Posted on 14th Apr 2026
| 6 Minute Read
Windrose is an early access survival-crafting pirate game that lets you sail the 7 seas, find and loot buried treasure and have epic ship battles. This is one of the games we've been looking forward to all year. The storyline starts of by throwing you onto a shipwrecked beach where you must collect and gather resources to build a camp.
There are survival elements in the game that remind me a lot of Valheim/Enshrouded, such as comfort, buff and stamina-based melee - you'll love this game if you are into those. The combat system is something that feels amazing too, with a sword and pistol combo, like games like Dishonoured or Sea of Thieves.
The game starts out with a nice simple character creation screen where you can choose how you want your character to look. With lots of customisations, but quick and simple also to create the character you want, complete with tattoos and pirate scars! Yaarrr!
Compared to other survival crafting games, the character creation choices are extremely well done, allowing you to be the pirate you have always wanted to be. The exploration and adventure elements that have been included are a nice touch as you read and unlock different parts of the storyline as you progress.
The thing that stands out to me in Windrose is the insanely good building mechanics which are a little different to most other games in the genre, but they feel intuitive and didn't take long to get used to.
In contrast, the smooth progression system as you wind your way through the game feels quite familiar. You get a lot of free reigns with your building and can really get some amazing creations you can feel proud of. As time goes on you can unlock and add some funky decor to the base that adds to comfort, which you get a nice buff from.
The image you see above is built with the building tools and really shows the level of detail and insane things you can do in Windrose.
The fun really stars in the game when you get to build your first ship! With a ship and a crew, you can sail and visit other islands as well as to fight and board other ships. I love the fact that you get to play some sea shanties as you sail, just like playing the radio in a car but you pay them to sing to you!
You can also build a nice dock for your ship at each base you have on different islands if you want. I see this being great for building trade outposts, especially with teammates or if not playing together, a way to build a merchant port or the like.
At the time of writing this, you can play Windrose solo or with up to 10 other people, which you can host on your PC, if you can afford the up to 16GB of RAM it will take to host! Luckily, there is a better option.
Our Windrose Server Hosting allows you and your friends to join into the world whenever you want, not have to worry about memory usage or performance and get the best experience when playing Windrose. If you want to continue a save from your PC, no problem, we provide full access for you to upload the files and run them.
We have fast setup in just a few minutes and a top-notch support team available around the clock via tickets or our discord server if you need any help getting your pirate world going.
I hope that you all enjoy the game as much as we have. We are also here to support you if you need any help with your new server.
Ahoy! Me Hearties!
