It lives in painted tableaux, unlocked at the end of each of the five chapters, and in gnomic quotations, like, “Our love is dead. The other problem is that the plot isn’t as faint as it often is with rogue-likes, and repetition doesn’t do it any favours. The actual work of advancement is hardly compressed. You still beat on, scrounging for materials and hunting. The problem with Windbound is that, when borne back ceaselessly into the past, you find you haven’t gained so much in skill and experience that you sail ahead. So why strip away our story progress?Īt its best, the power of the rogue-like is twofold: first, to provide mounting weight and momentum to your journey, sharpened by the knowledge that, in death, all is lost and second, not to impart wisdom but, rather, to demonstrate what has already been learned-to shine a light on the shrinking of once-daunting challenges. Here the clashes yield no such complexity (simply lock-on, lunge, and leap out the way) and the regular elements of play-the foraging, crafting, and cooking-are established early and with ease. It was done to teach and to tinge: to encourage you to bolster your combat prowess, and to smear the world with mortal cruelty. When Dark Souls saw fit to clobber you without mercy and to mug you of your amassed currency, you sensed that death was being wielded, by a judicious developer, like a knuckle-wrapping ruler.
One of the draining effects of a popular genre is that it may be donned, like an ill-fitting suit, without warrant. Though, I have to say, I wish you weren’t. Should death befall you in the default mode, “Survival,” you’re booted back to the beginning, with all but a few items lost. These island routines-the dodging of hairiness and harm, and the acquisition of a flame-roasted lunch-are spiked with a rogue-like streak. Or you can creep past the creature entirely and bag yourself a razorback pig instead. You can poke it with a spear, whittled from a stick and, in a sturdier variation, tipped with bone. The beast can be felled with arrows, whipped up from freshly hacked wood and fired from a silk-strung bow. wreathing itself in black cloud, it vanishes and reappears, ready to pounce at your back. Take, for instance, the Gloomharrow, a skulking purplish lizard reminiscent of Randall Boggs from Monsters, Inc.
It’s there in the steady-burning ebb of your stamina and health, and, in more clear and clawing fashion, in the various predators that roam the isles. These themes, both the grand and the personal-the urge to decode the enigmas of the past while getting back to your people-are pinned down by Kara’s most pressing needs: namely, don’t starve and, if possible, avoid the long dark.ĭeath doesn’t so much loom, in Windbound, as lurk in plain daylight.
(Keep an eye out, too, for the early shot of Kara, gripping a guy rope on her raft amidst the tempest, mirroring the rain-lashed hero of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.) Yet the story is of the myth-and-moral variety, rich in symbolism but lightly sprayed, as in Abzû and Journey: scenes of rapture and downfall told in sandy murals, and so forth. In its surf-drizzled premise, and in Kara’s appearance-robed in fur-trimmed cloth and tribal tattoos, with a bun of ice-white hair-there is a hint of the marooned child from Rime. The tale turns on Kara, a young woman at sea who, having been sundered from her clan in a storm, washes up on a beach. But what of Windbound? Who might we imagine gearing up to bask in its breezes? Gentle, hippyish souls with hearts aflutter? Or perhaps those with a nose for adventure, eager to gust into the unknown? I fear both may be swept away. Don’t Starve, This War of Mine, Rust, The Long Dark: what else would they signify but the primal and the pragmatic, the slow wheeze of decay, and the constant threat of doom? Let us picture these players, their high spirits swathed in waterproof canvas, pressing on into the night and greeting the inhospitable with a smile. Players of survival games know what they’re in for.
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