Windrose

Steam Reviews

Read all reviews on Steam

• Recommended Posted April 17, 2026 on Steam ADD PAUSE BUTTON IN SOLO MODE FOR DADS PLEASE. Finally a pirate game you can enjoy solo. Nice environment Combat is good Controls & building 10/10
• Recommended Posted May 6, 2026 on Steam Amazing game, I've been having tons of fun playing with friends and I'm absolutely loving the crafting systems and very thoughtful QoL this game decided to include early on. Here are some criticisms coming from a place of love since I will absolutely keep playing and attempt to create mods for it going forward. - Character's progression is very overdesigned and detached from the actual gameplay. 90% of what you do in the game does not reward you with experience or contribute in any way in your character's growth. Talents are primarily focused on combat, with many being passives balancing out the lack of attribute importance, since the C, B, A, S, ranks you see on weapons correspond in miniscule increases in damage or HP etc, which are also soft capped. That absolutely hinders player expression when building your character. That leaves the crafting/upgrading part of your weapons and armor the only important factor that determines your access to higher level content. Which I get it, its a crafting/survival game, it should be important. But it's so important that renders the action/RPG/adventure part of the game completely irrelevant. - Content is very static for a sandbox game. I never thought I'd miss radiant quests. And I don't necessarily mean Dr Galen going "another pirate settlement needs your help" every 10 minutes, but even basic repeatable treasure hunts, bounties, cargo deliveries or great animal hunts kept me playing sea of thieves for years going on these quests with friends. - This ties in with my first criticism of the game and its about naval combat. Boarding as it is now, depends entirely on your ability to defeat the enemy ship, which demands from you to have the proper ship to do so, which again ties into being able to craft this ship. You need to have the brig if you are going to challenge 10 level ships, going against them with a ketch is out of the question, not to mention 12-15 ships in the final biome as it is. What I think it would be better to do, is have some customization and depth in designing your ship, being able to board it and challenge it without the need to actually defeat it in cannon combat. Again focusing on player expression rather than overdesigning everything in order to restrict the player and forcing them to craft the bigger boat to get to bigger boats. Let me build and customize a really fast ketch, so I can rush really bigger boats than mine and force them to a boarding action. Let me build a fortress of a ship with a dead slow frigate with 36ers on it, not constrict me to the "Blackbeard variant". I would still need to craft the better boarding gear for my fast ketch, or get the better hull protection for my sturdy frigate while expressing my self as a player towards a playstyle that I can enjoy. Sorry for the long post, I love this game, I've been waiting for a good pirate game forever and I believe this is it. I strongly recommend this game and my criticisms are more like suggestions that I believe could increase the depth and fun of what is starting out as absolutely lovely experience.
• Recommended Posted April 18, 2026 on Steam I have been wanting a new pirate game for a long time. We all know (I'm pretty sure) Assassin's Creed Black Flag. I'm also pretty sure we all know the disastrous failure that Atlas was or better yet, in recent years - Skull and Bones was. No game even compared to Black Flag at all and I was worried no game would ever come close again. Windrose started as a PVP pirate game. I did not want it because of that fact. I actually ignored this title because PVP is littered with cheaters and sweats that just ruin the fun. Then, they changed Windrose to PVE and I downloaded the demo to try. I fell in love instantly. After playing for about 7 hours in Early Access (would have more but I am swamped with recent games) I can safely say that Windrose ticks all the right box's for me. I am a massive open-world-survival fan, throw in pirates and tick all the right box's for mechanics... damn... I never thought I'd see it. Enough of my rambling, let's get to the review! [h1][b] What I like/Pros [/b][/h1] ⚫I want to start off with the building. Everything about the building is a YES. YES and YES. You collect your materials, craft the items you need and you go to place them. UNLIKE other survival games where you need to find the snap point, rotate the items and place them 1 by 1 - you can CONTINUOUSLY place them, AND walk on them while your placing them. No more falling off your roof over and over again trying to place those last few pieces! ⚫Another note about building - As the DEDICATED builder for all my open-world-survival games that I play with my friends, I can say this without a doubt - All the building pieces, all the different "pirate themed" buildings I can think to build... I can probably build them. They NAILED the building "cosmetic" looks for a pirate themed game. ⚫The environments in this game are gorgeous. Stunning even. From what I experienced so far, they clearly put a lot of work into the environments. I am sure there are lots more for me to explore with my low 7 hours. ⚫I built a boat/ship with my friends to sail and possibly attack other ships. I was expecting the ship combat to be as bad as Skull and Bones but I was wrong. It's not as great as Black Flag but it's much better than S&B. The extra on top of that... the crew singing sea shanties... oh my... bring me back to the good old Black Flag days!! ⚫The game is polished so damn well you would think that you are living in 2015 when games launched in a good state. It's also really well optimised. I played with 4 friends, including me makes 5, all on different PC setups and not a single issue between us (part from our own stupidity haha). ⚫I actually have fun exploring/adventuring. For once, an open-world game in 2020 - now actually feels fun. ⚫The combat is actually not to bad. Hits register when you attack and parrying feels rather rewarding because when you do parry, you can devastate your enemy with a flurry of attacks while they are stunned. From the weapons I used so far, you can tell they put work into them. (I am going to leave a little note about combat in my cons). ⚫You don't need to sleep, eat or drink to "survive". Okay, why is this a pro in a game like this? Well, food provides stat buffs to the player which stops you being instantly killed by enemies (most of the time). ALSO, if you had to go AFK for ANY reason, you won't starve to death or die of dehydration e.t.c. This could be a good thing or bad thing. All depends on how you look at it but I think this was a good choice. [h1][b] What is wrong/Cons/bugs [/b][/h1] ⚫Combat can feel a tad... boring. A little simplistic even. You hit the enemy twice, dodge or block and repeat this over and over. I may not have progressed far enough for skills or new weapons that add in cool mechanics later down the line. So this one may be subjective. ⚫Playing solo, when trying to build or collect materials to build, I felt like I was spending way to long trying to build a boat, a base and some items. Maybe this was a me thing haha. ⚫Collecting metal/ores was rather braindead. Let me explain. These are usually found in instanced caves, you would think - oh now, a dark gloomy cave, enemies!!! - actually no... most of them are empty and just full of rocks to hit... that's about it. [h1][b] What I'd like to see added (for now) [/b][/h1] ⚫Transmogs for armour. I would LOVE to be able to put the skin of my favourite armour on my top-tier armour. I'm not sure if this is a thing later game. ⚫I spent a tiny bit sailing in the ocean completely blind. Is there anyway we can "chart" our path with like... maps? Say, we get a map that WE can draw on and mark islands or buy them from NPC's. This would be awesome and save so much time for sailing. ⚫Please, please give us some sort of indication of how far we have turned our rudder!! haha! ⚫I would love an "OPTIONAL" difficulty to add to the survival experience. Like a HARDCORE mode where you NEED to sleep, eat and drink to survive. PURELY OPTIONAL THAT AWARDS NOTHING BUT THAT EXTRA SURVIVAL ASPECT FOR PEOPLE THAT WANT IT. [h1][b] My Verdict [/b][/h1] I am shocked at how well refined and optimised Windrose actually is. For a small studio they clearly listened and put in the time and effort working on this game. Don't get me wrong, it's not PERFECT, no game is but it's arguably one of the best open-world-survival pirate games to ever come out. I have played very little of Windrose so far and I haven't even scraped the top of the barrel. Not even explored 5% of the map because it's so huge. So much to do. So much to explore. Boss's to kill. Islands to plunder. This is the Pirate game you guys have been looking for AND its fully coop!!! [h1][b] 8/10. A true pirate fantasy game come to life, delivered by a passionate developer team! [/b][/h1]
• Recommended Posted April 27, 2026 on Steam Right, I'm not a pro review writer so I'm just going to tell you what I like about this game. +no item durability (what a pain in the ass in survival games) +no inventory weight limit, only x amount of slots +gathering takes some time but isn't quite as ludicrous as in some other games like it (looking at you, Conan Exiles), and you can eventually start buying resources - not all, but most +it's gorgeous to look at - the environments are beautiful and well crafted +combat is challenging but not stupid hard - it's all about learning enemies' attack patterns, and if a scrub like me can figure it out, anyone can +resources are available for building and crafting as long as they're stashed within bonfire range +sailing feels soooo good +the audio design is crisp - everything sounds perfect, from ambience to enemies, your ship groaning when falling off the top of a wave That's just off the top of my head. The thing that mostly annoys me is that NPCs have huge hitboxes and they're always in my way, especially in sea battles when boarding enemies. Naturally at this stage you can expect problems, like randomly getting thrown out of the game, and you lose your buffs whenever you leave a game. Other than that I haven't really encountered many bugs. Only once did I get stuck in quest dialogue, and had to Alt+F4. Overall the experience has been good. It would also be nice if we could customise the colours of our sailors as I seem to be so blind I can't tell them apart from enemies (why's everyone wearing purple?).
• Recommended Posted April 14, 2026 on Steam TL;DR: If you like building, exploration, and you’ve been looking for a pirate survival game that actually delivers - just buy it. You won’t regret it, even at current early access state. Details: Build bases, scavenge resources, and pick fights you might not win (especially if you’re trying to avoid killing dodos). And of course, step up as a captain: craft your own ship, upgrade it, load up the cannons, and take the fight to the sea to prove who really runs these waters. The hook is how smoothly it blends genres: it has vibes of Valheim progression - you want to return in game for make your base better with polished build mechanics. Game is already have great visuals, and naval combat that feels like the pirate game I've been waiting for. Honestly, Windrose is what Sk&Bones should have been and it also scratches that Black Flag itch in the best way. Note about dodos: they might look like a walking chicken nugget… right up until they’re the reason you’re sprinting back to your grave marker with zero dignity. ps: in it's current state, I did removed AI'ish slop part and I feel sorry for using it to make text easier to read pps: I did put 20+ hrs into early alpha build in late 2024, 20+ hrs into later alpha build in 2025, and 10 more hours in demo. And I can't say in words how much game progressed through this time. Based on demo, it is one of smoothly played early access game I had played and there was close to zero bug encounters (only crabs, hehe). Strongly recommended if you feel like playing modern pirate game with crafting bases (actually, it is not necessary, but sooo satisfying), greatly done sea fights (with abordage, ofcourse!) and scavenge for treasures at isles. windrose community discord https://discord.com/invite/windrosecommunity
• Recommended Posted May 8, 2026 on Steam The Best Pirate Coop Game we've ever gotten. Maybe 60% of what Blackflag is but with Coop. Pretty much Velhiem but as Pirates which is epic! A Must play for anyone with a group that played Ark, Velhiem, minecraft... It needs Sharks, Water Monsters, Kraken, More Fishing, Whaling, Ways to Sell your silver, gold, fish.. More NPC and non military life fishing boat NPCs NPCs that can do task. IT make healing with 60% of supplies until stopped Sort chest in campfire area... NPCs should be able to do stuff Camera should scroll out with mouse wheel when on ship in F menu top down/iso view Coop shared map/table to share Coop shared pings Map cords Cats, Dogs and more Pets Ship /personal pets Underwater gameplay Shoot land cannons Optional Raids when you use the Large Signal Fire