Been toying for a bit with Windbound, this week freebie on the epic store and had some fun.
It is a roguelite before anything so expect a lot of frustration (fun stuff like losing all your hard earned progress, boats, items, crafts, going back to chapter 1 ...) if you don't choose the "Story" mode (that allow you to keep your progress, only going back the beginning of the current chapter you're in when dying) .
The goal of the game is to complete each chapter (unless you're masochist and choose Endless mode in which there's ... no end but you still lose all your progress on death ).
Each chapter is an archipelago that is procedurally generated, each islands may have a few different biomes/monsters/items.
To complete a chapter, you must find 3 ruins that are on 3 different islands (not all islands of the archipelago have a ruin but you may want to visit to gather materials to craft things and boats) and trigger their light (located on their top). Then you'll have to sail to another island that contain a giant portal, that can only be reached by having triggered the light of the 3 ruins.
Once gone through the portal, you learn a bit of the lore and navigate an odd dark place to the entrance of the next chapter
Before entering you'll be able to choose a few (depending on how much you'll have gathered in your archipelago exploration) blessings from a random list.
Then the next chapter has a new procedural archipelago and you'll have to find and trigger again 3 ruins to access the next portal.
Things are not that simple, because the game out of being a roguelite is also a survival game : in which you'll need to hunt for food , cook , gather and etc... to keep your stamina and health at good enough level to avoid getting one shot or drowning, avoid sprinting all the time to not burn your stamina faster than you can heal it.
The combat gameplay isn't really great, but still manageable (you can lock on target to be able to dodge/parry , but you'll never be as fast as if you don't lock but dodging/parrying seems oddly not working as good as when locking).
Everything you find/gather/hunt can have an use other than only food : you craft tools, weapons, special items, boats, boat equipment, repair etc ...
Some early larger monster that is easy to avoid must in fact be hunted (great chance to die) because their materials are necessary for some tools .
Don't be like me and find yourself in chapter 2 and a rock prevent you to trigger the last ruin light, rock that can be mined out with a tool , but tool that require to kill a big monster that was appearing alone in an island in chapter 1 (that i avoided) but now walk with a buddy, and with the combat system and my poor old reflexes , avoiding getting hit by both at the same time is way too hard
Now the sailing : it's oddly relaxing despite requiring you being involved.
With your first crafted boat you'll use the oar to move, but quickly enough after some upgrading and rebuilding, you'll sail with the wind, having to deal with wind changing their orientation, being careful to not get wrecked by a reef you may see underwater, careful of those fracking crabs that can jump from a reef into your boat, damaging it (kill it fast to avoid heavy repairs).
One of the first crafting you want to do is a bag, because without it you can only carry very few different items (making item management hell), with the 1st bag craftable it's a lot better.
You can also craft special bags you can attach to the boat that can carry even more.
Overall it's a lot more fun than i thought it would be, but don't be decieved by the Disney like appearance
It's sometime easier to die than you may think.
Oh and performance is excellent , good point in a time in which optimisation isn't really a focus in development anymore, especially amazing considering that it's the Unity engine.
Low point is that in the long run it may be a bit repetitive, and it seems you can't rebind your key, it's super annoying to me but i guess i'm one of the few guys not playing with a controller in this age, but still can't believe the devs haven't implemented that (at least AutoHotkey is always helpful in those cases).
Anyways, good game at first but i doubt it will stay fun for long from the reports i read on further chapters.
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Topic: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads. (Read 319493 times)