Windbound Reviews

Windbound is ranked in the 25th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
6 / 10.0
Sep 17, 2020

Windbound is a beautiful game. I do feel that the vibrancy of the islands had to be toned down for Switch. Lush plant life had to be limited, making the terrain feel a bit barren. Food will degrade and there is a weapon durability system. The game wants you to utilize the crafting. As already mentioned, I enjoyed the game. More so when I switched over to the “Story” mode. I can’t, however, recommend this game at full price. The glitches make it feel a bit unpolished. The lifeless world is not great. There’s potential, but it hasn’t been realized fully.

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59 / 100
Sep 26, 2020

Windbound offers a simply adequate sailing adventure. The crafting system is predictable, the story simplistic, and the world is beautiful but quite empty. You might find some enjoyment from the bigger islands toward the end of the game, but not everyone will have the patience to make it that far.

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58 / 100
Aug 28, 2020

Windbound looks pretty, but lets you get frustrated and bored while playing.

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5.7 / 10.0
Aug 28, 2020

Windbound had a tonne of potential but the finished product is more Titanic or The Perfect Storm than a soothing day at sea.

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5.5 / 10.0
Sep 14, 2020

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.

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5.5 / 10.0
Aug 28, 2020

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.

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IGN
Top Critic
5 / 10.0
Sep 1, 2020

Neither compelling as a survival simulation nor captivating as a story-based experience, Windbound is all at sea.

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GameSpot
Top Critic
5 / 10
Aug 28, 2020

Windbound drops you in a world of wilderness and open water but fails to make exploration compelling.

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5 / 10.0
Aug 28, 2020

On the tin, Windbound offers a fulfilling and exciting survival/adventure endeavor but when delved into, I was left with an empty and exhausting experience.

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Aug 28, 2020

Windbound is an exploration game whose sense of exploration is painfully rigid.

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5 / 10
Aug 27, 2020

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.

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5 / 10.0
Aug 28, 2020

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.

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Ben Sellwood
Top Critic
5 / 10.0
Aug 28, 2020

Windbound should have been better. The potential and aesthetic are strong, but it is such an uninterestingly strict jaunt that I really couldn't find many redeeming features to make me want to play it any further than I have.

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GameSpew
Top Critic
5 / 10.0
Aug 28, 2020

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.

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5 / 10.0
Aug 28, 2020

While Windbound initially instills the awe and wonder of a brave new world to explore, the game quickly grows stale once the structure of it becomes readily apparent.

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5 / 10.0
Sep 3, 2020

There’s a lot to learn from Nintendo’s initial offerings, and Brisbane based indie studio may have a bright future but much like the title’s “Survival” mode, Windbound sets sail into tumultuous tides that may have washed them ashore, and back to the drawing board.

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Aug 28, 2020

With just a single trailer, Windbound captivated the minds of many gamers. As more news came out about this indie title, anticipation grew larger and larger. Developed by 5 Lives Studios and published by the illustrious Deep Silver, the journey known as Windbound has finally seen its release on today’s consoles.

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Chris Wray
Top Critic
4.5 / 10.0
Sep 5, 2020

Windbound wants to offer a deep story backed up by rewarding exploration, crafting and survival in a beautiful open world. However, it only really lands the beautiful open world part of this, with it getting close to the line with the rewarding exploration and crafting aspects. The problem is that for all it wants to offer, Windbound is just too shallow and repetitive and offers no real replay value.

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Sep 7, 2020

Overall I can’t say I fully enjoyed my experience with Windbound, but I could have without the issues

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Jacob James
Top Critic
4 / 10
Sep 21, 2020

Whatever potential Windbound had went down with the ship.

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