Procedurally generated games are such an intoxicating premise – The idea that you can start up a game and have an adventure that no one has ever had and never will is a draw that will kindle a sense of giddy excitement in me every time. And yet, I can think of few games that deliver those unique, memorable epics I desire. Civilization comes to mind… And that’s about all I can think of. In reality, games that randomly generate their content often feel hollow and directionless and simply unfun. Windward, from Tesharen Entertainment, unfortunately largely falls into this category. Despite an exciting premise, it’s largely a repetitive experience that will not appeal to anyone outside of a very select fan of seafaring trade sims.
In Windward you chose from four factions who receive bonuses to either combat, exploration, trade or diplomacy, from there you are released into a huge, randomly created map that charges you to control a ship, moving from town to town, trading and carrying out missions, fighting pirates and building new colony towns. Whether it’s to Windward‘s benefit or detriment, you won’t need to play the game for long before it reminds you of Sid Meier’s Pirates! series. From the setting and game’s bird’s eye perspective and all the way to the slightly whimsical tone the comparison feels invited. Despite the similarities Windward at least tries not to be a mere imitator. It is an open world, with plenty of territory to explore and and an endless supply of missions to play, and for a few hours this will be fun, but after a handful of trade missions and pirate bounties, you’re going to find that you’ve done everything the game has to offer and that’s where the flaws really start to show.
Regardless of whether you choose the warrior class or the merchant class you are going to be engaging in a lot of combat, far more than anything else in the game. The mechanic is very simple; you will circle your enemy while the ship’s crew fires on them with small arms. You control the ship’s big guns and choose when to volley on your foes. As you proceed in the game you will gain a very small handful of additional gun types, such as chain shot and flaming projectiles, but the routine never changes as you run circles around your foe waiting for your guns’ cool down timers to finish and you can fire the next shot. When the game begins your ship will hardly be able to fight anything, but your stats are upgradeable by acquiring new sail types, hull materials and even captains, or by purchasing entirely new vessels all together. Windward’s giant map is divided into small sections and after the starting area every location you venture into is controlled by pirates, requiring you to capture ports to establish a foothold in the area and you will have to completely eliminate their presence entirely before you can start trading. This makes every new section of the map a tedious slog as you have to capture each town one at a time, all the while pirates recapture the ones you’ve already taken.
Here I am discovering Fanbor.
The rest of the game is mostly divided between trading and missions. In Windward trading is the route to getting rich, and missions are mostly wastes of time. They will provided some gold and experience which you can use to upgrade your captain skills, but trading will provide the most value for your time. Missions fall into just a few categories, mostly involving delivering something from one port to another or tracking down a pirate and sinking their ship. This gets tedious very quickly, which is unfortunate because Windward’s one intriguing mechanic is that completing missions for individual towns will also level up the town, adding additional quests and better goods to purchase. I really like this idea and at first spent a lot of energy trying to build up towns, but often found it to be better to just move on to the next map section, where the towns were already offering bigger rewards and better trading. Trading is similarly unfulfilling. Each port has a few commodities for sale, some which are rare and expensive and some which are abundant and cheap. You will hear rumors advising the best places to sell and buy goods, so you will go to these places… to sell and buy goods. There really isn’t much more to it. I won’t say the mechanic is undeveloped, but it feels it’s missing something, at least for being one of the pillars of gameplay.
Windward isn’t all terrible, it has its charm in some ways. It definitely looks nice, with some very pretty lighting effects and gorgeous blue oceans. Its cheerful demeanor is also enjoyable at first, and while the appeal didn’t last nearly long enough, it was nice to have other ships hail me with jolly greetings as I capered across the seas. In complete sincerity I think this would have been a great game if it were on a smartphone and I could play it for a few minutes at a time, but sitting down and dedicating an hour just doesn’t yield much satisfaction (Or hours, as time does seem to pass quickly playing it).
I ended up spending a lot more time playing Windward than I thought I would; it promotes a “just one more mission” way of thinking that consumed more than a few evenings unexpectedly. Despite putting plenty of hours into the the game though I don’t really recall much of what I did, and even my most recent play time didn’t feel especially distinct. I think this is where I find the biggest failing with the game, and perhaps most procedurally generated titles, is that while the idea of big new worlds to explore sounds appealing in theory, the real adventure often ends up falling short. For the most part I found myself repeating the same missions over and over as I sailed from map to map. Even playing different factions, the adventure of my Consulate and my Sojourn captains felt more or less the same. While this is fine for a while (I spent more time fretting over the price of coffee than I ever thought I could), I would be hard pressed to tell an exciting story of near death swashbuckling or even a memorable anecdote about making a big break on the price of silk, and that lack of ability to generate unique or interesting tales is the biggest letdown (Or the culmination of the other letdowns).
I feel for his crew…
I am sure there is an audience for Windward, so sure in fact that I’m scoring it a little higher than I feel that it deserves. For a few hours it was an enjoyable way to while away some time, and even after it stopped being much fun I did find myself putting in a lot more hours than I thought I would, but the experience is largely forgettable. If the trading and naval combat of Pirates! was really your thing, this might be the type of game you could get into, but otherwise for $14.99 it doesn’t offer a lot of bang for your buck and I would recommend skipping the grind.
This game was reviewed using retail code provided to us by the publisher.
