, ranging from chests filled with meat (we don’t know why either) to herbs, copper ore and items with magical properties. Stoves are scattered across the land and while you can't just randomly throw things into the pot a la Breath of the Wild, there's a list of recipes available to show you what can make or what you need to restock your inventory.
The same applies to making potions for temporary stat buffs (such as elixirs that increase the toughness of your skin, thus applying a brief amount of additional protection), building armour and creating weapons. There are forges to help turn raw materials such as ore into more useful blocks, so anyone with a passing history in Minecraft will feel right at home. Windscape is a game with an abundance of resources, so you're rarely ever stressing over a lack of herbs or wood. You can even use a mana compressor to create spells you can unleash in battle. As before, all the recipes are there, you just need to go out and find the missing ingredients.
While Windscape doesn’t necessarily attempt to subvert the classic concepts of the first-person RPG, it does make a concerted effort to reinforce its focus on a natural pace of exploration and progression. One mission spawns another in first hour or so, but soon you’ll encounter NPCs out in each sandbox-sized portion of the world. None of these missions ever stray into mind blowing territory when it comes to quest design, but most do give you an excuse to explore many of its impressively large dungeons. Many of which contain all manner of rarer resources and, naturally, the occasional boss battle.
Annoyingly, most of these boss battles are pretty forgettable and are usually far too easy to overcome once you learn a particular attack pattern and exploit it, but they do help break up the need to bash ratmen over the head with a club or lob spells at angry wolves. To be fair, even the likes of The Elder Scrolls Online and its current expansions too often rely on bosses that just need to be whacked for ages until they die, but Windscape’s are simply over too quickly too leave any lasting impression.
By simplifying mechanics such as crafting and doing away with the heavy burden of XP metres, skill trees and grinded upgrades, Windscape pushes the world itself and the adventures you undertake within it to the forefront. It's a much cleaner experience for it, and one that's likely to appeal to both older and younger players alike thanks to the colourful nature of its art style and that desire to occasionally channel modern walking simulators. You'll just have to contend with the issues that still plague the likes of The Elder Scrolls to this day.
Regardless of which melee weapons you take into combat, the moment-to-moment action rarely stretches beyond 'hit enemy, block enemy attack, hit enemy again'. Granted, some enemies do require a little more in the way of tactical thinking – such as circling angry wasp-like bees in order to avoid their stinger projectiles or using spells to incinerate groups of spiders – but once you've understood these methods, it's a case of rinse and repeat. Windscape was designed to avoid being a first-person action game, but its elements dictate that some of the time it has to be, and it simply doesn’t attempt to do anything new or innovative as a result.
Conclusion
Windscape isn’t an antidote to the everlong tropes of modern action-RPGs – simply because it still needs to rely on enough of them to tie its own systems together – but it does present a relaxed and engrossing alternative that’s designed to give players of any age or skill level the chance to explore, battle and craft at their own pace. The deepness of that crafting system belies its apparent simplicity, and with all manner of stories to uncover across its hand-crafted lands, you’re left with a first-person adventure that very much belongs on Switch.
Comments 21
Looks interesting enough, I'll put it on my list. First I've heard about this game.
Looks right up my street. Will buy once done with Yonder.
Just played the first hour or so after done with work, dinner and puttning baby to sleep. Super chill and relaxing. Beautiful artstyle. Suits me just right.
I was on the fence with this game for quite some time. I watched quite a few videos but eventually I decided against it.
The graphics on that cover image are a bit Runescapey aren't they?
Could I interject with a somewhat altogether different opinion? I couldn't possibly recommend Windscape. When I reviewed this game for my own site, I found it to be an unfinished buggy mess. I won't link it here, that seems like very bad form. However, if you were to google the name of this game, review, and the format it is on, my own review is the one directly below this in the search results (It was the top hit until this went live, not that I'm bitter....)
How about performance?
I’m surprised to see no mention of how the in game diary doesn’t update past the first island. Or that you are tasked with saving 3 sages, yet there are only 2 in the game. Or how the frame rate stutters during the open areas of the third island. Or how there is only 2 open islands, with the last two being linear dungeons (albeit the last one is outside), with no NPCs or side quests after the halfway point of the game except for the vendor, whose items don’t update after the first island making his wares useless after a quarter of the way through the game.
I gave it an 8 on my site. It is a charming little game with big ambitions. I found it incredibly relaxing to play after crappy days of work. I would suggest laying back with an afternoon snack and a nice cup of joe or hot tea (Earl Grey or Oolong are my favorites) while playing it.
@Lachybob I guess we got pre-alpha codes or something as everyone else is raving about the open world and the story being great. There was a story?
@Sammich that's actually parked my interest because the chill part of breath of the wild are really what kept me coming back to the game all the time
@Nin10dad I’m starting to think something like that has happened, as I’ve seen very discordant reviews so far. Like, a site gives it 3 and another one 8.5; this is not regular score fluctuation.
@Dom as far as you’re aware, have you played the base version or have the devs already put out a patch?
Because some reviews mention pretty heavy technical problems and oversights (like no map at all in the last area), while others don’t.
Thanks 😄
so, like, is the game stable or not?
It sounds like there's too much exploration and not enough action for my tastes. I generally don't play video games to "chill." I'll pass.
So basically Baby's First Skyrim.
@gavvybiggs I hope you like Yonder, I did. Yes, it was a little glitchy, but the story and game play made up for that. I played it till the end, but did not quite 100% it. I would give it an 8 out of 10.
If this game is like that, I can forgive some glitches. But I will have to see more reviews and videos.
Good thing this game is first person, from what I've seen they botched the main character's face.
I kinda like my XP meters, though action/adventure can work really well without any RPG trappings. I mean, that's the entirety of Legend of Zelda.
@dugan Yes I'm still enjoying Yonder here, rarely finish games but hoping to on this one!
So I bought this last night as it was on sale and with my discount cost just under £1.40, which to be fair, seems about right. Even this much later the game is still on 1.0.0 which pretty much labels it as abandonware in my book.
Don't get me wrong, it is charming and does have some nice touches, and crafting - which works quite well actually, and I like the retro graphics. BUT, oh but... the quests are kinda nerfed; dialog occurs before the thing to which it refers has happened, the AI is completely off the wall, and it really doesn't feel finished at all.
It is a bit like "My 1st Oblivion", and carries amusing meta-references to Bethesda games.
It has certainly got some decent points, and it is (currently) quite fun to play, but it really lacks in some of the details and polish and finish, which is a real shame as an obvious amount of time and effort and love has gone into it.
I'm down with carrying on coz it's not annoyingly terrible like some games, and it's too full of innocent to charm to drop - (I'd feel guilty) - but it's not worth the non-sale price by any standard, and it's definitely not a 7.
If you can find it on sale for under £2 though, go for it, it'll make you smile if nothing else.
Oh, and the music is EXCELLENT.
@clvr 2023, and no patch as far as I can tell.
cant figure out how to rate it but while i enjoy the game its got some issues, 1. im unable to sell things, the merchants only have 100 coins and after i sold the limit to one merchant every single merchant after that only has 39 left and i have to buy things in order to sell. 2. there is no use for the fangs, strong arcane mana, blueberries and gamboo fruit, and i only had 2 uses for the animal tendons, and only 1 use for the pallas bar. 3. when i was in the pyramid everytime i died i respawned outside it despite multiple saving inside forcing me to have to repeat and regather everything until after i beat a specific boss. 4. everytime i leave Tambora to make something i am unable to go back cause the gate keeps slamming shut forcing me to either restart the game or go visit another island then come back every single time, the restarts makes me lose things despite saving beforehand if i could i'd give it 3 stars
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