To start with, Kala will only have the ability to craft a canoe that can be paddled by oar, but this method of travel is slow and tiring, and ceases to be useful when traveling between more distant islands. The sailing on the other hand is much more reminiscent of Wind Waker specifically, and is where Windbound really stands to set itself apart. While it does share some elements with BotW in that weapons and items degrade, and a couple of tools such as a glider give comparable abilities, the similarities are ubiquitous of many modern titles in many ways. Once you reach Chapter 4 you’re unlikely to die in any case, but there are some frustrating elements that can cause progress to be instantly lost, and having to restart because of something that’s out of your control at that stage of the game is something I can imagine many players would rather not contend with. My personal recommendation would be to stick to Survival Mode until you reach Chapter 4 for the first time, then to swap over to Story Mode. The benefit of Survival Mode is that returning to Chapter 1 means being able to complete each chapter again and unlock another ability, increasing Kala’s survivability. Death in Survival Mode will return Kala all the way to Chapter 1 and allow her to keep only a subsection of her total inventory. Survival Mode on the other hand makes dying a much more threatening idea. In Story Mode death is less severe, returning you to the beginning of a chapter and allowing you to keep the entirety of your inventory. Whichever one you choose will significantly alter how you play the game, and what happens if Kala dies. The game allows you to choose between two gameplay modes. These can range from passive abilities like poison resistance or increased drop rates, to more active ones like unbreakable tools or weapons, and in some cases whole new abilities like diving deep underwater. At the completion of each chapter Kala will have a choice between a couple of randomly allocated permanent improvements that can carry with her through the rest of the game. As such, Kala will have to stop on each island to gather more food to stave off hunger, and to gather new materials for improved tools and yet more seaworthy vessels. However, finding them can take some time, especially in later chapters where the map is larger. In theory, if you knew where to go, you could sail directly to each and quickly activate them before moving on making Windbound very short indeed.
To complete each chapter Kala will have to find three towers spread across the islands and activate a pedestal at the top. The game is split into 5 chapters, with each chapter bringing you to a new, consecutively larger archipelago than the last.
From there you’ll work up to hunting animals for meat and bones, make better food and weapons, and so on, and so on. From there you’ll start of harvesting fruit and mushrooms for food, rocks for weapons and, most importantly, grass and sticks to fashion your first canoe. Kala starts off the adventure with nothing but the shirt on her back and a small dagger for hunting weak enemies.
Windbound’s gameplay, for the most part, is typical of the indie survival genre.
While Windbound may look the part from trailers, to actually walk the walk and keep the pace up for the full length of a game is another matter entirely. Playing this on Nintendo Switch, Windbound is reminiscent of Legend of Zelda : Breath of the Wild by way of Wind Waker. Likewise, seeing its cartoony aesthetic and tropical setting, it’s hard not to be reminded of Disney’s Moana. When a game sets itself up, whether intentionally or not, with those sorts of images, it has some very large boots to fill. To make it back to her people, she’ll have to hunt for food and materials in order to survive and craft a boat to make it back out across the ocean. This open world survival title sees the player take control of Kala as she tries to find her seafaring tribe again after becoming shipwrecked and washing ashore on a small island among procedurally generated archipelago. Windbound is the newest game from developer 5 Lives Studios.