As I was sailing the blue, open waters of the Caribbean, circa the 18th century, in my big pirate ship, my crew sang a shanty. The winds shifted, the gusts filled my sails, and we sped up now that the breeze was coming from behind. A small enemy boat appeared on the horizon, and a few moments later, my crew stopped its singing, and I blasted the ship’s sails using cannons firing ball and chain ammunition. We boarded it, killed its crew, and took its goods.
This might sound like I’m playing Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, but nope. This is a common experience in the latest hit game on Steam, Windrose, an open-world pirate RPG from devs who directly named Black Flag as inspiration. You can feel it in many parts of the game. But Windrose is also a sprawling survival crafting game, featuring base building, multiplayer, and some damn-hard-to-kill boar. It’s this part of the game that might end up being a roadblock for those just wanting to sail the seas with a crew of singing pirates like they once did in Black Flag.
After a short, action-packed tutorial, Windrose tosses you onto a small island in the middle of the ocean and forces you to survive. You know what that means? Collecting wood, rocks, and grass to build a few crappy tools, a small camp, and a fire to cook food. There is no getting around the fact that Windrose is a survival crafting game, aka a tree puncher. You don’t actually punch trees; to be clear, you use an axe, but still, it’s one of those games. The early hours of Windrose can be rough. Boars that roam the island can kill you in just two or three hits, and they will kill you. A lot. Mining for copper (yes, there is mining, too) and burning wood to make coal to smelt copper to craft better gear, all while dying over and over to wild pigs, is far from the exciting life of a pirate that the game’s trailer promises.
But once you get through these early hours and complete the opening tutorial quests, you’ll be able to save your crew and build a pirate ship of your own. And it’s here that Windrose really got its hooks into my brother and me.
Sailing the seas and singing songs with the lads
Piloting a pirate ship in Windrose is very similar to doing so in Black Flag. You can set the ship’s speed, sail with the winds to gain more acceleration, collect floating loot and resources with a quick button press when you get close, and even walk away from the helm to stroll about your vessel as it heads onward. And yes, you can have your crew sing various sea shanties as you do all of this. Even better, the lead singer is Sean Dagher, who was the also lead singer on Black Flag. So the shanties sound wonderful and made me smile.
Boats in Windrose feel properly large and bulky, but just responsive enough not to be a slog to cruise around in. The first time we boarded our ship and charted a short trip to a nearby island, the pirate fantasy kicked in completely, and we started cracking jokes, talking like pirates, and firing our guns at any boar we spotted as we got close to the island. Take that, you bastard swine.
And unlike in Skull & Bones, Ubisoft’s long-delayed spiritual successor to Black Flag, you can stop your boat at any point and hop off to go explore islands. (Ubisoft canceled previous plans to add on-foot combat.) You can fight pigs, birds, pirates, and even some supernatural enemies, like zombies. The combat on foot is, as the devs say, soulslike, but not nearly as deep. You can block a few hits before needing to step back to recover. You can also parry attacks, dodge, and lock on to enemies and use light and heavy swings or crude firearms, like a blunderbuss.
The combat in Windrose isn’t the best third-person combat I’ve experienced, but it is a lot better than what I’ve come to expect in most survival games and feels more brutal and responsive than the floaty first-person gameplay of online pirate game Sea of Thieves.
Meanwhile, back on your pirate ship, which you can upgrade and repair after a hard fight, naval combat is ripped right out of AC Black Flag. You choose which gun to fire based on which direction you’re looking, aim using glowing white arrows and guidelines, and then fire cannonballs or other ammunition at vessels. Ramming is also an option, though risky. Once a ship is weakened and unable to move, you can either blow it up and take some loot or pull up next to it and board it.
Or you can let your crew board the enemy vessel and then stand back on the safety of your ship with your co-op buddy and blast enemies with muskets. I ain’t never said I was a noble pirate!
A great pirate game locked behind some tree punching
And yeah, all of what I’ve described, as well as the entire game, can be played with some pals. As mentioned before, I played with my brother, and we had a great time running two ships around the seas and ganging up on lower-level NPC pirates and taking them out. We also crashed into each other a few times, but that tends to happen when both players are looking at their maps and not focusing on the ocean.
Being a pirate in Windrose is awesome. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had in an online game in a bit. Playing solo has been enjoyable, too, though also challenging at times. The problem is that all of this cool pirate stuff and the game’s different towns and factions are locked behind those opening hours filled with murderous wild pigs and wood chopping.
If you can get past the crafting game intro, you’ll discover an online pirate game that feels like what Skull & Bones should have been. Something you can play solo or with buddies, that simulates being both on and off a pirate ship. And the survival/crafting gameplay adds a lot to being a pirate. You can make pirate castles and dockyards, or just build a small camp at night before exploring more of an island while your boat stays safely away in deeper waters.
So I don’t think Windrose should remove the survival, base building, or crafting parts of the game. It just means those first few hours will be far less exciting than what lies ahead. But once you reach the fun sea shanties and pirate shenanigans, all that pig killing and rock collecting will be worth it.
Windrose is out now in early access on Steam. I can’t wait to see how they expand on the game in future updates.
