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Windbound reviews6/24/2023 ![]() It’s possible there are methods for cooking longer-lasting food or items to preserve the food that’s cooked, but Windbound‘s slightly off-kilter crafting mechanism made it difficult to uncover new recipes. ![]() This is all exacerbated by the way Windbound makes it impossible to build up a stock of food - edibles degrade even faster than the main character loses stamina, and while food’s condition can be reset by cooking it over a fire, the moment it goes into the player’s inventory, the decomposition clock restarts. This transforms would should be an intriguing experience about gradually exploring mysterious islands into a constant rush to stuff the main character’s face, lest she fall into a failure spiral in which she’s too weak to track down her next meal. Every one of those actions requires stamina, of course, so the longer the player has gone between meals, the more difficult a time they’ll have hunting down their next one. That’s right, fighting enemies involves sprinting, dodging, and finding the perfect moment to strike with a melee weapon. It’s a strange choice for a game with stamina-based combat. This transforms Windbound into a constant rush to find enough food to keep from starving to death, which is easier said than done since there aren’t enough plants to satisfy the character’s hunger - it generally took me more energy to find berries and mushrooms than was recovered by eating them.Īs such, the only reliable way to get food is to hunt animals - or it would be, if it weren’t for the fact that the developers have failed to give the character a Hunger bar separate from the Stamina bar. Her stamina meter drops a chunk every minute or two, and it doesn’t have many chunks to start with. Speaking of food, hunger is the perfect place to start discussing Windbound‘s problems, almost all of which come down to balance issues.įor starters, the main character gets hungry way too fast. There’s a wide variety of weapons and tools to be unlocked, as well as food recipes to deal with the character’s ever-increasing appetite. My character would find some rocks and grass, make a sling, use it to kill a boar, then turn that boar into a bone spear to ready herself for the larger beasts inhabiting the next island. When this system works, it’s a thing of beauty. ![]() This involves cutting grass, chopping down trees and slaying monsters for their oh-so-recyclable bones. Gameplay is built entirely around scavenging resources and transforming them into valuable tools. Climbing these towers and progressing to subsequent areas is the main goal of the narrative. Each major island contains a tower which holds a key to open the the next stage of the Nautilus’ world. From this point, it’s up to the player to guide her through building a grass canoe and setting out to explore. As she drowns, she finds herself whisked away to a mysterious island. As a flotilla of rafts do battle with enormous Nautili, a woman gets knocked into the water as her ship is smashed. Windbound starts with a terrifying cutscene. ![]() As I worked my way through it, though, I found too many issues to make it an easy recommendation. ![]() Windbound seems like it would be an ideal title for me - craftable canoes and rafts, randomized islands to explore, and a gorgeous cartoon aesthetic? It had me right away. Give me a canoe, the open ocean, and some kind of a weapon, and I’m happy. I’m a fan of games about exploring archipelagos. WTF Seriously, how is there not a hunger meter separate from Stamina? LOW Dying because I was too weak from hunger to hunt for food. HIGH Perfecting my all-bamboo watercraft. ![]()
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