You wash up on a shore with nothing. No tools, no map, nobody to ask.
Windreach is an open world survival craft RPG. The ground is voxel and you can dig all of it. Buildings need real structural support or they come down. The wind in your sail is simulated and it doesn't care where you were headed.
TWENTY-TWO SKILLS, AND YOU LEVEL THEM BY USING THEM
Woodcutting, mining, smithing, crafting, cooking, farming, fishing, sailing, riding, ballooning, swimming, running, jumping, climbing, gliding, archery, swordsmanship, blocking, sneaking, kindling, focus, health.
You don't spend points on any of them. They go up because you used them. Every level earns a tech point, and the tech tree is where you work out what you're actually good at.
There are no quest markers. Workstations gate your progress instead. Campfire, workbench, furnace, forge, anvil. Building the next one is how you reach the next age.
DIG TO THE BEDROCK
All the way down. Cut a staircase into a cliff. Bridge a gorge. Sink a mine shaft, flatten a hillside for a field, or bring down the ceiling you're standing under.
Ore sits in veins you have to find and then follow. Trees fall the way you cut them and break into logs where they land. Fire spreads through dry grass, and putting it out means going and fetching a bucket.
BUILD SOMETHING THAT STAYS UP
Walls, floors, roofs, stairs, doors, windows, fences, pillars. All of it on a real support graph, so overhang too far with nothing underneath and the span comes down on you.
Repairing and demolishing are part of building. A collapse costs you materials and time, nothing more.
FIGHT WITH SOMETHING YOU MADE
Blades from a dagger to a two-handed great sword, with a kukri, a scimitar and a macuahuitl in between. Spears that thrust and sweep. Whips that crack wherever you aim them. Light attacks chain into a combo that carries you forward with the swing. A heavy hits for double and commits you to it. Hold the heavy and it becomes a whirl that cuts every time you come round. You can fight bare handed. It goes badly.
At range there are bows and crossbows. Hold a bow's draw and you buy damage, reach and a flatter arc, so a snap shot and a full draw are close to being two different weapons. A crossbow hits harder and you reload it by hand.
A raised shield turns aside anything inside a 140 degree arc in front of you, and charges you stamina for every point it stops. Take a hit that's too heavy while you're guarding and your guard breaks outright. Armour works on a curve, so a full set of iron is a real difference and never immunity.
Get on a steep enough slope and the shield stops being armour and becomes a sled.
FIRE OUT OF STONE
There is magic in the Reach, and it starts small. Find an Emberstone, hold it in your off hand and call fire out of it. A spark, a fireball, a stream of flame, a flare. Kindling is a skill like any other and grows only when your fire lands. Focus is what it costs you. Dry grass catches. So do trees.
RAISE A SAIL
Real wind, live on your HUD, with a dead zone you have to learn to work around. You start on a raft. You earn a sailboat, then a longship.
Weather drives its own sea state, so crossing open water in a storm isn't the crossing you made at dawn.
Rivers run from the mountains down to the ocean and every one of them is navigable.
RIDE, GLIDE, OR GO UP WITH THE WIND
Wild horses run in bands on the plains. Feed one until it lets you up, stay on through its first ride, and it's yours. A saddle you made lets it gallop and jump.
Step off a cliff under a leaf glider. Build a balloon, light the burner and steer by climbing until you find a wind going your way.
Build a pair of wayrings and each one opens onto the other. You walk straight through.
EAT, HUNT, FARM, FISH
Till, sow, water, fertilise, harvest. Keep chickens and cows. Feed them, milk them, collect the eggs. Fish with a rod against a real bite window, then cook whatever you bring home.
Pet a stray dog until it's yours and it follows you, guards the coop and fetches. Lure a cow through a gate you built and it's livestock.
Fifty-one kinds of butterfly, moth, dragonfly and firefly. A net, a quiet approach, and a page in the Wingbook for every one you catch.
Food is a buff economy. A full belly makes you stronger and an empty one just makes you ordinary. Hunger will never kill you.
NINE BIOMES, WITH CAVES UNDER ALL OF THEM
Grassland, forest, beach, ocean, mountain, tundra, desert, mesa, swamp. Each one has its own weather, its own resources, its own animals. Bird flocks and fish shoals run on the GPU.
A full day takes twenty real minutes. Things come out at night that you won't meet in daylight.
PLAY IT HOW IT SUITS YOU
Seven difficulty sliders. Damage taken, creature health, detection range, stamina, oxygen, hunger, resource yield. Relaxed, Standard and Harsh move those same sliders and show you the numbers they set, so you can take one as a starting point and then shift whatever you like. All of it changes mid game.
Full controller support with on-screen text entry. Narration, a colour-vision filter, and more than forty languages.