Windblown — Preview

Hack’n’slash and color… looots of color

The folks at Motion Twin are back at it again. Dead Cells’ success in the roguelike scene is pretty much undeniable. And now they’re returning to the genre with their newest title, Windblow. The folks from Cosmocover and Kepler Interactive were kind enough and offered us the chance to preview the game. Let’s see which aspects are worthy of praise and which ones deserve some critique.

In Windblown you play the role of a leaper — a character who can charge themselves into a cannon in order to be shot into the Vortex, a place where they need to fight with the enemy they meet to collect resources and take them back to their hometown to be used in different ways. Obviously, what matters to us is that most of these resources will be used to upgrade our equipment and abilities, so you’re even more powerful when you return to fighting baddies in the Vortex. You can choose your player character from a selection of anthropomorphic little animals before you’re thrown directly inside the Vortex. Your character will be transported to their hometown after their first death. Here they find out they possess a device that’s capable of reviving them should they kick the bucket on hostile ground. They meet a couple of NPCs that will help you upgrade your arsenal (you’ll obviously need to offer them something in exchange (because even the aliens on the farther planet love the smell of money and capitalism). After this, they’re sent back to pillaging resources from the Vortex as much as they want. More precisely, until they die again and get revived. Simple, elegant, classic.

What did I enjoy at Windblown? First and foremost, every single move is very fluid. From the combos you can put together with the weapons you have available to the dodges you can chain together to run away from danger’s way. Fighting takes place at a fast pace — it’s do or die and you don’t have too much time to sleep on your decisions. I personally love this type of playstyle and the emphasis on making decisions on the spot, dodging at the very last second, and being rewarded for your understanding of which enemies are a priority and should be dispatched off first to make your life easier. Just in case I got you scared, the creatures attacking you have clear signals that they’re about to charge at you, and even the screen shake will signal that they’re about to jump on you. I’m not a fan of screen shake in my games at all and it’s the first thing that I’m looking to turn off in any game I lay my hands on. But I have to admit it wasn’t too annoying in Windblown. I still hope they’ll allow us to choose whether we want to enable or disable it in the final version.

During the runs you have access to a series of melee and ranged weapons, as well as trinkets acting like utility gadgets that enable you to slow down your enemies, explode them etc. However, you need to keep in mind these trinkets are on a cooldown and you can’t spam them to bail out of every tight spot. No matter if you prefer melee or ranged combat, you can always equip a maximum of two weapons, each having a dedicated button. You’re free to choose which one you’d like to use as your primary source of damage and which one is your secondary weapon — the inventory allows you to do so at any point in the game. I hope we’ll get the option to map our buttons freely once the release version is out. I’m a fan of swords through and through and I used this type of weapon the most. I also enjoyed the animations and special effects more than the ones for ranged weapons.

The devs at Motion Twins switched things around when it comes to the camera positioning and graphics style — instead of the 2D side-scroller perspective from Dead Cells we have a 3D isometric one, similar to games like Diablo. I see it as an intelligent change that encourages exploration and atypical combat styles. By exploration, I mean that most platforms are floating islands, but if you’re paying close attention to the signs from the environment, you can find hidden resources and chests under these islands or covered by objects. And by atypical combat style, I’m referring to situations where you can determine your enemies to follow you on platforms where you have more space for movement — just in case they spawn on very narrow platforms and you’re not comfortable with tight spaces. What’s even more atypical is how you can use the platforms placed at different heights to avoid attacks or to shelter yourself from them. More precisely, the dash command is normally limited on flat terrain and you can’t link dashes together. But if you decide to switch between platforms, the cooldown that would normally apply on flat terrain for your dash magically disappears.

One of the other elements that I enjoyed is how you can stagger enemies if you attack them precisely at the time their attack animation starts — this offers you a few seconds to bonk them while they’re down. I also want to mention the environmental indicators for weapons, consumables, or chests that you find throughout your journeys in the Vortex and how they stay on screen until you reach the next combat area — these will help you in case you forget to pick items up and get more powerful. Even though not an indicator, I appreciate the existence of sound cues when the cooldown for your trinkets is over and you can start using them again. Last but not least, I love that they kept base management to a minimum — you go into the town, buy the shtuff you need, then you go on another run.

Alrighty. Let’s move to the part where I complain. The first and most bothersome element for me was the visuals. Even though I enjoy the idea of a miniature world populated by cute little critters, there’s an obvious lack of contrast and separation between colors and objects. When I say “obvious lack”, I mean that I would constantly feel nausea, dizziness, and motion sickness while playing the game. I felt like all the objects, characters, enemies, and the environment were mashing together during gameplay. Everything bleeds into everything, the colors are very bright and you get the constant feeling that the room is spinning around. I gave this the benefit of the doubt on the first day and I thought I might’ve been too tired after work. But I saw this phenomenon persist on the second day, too. To top it off, I have another roguelike title in review, but I didn’t have any issues playing that one for a couple of hours during the same days. In short, I’d advise you to take care if you know you have high sensitivity to vibrant colors that move around fast — you might be better off waiting, checking some gameplay, and determining if it’s something you can enjoy. Please take care of your eyes even if you don’t have any health issues in this regard (I certainly know I don’t, since it’s the first time happening to me).

Another aspect that initially seemed odd to me was the different alternate paths you’re present with from time to time — here you’ll have to choose which reward you want to fight for. Some of the symbols for the paths weren’t very intuitive, so I would flip a coin in terms of what rewards I might get.

I also felt the idea of not being able to choose your starting weapon from the ones you unlocked was very limiting. You can unlock an upgrade that give you one random weapon at the start of the run, but you can very well keep restarting your run until you get the weapon you want. I’d say it’s a pretty standard Quality of Life option nowadays.

Overall, Windblown makes many great decisions when it comes to gameplay — I disliked very few of them. On the other side, I hope they’ll fix the problems regarding visuals. It would be sad to be unable to play a game just because it’s taking a great toll on your eyes and it’s making you dizzy.

That’s it from me. I’ll see you around when you come across my next article.

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