This is turning into a bang-up year for new roguelikes from developers behind some of the genre's modern pillars. Slay the Spire 2 was announced, Hades 2 is out and already a delight even before its first major update, and now original Dead Cells developer Motion Twin has a new co-op action roguelike called Windblown launching in early access on Steam on October 24. I spent a few hours playing a demo of Windblown ahead of the release of a slightly different demo that will be on Steam from October 14 - 21, and yep, it's exactly what I'd want and expect from a co-op action roguelike from the makers of Dead Cells.
Playing in co-op wasn't doable for me during this preview, but Windblown feels great solo. So much so that my very first session had me up past midnight hankering to beat a boss that just wouldn't freakin' die. I try to jot down notes during previews like this, and the last line I wrote, high on the victory of finally beating that boss, is a pretty good summary of my thoughts so far: "This game fucks."
Not another Dead Cells
The bones of Dead Cells are here, repurposed for Hades-esque 3D isometric action in a less grisly universe. Instead of a puppeteered corpse, you play as a markedly cuter and customizable Leaper, a functionally immortal warrior delving into a violet, world-consuming tornado in search of answers and allies. My Leaper is a weird little axolotl guy who pukes a lot. I love him. Each run starts with you firing yourself out of a cannon and ends with your magical soul backpack yanking you back to the floating island hub space to buy a few upgrades and say hi to your growing gang of pals – or, perhaps, to impatiently stomp right back over to the cannon because the boss that you just had at 5% health needs to die now.
With each trip to the Vortex, you assemble a build from two weapons (typically one melee and one ranged, but you can double up if you want), two cooldown-based active abilities called Trinkets, powerful passive abilities called Gifts, and cumulative, drafted boosts for stats like max health, crit damage, and base damage. Weapons come in different tiers and can roll random effects like healing, bonus damage to enemies with certain status effects, or increased attack speed. Every weapon has some way to guarantee a critical hit – land the third attack in a combo, for instance, or hit enemies from behind – and exploiting that is key to ending fights quickly, before you have time to screw up and take a lot of damage from even one mistake.
Most of the gear I've found has been pretty straightforward. This Trinket chucks a bomb over there, this one detonates directly around you, and this one detonates around you but leaves AoE goo behind. This Gift boosts damage to bosses, this one gives you a bonus on your next hit after a dodge, and this one is downright overpowered because it heals you for 4% HP after every kill. It's always healing with action roguelikes, isn't it? Depth is mostly layered in through variant Gifts that cross the beams – deal more damage to enemies covered in goo, for instance, or rack up a bunch of burn with fast-hitting Trinkets and attacks.
All that being said, the strongest tool in your arsenal is Windblown's frankly absurd dodge. A lot of action games boil down to dodging attacks, but very few lean into it this hard. Windblown wakes up early in the morning to have more time in the day to dodge, and I am hitting this dodge button like it owes me money. There is no walking; there is only dodging. It has almost no cooldown, so it's not only your primary method of travel, it's also incredibly spammable in combat. If a monster so much as scratches its nose, I'm dodging to the next county over – and then I'm dodging right back into the fray with the heaviest hit of my combo strategically teed up.
Not that I would complain
Combat is blisteringly fast but retains punch and a sense of direction, with enemy attacks well-telegraphed. You can get away with whaling on some squishy targets, but elites and bosses force you to play defensively and only sneak in damage during safe windows. I know from experience that you're always one mistimed dodge away from a cascade of errors that can burn your once-comfy health bar down to cinders.
Windblown begins to move on from the rock-solid fundamentals of Dead Cells with the addition of Alterattacks that you can only perform with your other weapon after dishing out a few blows with your current one. Alterattacks deal so much damage that the combat system ends up bent around them in a clever way. I found a crossbow that I didn't like as a primary weapon, but once I figured out that its Alterattack hits like a double decker bus, I started looking for it on every run. Some weapons deal lower damage but allow for more rapid Alterattacks, enabling fun back-and-forth builds. This may push you to build into attack speed instead of raw damage. Suddenly the entire arsenal – a somewhat disappointing 11 weapons in the early access launch build – has many more applications.
Alterattacks change up the tempo of fights, adding power spikes and welcome invincibility frames to your combos, and they're joined by another show-stopper: Crystallize. This is basically an execution move that you can use once you get elite enemies down to low health, and while it does give you a chance to net some extra resources, another big draw is how good it feels in the moment. Animations and sound effects are strong across the board, but Crystallize is especially good at cutting through both the din of combat and Windblown's subdued but still thumping soundtrack. A Crystallize KO is a small reward, a little oasis of calm that says, yep, that big thing is dead.
Combat encounters are dotted around levels, giving you a small breather in between. As you progress, you chart a path through different biomes. I encountered two of the five biomes coming in the early access launch – fantasy floating islands, and steampunk floating islands. Chambers and arenas may contain gold to spend on the current run, cogs to spend on permanent upgrades like a bigger health potion or better starting gear, different upgrade options, and most importantly new weapons, Trinkets, and Gifts to unlock for future runs. Windblown is much less segmented than Dead Cells; levels are pretty linear so far and don't feel that different run over run, but they're also connected and explorable, with random valuable secrets like bonus chests and shops tucked away in the margins. It's also dangerously easy to run smack into enemies or traps when you're dodging around, so take a swig of caution before you go.
Windblown might actually be more punishing than Dead Cells. This was just a demo build, but when you start with 100 max health and the first true boss hits for 72 honest-to-goodness damage on normal attacks, punches are not being pulled. A great run can go south extremely quickly, but it's so painless to dive back in for just one more that I was never frustrated. Windblown is instantly compelling, and while its limited pool of gear may cap its variety at launch, it feels like a wonderful foundation for the follow-up to one of the best roguelike games of all time. I simply cannot wait to play it with friends.
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