Windbound Reviews
More enticing systemically than it is narratively, Windbound nevertheless succeeds as a sojourner's adventure of striving for survival and greater understanding.
Windbound is a delight. With a few UX issues and a bit of repetition holding it back from all-time-great status, this game is still a wonder to explore and discover. The sailing is fantastic, the island exploration is intriguing, and the sting of dying isn't so bad that it should scare away roguelike-haters. The world of Windbound is so well made that you may want to dip into it just to hang out for a while. Fun, exciting, and rewarding.
Windbound looks pretty, but lets you get frustrated and bored while playing.
Review in German | Read full review
Windbound is a survival game with rogue lite components. If the game have good ideas and design, the controls lacks of ergonomy, and the game is quite repetitive.
Review in French | Read full review
Windbound is a game that sounds good on paper but in practice, it falls apart. It's a very interesting case study in design that takes inspiration from certain games yet doesn't quite understand what made them fun in the first place.
If you like survival games with a good atmosphere, you might want to give Windbound a try. Just be sure to temper your expectations. Anyone going into it thinking this will be a Breath of the Wild level survival title will be immensely disappointed.
Windbound is an exploration game whose sense of exploration is painfully rigid.
Windbound has lovely visuals and some solid ideas. But it's held back by how old the game's loop gets. Plus, the sailing is so slow and janky that it really . . . takes the wind out of the game's sails. Okay, I'm sorry about that one.
Windbound loses its potential in getting bogged down by unbalanced survival mechanics that distract from it's best features.
Windbound is a fun experience that breaks the survival game mold. The boat crafting and sailing are innovative features that were exciting to explore. Altough the positives were very strong, the quality of life issues made the experience tedious. Windbound accels in standing alone in a saturated genre, but doesn't shine through enough.
Windbound can be made to sound excellent in an elevator pitch, but the actual game is plagued by conflicting ideas, inconsistent design, and unrealized potential.
I sailed into Windbound with hope and excitement and unfortunately sailed away with disappointment. It’s not all bad, not by a long shot. But there were enough confusing design decisions and awkward control issues to put me off this game completely.
Windbound is a beautiful artistic accomplishment in terms of presentation, but fails to make good on its promise of bringing together an open-world single-player game and typical crafting-survival elements. Despite attempts to make it approachable for all, it is an ultimately frustrating affair that squanders its potential with the same rigid survival mechanics that we've seen in a lot of other games and that's a real shame.
Whatever potential Windbound had went down with the ship.
"Windbound" is a beautiful journey that says a lot without needing to rely on spoken dialogue.
Windbound is a good survival game, but it fails to deliver a real vibrant story and a good rhythm during exploration and crossing phases.
Review in Italian | Read full review
I’d love to see this survive as a franchise -- all the elements are there, it just suffers identity crisis throughout and needs a bigger hook than “alone among a series of islands trying to find answers”. And unfortunately, that’s the game as is presented -- a solitary experience, directionless and without contextual form. Gorgeous, yes, and presented as an ambitious and familiar package with an equally resonant soundtrack, but oddly empty.
Windbound throws a wide net of ideas in the hopes of catching something magical but a lack of depth leaves it high and dry
If the gods of random generation line everything up in your favour, Windbound could be a truly captivating adventure. It’s unlikely to happen that way though, and sadly its many frustrations outweigh the beautiful game it could have been.
Windbound is a brief but enjoyable journey that merges Legend Of Zelda-style adventure with survival crafting.