5 Lives Studios, with the help of Deep Silver (Koch Media), bring their own take on the survival genre with Windbound. With promises of players looking at their own moral compasses and a unique blend of open-world/survival RPG gameplay, Windbound should surely be set to charter new ground within both genres?
Windbound To Impress?
Firstly, yes, Windbound does feature hunt and gather mechanics. Secondly, yes, players will craft and upgrade tools, storage and seafaring raft to overcome new procedurally generated challenges. Finally, yes, the initial presentation of Windbound is instantly reminiscent of the Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, with dashes of Disneys Moana misé en scene thrown in for luck.
Cel-shaded graphics have had a broader appeal thanks to the Gamecube’s TLoZ outing, Windwaker. See where I’m going with this? The issue with Windbound isn’t in its core ideas and how it looks on paper, it’s in its execution.
Borrowed Aesthetics
The title’s shameless borrowing of mainstays in its peers’ genres seems to have taken pride of place over the core gameplay flaws Windbound suffers. Its movement system feels afloat in the seas the protagonist Kara is set to explore. Its fighting system is lifted straight from Breath of the Wild with what seems to be next-to-no-time put into calibrating offensive movement.
Windbound’s physics is also of a shareware mobile standard, with the earliest example being the slingshot. Thrown rocks seem to float towards its roughly guessed target whilst the physics of the sling seems to be giving the middle finger to Sir Issac himself.
What Immersion?
Players will also find early on that scenery such as ledges and rocks will be unclimbable due to poor character mapping. Kara has an acute case of Elder Scrolls mountain jump syndrome, just without the jump.
The whole point of survival games, for the most part, is to immerse players into a series of fight-or-flight moments. These moments build up small successes such as crafting a tool into a major achievement. The premise of this falls flat at the starting line by not getting the basics nailed.
The sound engineering is about as passionate as a 40-year-old marriage that has suffered repeated bankruptcies. With protagonist Kara exploring multiple procedurally-generated islands, it would have been just super to hear the ocean. Maybe the sea breeze rushing through tall grass? No. Just a shrill bum note every time something wants to attack players and a series of bog-standard effects.
Breaking more Wind than Ground
Windbound could have been groundbreaking for the survival genre, even the narrative lands short of expectations. This sense of mystery is, unfortunately, a parody of itself, which left me wondering why 5 Lives Studios didn’t take the opportunity to again immerse players into deep lore. All of the ingredients are there. It feels like making a curry with just chicken and coconut milk, completely blanking the spice rack.
The overall design of the islands, characters and wildlife are great. The initial presentation of Windbound makes for a full-fat RPG/survival experience. It’s a solid game underneath its appealing aesthetic but is let down by poor execution and lack of polish. It’s a shame to see a title with such promise fail to live up to expectations.
What do you think about games that borrow too much from other franchises? Is presentation paramount over gameplay?
