Windblown is the perfect early-access game. The combat and gameplay loop is flexible enough that it can still be tweaked based on player feedback and the parts of the game that are already ‘baked in’, like the earworms from the soundtrack and art direction, don’t need any updates.
The strategy is no surprise coming from Motion Twin, who relied heavily on player feedback to craft one of the best recent roguelite games in Dead Cells.
Combat is the heart of every roguelite, and Windblown just feels good. The healthy mix of dashing, slashing, and mashing has you settling into a violent flow state right out of the tutorial. There are warts I’ll touch on later, but how the combat systems are built will keep gamers around. The powerful combos built off of the balance from your primary and secondary weapons with the well-executed visual and audio cues integrated a rhythm that brought me back to my days of keeping a beat on the drums in Rock Band. I loved the dashing. I felt like I was playing PS2 classic Shinobi again.
My primary complaint is it feels like you can’t do a melee build. If I didn’t have a ranged weapon, I didn’t feel like I had a chance. Fortunately, this can be iterated on with player feedback and tweaking, but in its current state, the melee combat is severely lacking. The factory biome’s enemies were especially annoying with their attacks when trying to stick to melee.
There were moments of downtime that felt off. I don’t expect to punch something every second, but I would go through the levels for 10-15 seconds just…dashing and breaking containers. For a game that heavily leans on the fast-paced style of combat, I didn’t expect so many lulls. It almost seems like the enemy spawn rate isn’t quite right with how lopsided the containers to enemies felt in stretches.
The randomly generated levels are extremely well done and showcase a variety of paths and battlefields. However, they feel over-engineered to the point where I had moments where the areas weren’t clear on where to go next or ended up dashing for the sake of dashing through 20 mini islands with nothing going on.
I didn’t have an opportunity to spend much time with the co-op. I wish I did, however, because what I played was really enjoyable. It doesn’t feel like an afterthought, and they are building mechanics around the co-op experience which makes it very interesting as they iterate it in the future.
The art direction is a standout. I loved the delicateness of the first biome with the floating leaves and serenity inter-spliced with the constant action. The enemy design and movement look great in motion. The characters are anthropomorphic animals, a la Star Fox, and each has a unique look so that you can easily find ‘your main.’
I played Windblown on my PC and my Steam deck. Both had strong performance, and I never noticed any stuttering or slowdown, which is essential for the type of gameplay. The Steamdeck was putting in work when running Windblown, so I couldn’t get very long sessions in, but for a pickup and play you could get a few runs in on the deck.
This is a nitpick because once you get into the gameplay loop of doing runs, the story and dialogue fall into the background. I was taken out of the moment because of certain dialogue choices such as random swearing, and overall offputting remarks. I was glad to see it fall by the wayside once I got out of the tutorials. Not to say I didn’t like the light-hearted vibe Motion Twin was going for. The character designs and homebase are fun and inviting and the little moments, like when you get an upgrade and initiate the selection by giving a hologram a high five, give Windblown its charm.
Windblown final thoughts
Windblown is button-mashing nirvana. I was frustrated by the heaviness of enemy attacks and lack of variety from being hamstrung by melee, but when the combat sings it really sings. You are hitting the right buttons, dashing at the perfect time, hearing the *ping* knowing that you can execute a combo, and all is right in the world.
The complaints I have of Windblown can be fixed through early access, and with the team Motion Twin has and how they have ingested player feedback in the past, I have no doubt each version will be better than the one before. Windblown is worth it right now if you are a fan of roguelites, and I am confident it will be an absolute banger once it leaves early access.
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