Windborne - Initial Thoughts

This is another weird game - it doesn't have a Steam store page. According to my research, it used to be an early access game, but the company who made it ran out of money and decided that it couldn't be finished. They took it out of the store and it more or less became impossible to get the game.

I have a copy thanks to the generosity of Andorxor. All of the early purchasers of the game were given five extra copies (to give away) when the project was shut down. I was lucky enough to receive one of those copies.

This is a pretty intriguing opportunity for me. Oh, in the past I've played games few people wanted to play, but this may be the first time I've ever played a game that few people are able to play. I feel so elite.

Don't worry, I'll try not to rub it in.

As far as I can tell, Windborne is like a fancier version of Minecraft. I'm pretty excited about playing it. Behind 4X games, crafting games are perhaps my favorite genre, so much so that it's a little weird that this is only the second one I've played (I have at least 4 more on the list, though). I should have little trouble finding things to amuse me for 20 hours. If nothing else, I'll just pick a mountain and hollow it out (it's strange, I love leveling things, even if there's no particular reason to do so).

My big worry is that this is a game that was cancelled mid-development, so there's no telling what sort of frustrating bugs I might encounter, or whether or not a partially-implemented feature might mock me with tantalizing glimpses of what the game could have been.

It's hard to say. Windborne's discussion page has pretty much become a wasteland where the only topic is various people's attempts to dispose of their extra copies, so I'm inclined to think that maybe it's not quite captivating enough to sustain a community (the company's official forums are completely dead), but it could just be that the necessary nucleus for community formation never appeared, and people just felt too lonely to continue supporting the game.

Certainly, a lot of the older posts were by people who were excited by Windborne's potential. I'll just have to dive into it to see how much of that potential was realized.