Kicking off The Escapist’s Indie Showcase today, Windbound is a nautical survival romp from Satellite Reign developers 5 Lives.
Pop-out gliders? Flashy, over-the-shoulder archery? Glowing blue lights and environmental puzzles? Cor, this all looks very Breath Of The Wild, doesn’t it? Bring in the boating, and you’ve also floated a little bit of The Wind Waker into the mix. That’s fine, though - emulation notwithstanding, we don’t get many Zelda games here on the home computer. Besides, as far as vaguely RPG-ish action adventures go, Windbound does look quite lovely. It’s not like Windbound hasn’t roped in a few ideas of its own, either. Key amongst them is that raft, which looks to grow from little more than a canoe to a full-on floating house worthy of Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. There’s a seemingly never-ending ocean of islands, each offering their own beasties and environmental challenges to take on before hopping off to the next. There are hidden ruins and story threads to dig up, sure - but by my reckoning, all a game like this really needs to offer is a lovely pirate-free ocean to drift about in. Windbound aims to set sail for Steam on August 28th for £25. Whatever you call it, hit our E3 2020 tag for more from this summer’s blast of gaming announcements, trailers, and miscellaneous marketing. Check out the PC games at the PlayStation 5 show, everything at the PC Gaming Show, and all the trailers from the Xbox showcase, for starters.
