Motion Twin have experienced the highs and lows of game development. An early star of the social-media web-based gaming movement, when the market started to dissolve things were looking bleak until they settled on making a huge creative pivot to create something niche and something hardcore. The result was the runaway indie success, Dead Cells. Following that up is never going to be an easy task, but with Windblown they’ve retained many of the lessons learned along the way, and though they’ve created a new, undeniably cuter, roguelike IP, it’s still got plenty of that Dead Cells bite to take the unwary by surprise.
Before you can do anything in Windblown, you have to choose a body. This is a purely aesthetic choice, so you won’t have to question too hard whether to be an Axolotl or a Pangolin, and once you’ve completed your first run you can swap into any of the other bodies. If you played the demo you also get access to a Guinea Pig, which is, presumably, the most correct choice.
You immediately awaken in the fantastical isometric land that Motion Twin has created, impossible islands hovering in the sky, while rivers drop off into nothingness. The characters boast bold, comic-book lines, but the world itself is more grounded. Well, as much as a bunch of floating islands can be grounded.
Dashing here is both traversal and evasion. You hit the button to transition from island to island, as well as to jump between different areas above and below, while you must utilise it in combat to get out of the way of the increasingly aggressive and swift enemies you encounter along the way.
You immediately feel the vein of Dead Cells running through Windblown, emphasising movement and timing as much as any of the myriad Souls games that are out there. It’s certainly fast, and leaping from island to island and in and out of combat feels gloriously smooth.
Windblown is a roguelike, so you make repeated runs into the Vortex, collecting Cogs and upgrading your abilities as you go. You can choose Gifts at various points, finding friendly memories – seemingly the remnants of fallen heroes – that are willing to bestow new skills upon you. They fall into different categories, but each will give you a new edge in combat, whether that’s ignoring the first hit in each Biome or randomly marking a nearby foe with automatic lightning damage. You can have three Gifts active at any one time, and there’s liable to be plenty of tinkering to find your ideal loadout.
You can also switch between different weapons, grabbing new and more powerful variants as you progress. Much like Gifts, each of these also boasts additional effects or skills, making them increasingly lethal in the right hands. While you start out with a Fish Knife – a standard sword by all accounts – you move onto more interesting options like Kunai and dual blades, and you can access two of these at any time. These can work synergistically too, so completing a combo with one lets you then immediately switch to the other with a special attack.
Alongside that, there’s Trinkets to be found which give you additional skills, with the first one I encountered giving you an explosive Goo blast that damages and slows enemies. Soon enough, you feel incredibly powerful, and during our hands-on Windblown really dispensed these with speed. I really enjoyed the different choices you were given too, and I’m definitely going to spend some time exploring them.
The only thing that didn’t quite fit right for me was the tone at the outset. The soundtrack in the opening area of Golem Gates is very mellow, with slow, drawn-out synthwave echoing across the floating islands. It’s an odd counterpoint to the kinetic combat, particularly at the beginning of the game, but as you advance the soundtrack really picks up, with funky beats feeling more at home with the speed that Windblown wants you to operate at.
When you die – which you definitely will – you’re transported back to the Ark, Windblown’s main hub, where Eperin will fill you in on how it is that you’re able to be brought back to life so succinctly. It’s from here that you can unlock new boons, making the start of each run that little bit easier, as well as joining up with other players.
One of Windblown’s key elements is the ability to play in co-op with up to three other players, and from the Ark you can create your own lobby, or hop into any of those that are available with space. We weren’t able to check this element out during our preview, but it feels like Windblown will be a lot of chaotic fun with a few friends, and I can see speedruns being particularly popular. I hope there’ll be a time-trial mode or racing events, as Windblown feels utterly perfect for that.
I had a lot of fun with Windblown. Its fast combat, cute art style and swiftly expanding range of upgrades are certain to find their way into player’s hearts – you should definitely add this one to your wishlist.
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