Windbound Reviews

Windbound is ranked in the 25th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
Recommended
Oct 29, 2020

Windbound is a fine survival game, if you want to build very specific kinds of ships and kill indigenous wildlife for twenty hours.

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C+
Oct 23, 2020

Windbound is a decently fun game. Through the story didn't pull me in, the visuals and upgrading the ship were what kept me wanting to play more. If you're a fan of Windwaker, Windbound may not satisfy your craving with the survival pieces added in. But if you're looking for a different survival game, or if the premise of Windbound sounds like it will float your boat? Grab it!

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4 / 10.0
Oct 21, 2020

Overall, though, Windbound’s visual and atmospheric aesthetic just can’t save the gameplay. I wanted to love Windbound as a fan of survival games and cel-shaded visuals, but the world was too empty and uninteresting to make the adventure worth it. The survival mechanics were almost unnecessary, making the trek through the world feel even more pointless and empty than it should have. Windbound is an attempt to combine narrative, survival, exploration and aesthetic into one package and fails on every count.

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Unscored
Oct 10, 2020

Windbound is fine for a short pleasure cruise, but you're unlikely to want to complete the full voyage.

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6 / 10
Oct 6, 2020

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

Recommended
Sep 29, 2020

Though a few rough edges keep the game short of perfection, Windbound nonetheless is an excellently crafted and conceived take on the survival-exploration genre built on gorgeous aesthetic and storytelling.

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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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Jacob James
Top Critic
4 / 10
Sep 21, 2020

Whatever potential Windbound had went down with the ship.

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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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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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LevelUp
Fernando Salinas
Top Critic
6.5 / 10.0
Sep 14, 2020

Windbound shines at first glance for its beautiful landscapes and a mix of survival themes with good sea-navigation mechanics, yet it falls short putting these ingredients into action. It's a game that becomes fun if you manage to overcome the learning curve, but it becomes very tedious and frustrating after a few hours.

Review in Spanish | Read full review

8.5 / 10.0
Sep 14, 2020

This game was certainly a unique experience. I enjoyed its simplicity, struggled with its challenges, and had fun in the process. The visuals were pleasing, accompanied by clean image quality, and the music was fitting and a tad charming in the process. Despite my frustrations with the moments of platforming here and there and the eventual repetitiveness of the gameplay loop, if I were to ever hunker for a survivalist’s challenge again, I would definitely come back to Windbound.

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8 / 10.0
Sep 14, 2020

More enticing systemically than it is narratively, Windbound nevertheless succeeds as a sojourner's adventure of striving for survival and greater understanding.

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6.3 / 10.0
Sep 11, 2020

Windbound looked to be a great many things, but it turned out to be a standard survival-roguelike crossover with some promising areas that never reached their full potential. An overly cruel death mechanic and repeating vistas are what ultimately drag down an otherwise solid and partially fun survival game. With the right expectations, Windbound is a solid offering that doesn't stray too far from its survival core.

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Sep 9, 2020

Windbound seeks to move beyond the “emergent story through gameplay” standard among survival games, and while it succeeds somewhat, I think it still has some room to grow. There are also some balance issues with some of the systems that the developers have talked about tuning post-launch, so it is entirely possible that Windbound will grow into something that feels overall really polished, but at present it just isn’t quite hitting all the right notes for me. There’s a lot to like about Windbound, and maybe with a little more time and care, there will be a lot to love. For now, it’s a strong concept with some really well implemented mechanics that just leaves me wanting for the better, more fleshed out version of this same thing. In the meantime though, it is a joyful, bright game that has enough going for it that you may want to keep dipping your toes back in. Just know that the waters may be a tad more shallow than they appear.

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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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6 / 10.0
Sep 6, 2020

In the end, after figuring out every Chapter was essentially second verse, same as the first, I stopped exploring. I stopped trying to get better gear. All I needed was enough food to keep me alive as I sail from one island to the next, climbing towers, activating beacons, rinse, and repeat.

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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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6 / 10
Sep 3, 2020

Unfortuntely, if you’re looking for a great survival roguelike to put your time into, then you’re probably better off setting sail in more abundant seas.

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Avoid
Sep 3, 2020
Windbound (Quick Review) [PC] video thumbnail