Seventeen-hundred-and-a-few-broken: Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, has proclaimed himself king of the pirates and his fleet dominates the Caribbean. With her he besieges Tortuga. The player tries to fight his way through the blockade and escape. His ship is captured and sunk. Then he is unceremoniously thrown overboard with serious injuries. When he wakes up on the beach of a small island, he vows revenge. First of all you have to survive on the deserted island. And then you need a boat. After that, nothing stands in the way of your own privateer career.
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This is how the pirate adventure “Windrose” begins, a cooperative survival action RPG for one to eight players, which was released in the first early access version on Steam a few days ago. For anyone familiar with the genre, Windrose is quickly described: “Windrose” is “Valheim” with pirates. In fact, Windrose has so much in common with the pandemic hit from 2021 that you can safely call it a copy, at least when it comes to the game mechanics, because the graphics stand out clearly from the Viking survival model. That’s not bad in itself, because Valheim is popular for a reason: the sophisticated game mechanics still inspire a fairly large fan base even five years after the first early access version was released. That’s why “Valheim with pirates” is a pretty brilliant idea.
You can’t live on rum alone
For everyone who has never played Valheim, the gameplay of Windrose is briefly explained. It’s a kind of survival game light. Neither food, water nor shelter from the weather are essential to life. The character survives indefinitely if you don’t get into fights with pirates, wild boars or the surprisingly aggressive, omnipresent dodos. You don’t need any water, rum and coffee are a bonus. However, your own health bar is so miserably short at the beginning that your would-be pirate is easy prey even for a dodo. Although death is not the end of the game, you lose many of the items you have collected. This is annoying, so you should look for something to eat.
Fabian Scherschel/Screenshot Windrose
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Two food slots need to be filled. Each of the two significantly expands the life bar. However, you have to have two different dishes ready at all times, a different one for each food slot, in order to be able to start your wild pirate adventures with maximum life energy. So it means diligently collecting ingredients and always keeping an eye out for new recipes during your adventures. Not only can you turn enemies like giant crabs into kebabs, you can also use bananas, dodo eggs and cayenne pepper in creative creations.
Later, in addition to a cooking area, you can also build an alchemy table and brew a variety of potions. This is where every pirate’s best friend comes into play: rum. In addition to elixirs of life that heal wounds, there is a whole collection of different potions with which you can improve your attack powers or teleport yourself home.
What would a pirate be without his own ship?
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After the player has cut down palm trees, collected plant fibers and built a first hut on the beach of the deserted island, it is time to move inland. Not only wild animals await here, but also mysterious ruins. Later there is access to a small dinghy with which you can explore other islands in the archipelago. Blackbeard’s men eventually find pirate nests there. You gradually free the sailors trapped there and put together your own motley crew of pirates.
Then you set about making one of the many shipwrecks that are a dime a dozen in this part of the Caribbean seaworthy again. Along the way you will find all sorts of contemporary weapons such as sabers, swords, halberds, pistols and black powder rifles, as well as the tricorn hat that is obligatory for a pirate captain. Now it can begin: off to battle with Blackbeard’s fleet!
Like the Viking model Valheim, the world of Windrose, which is largely made up of procedurally generated geography, is divided into different landscapes. First it’s about finding secrets hidden in a landscape. These enable you to build new tools, which gradually enables you to overcome increasingly stronger opponents until you finally meet the final boss of the respective landscape. Then we continue to explore a new area and overcome new challenges.
Fabian Scherschel/Screenshot Windrose
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In the case of Windrose, after exploring the coastal jungle biome, the player is confronted by Captain Thomas Richards – the son of a bitch who burned down his own ship and abandoned the player to the sharks. So now it’s time to show Captain Richards what it feels like to get a cold bullet straight to the heart.
Dark humor, beautiful Caribbean
Where Windrose stands out most clearly from the Valheim model, aside from the pirate outfit, is the graphics. Where Valheim appears pixelated and sweet despite the rather dark Viking end-time atmosphere, Windrose’s graphics are much more realistic. It’s clear that you can’t expect revolutionary graphics advances from an indie game in Early Access, but the game uses a lot of the Unreal Engine’s potential. The palm jungles are satisfyingly dense, the beaches are extensive and, above all, the game’s sky and sea are impressive. Sailing in a storm, both initially in a dinghy and later on a real ship, can take your breath away. The wave crests are epic and ship battles impress with thundering broadsides and the atmospheric banging of sails in the wind.
Despite bloody saber duels, killer crabs and water corpse zombies, Windrose is colorful enough to generally maintain a light-hearted, humorous mood. The tone of the game is definitely based on Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean”. What needs to be taken seriously is the level of difficulty. Especially when you’re traveling alone. Similar to Valheim, in Windrose you create your character separately from a game world, some of which is dynamically generated and so looks a little different every time. The difficulty of the world can be adjusted down to the last detail and you can invite up to seven other players into your own world. In addition, dedicated server worlds with even more players are possible.
Basically, Windrose is designed for four players. You can also play the game as a solo player, but the level of difficulty increases significantly. In normal game mode, for a single adventurer, the first boss almost looks like a boss from “Elden Ring”. You have to be prepared to die every now and then. At least you never lose experience points here.
Windrose’s combat system takes some getting used to at the beginning. It works relatively slowly and relies heavily on parrying opponents’ attacks – a technique that is definitely worth learning. But once you have internalized the unique rhythm of pirate duels and understood when to use the limited ammunition for firearms in a tactically clever manner, the whole thing becomes an artistic dance that has a surprising amount of depth. The whole thing is quite fun, especially during saber duels with other pirate captains.
Early access oyster or mussel?
The Caribbean depicted in Compass Rose is as unrealistic as it is joyful. Exploring the beautiful islands on foot is just as much fun as sailing around the archipelagos behind the wheel of your own sloop. Saber duels in pirate camps are just as boring as trying to maneuver your own boat into position while avoiding the broadside of the opposing schooner.
Windrose is a very successful implementation of the pirate fantasy and is surprisingly extensive for a game that has only just been released in early access mode. Not to mention that it appears to come with very few bugs and fairly polished gameplay. For just under 30 euros you really get a lot here.
The pirate adventure is already recommended in its current configuration. If the development team, true to the Viking role model Vahlheim, continues to work diligently on the game over the years during the early access phase, Windrose could become one of the best pirate games of all time.
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