The first thing you’re likely to hear anyone say when you talk about Everwind is that it looks a lot like Minecraft. Even my 6-year-old daughter came in and asked if I was playing it. While that’s incredibly true and a clear inspiration for the developers, there is a key difference that needs to be addressed straight off the bat. Everwind has an insanely interesting traversal hook. Flying ships. Why? Well, to get around all the floating islands, of course. I’ve spent 15+ hours in the game and I’ve also been spoiled with a developer chat ahead of the early access launch, so here’s my initial impressions.
Unlike other sandbox survival-based games, Everwind is focused on an entirely new format that requires you to build and upgrade your flying ship and it’s pretty freaking cool. Not only is it a fun way to get around, but it’s also incredibly handy having your home base follow you around wherever you go. Plus, you can use your starter compass to teleport straight back to your ship whenever you want. No, I didn’t punch holes in the bottom of my ship to climb back in when I got stuck before I realised, you did.
Up, up, and away
Upgrading your ship is mighty interesting, too. There are three different ways to do this, by increasing the size of your ship, how high it can go, and how fast it can go. And believe me, you’ll want to upgrade the speed early doors, travelling around 2.5 blocks per second doesn’t quite cut it. Though I did find this sloth-paced travel time a good opportunity to step away from the helm and do some inventory admin, crafting and cooking, ready for my next stop.
How high it can go also opens up different biomes and more islands to explore. While I could see all the islands from the get go, I’ve not been able to reach all of them. Of course, the more I upgrade, the more I can explore, and so on and so forth. Fortunately, even if you choose to drive your flying ship around like an absolute lunatic pirate, like me, you can’t damage it. I checked this with the devs before I set sail, and I’m glad I did because when I carried out a wave of embarrassing reverse parking moves to land safely on the islands higher up in the sky, I didn’t have to worry about the state of my ship afterwards.
As I mentioned, it becomes your home base and that means filling it up with important stations from crafting to repairing to smelting, cooking, and more. I’m not the greatest builder, but I loved having the total freedom to do what I wanted with it. It certainly doesn’t look like any ship I’ve ever seen, but don’t judge if you’ve spotted it in my screenshots, okay?! Once I’d got everything sorted aboard, here’s where I began to shine. Loot time. Everything around you is obtainable in this fully destructible environment, just smash it up and gather up the pieces, and I took full advantage of this. Hover over an item long enough and it’ll even tell you the best tool to destroy it with. Then, you can drop off all the lovely, lovely loot you’ve found, and let me tell you, the loot collecting is absolutely massive. I’m a self-professed loot goblin. It’s why my husband won’t play Borderlands with me anymore. And in Everwind, there’s so much loot I’ll admit that even I, Lady Loots-a-lot, felt a little overwhelmed by it all.
Loot gobblin’
But, you should grab it all because you can use absolutely everything, whether it’s for crafting, building, eating, collecting, upgrading, wearing, the list goes on. With seemingly endless loot, I just couldn’t help myself. I felt like a greedy little pirate. It’s the reason my ship now mimics that of The Collector in Guardians of the Galaxy, filled with several large chests housing all my delicious wares. Turns out, I’m also now a hoarder. Alas, I’ll just fly it all around with me on my adventure in the skies.
Aside from this key ‘take to the skies’ difference, it’s far too easy to make comparisons about a lot of what’s happening in Everwind with Minecraft, but I’m not going to do that. Even if, when asked about story progression in Everwind, Marcin Olczak, Publishing Producer at Bohemia Interactive said, “You can kind of, in a sense, compare it to how the Minecraft storyline worked… Everyone knows Minecraft. How it worked with the Ender Dragon, how you were at some point reaching it. It’s kind of an end game and then you could still play the game. It’s basically the same.”
Similarly, Everwind is told through environmental storytelling, and the devs teased that it’s all got something to do with the huge planet you see in the background with stuff ripped out of it. Whatever you do, the story’s there, even if it didn’t quite feel like it during my time playing. I’m not a speed runner, and I never have been, so I’m sure the story will blossom as I get further in.
Capy days
Right, it’s time we addressed the elephant in the room, if said elephant was dressed up like a capybara. Everwind is full of them. These cute massive guinea pig-looking animals populate pretty much every island I’ve found myself on so far. But, their presence in the game is actually incredibly symbolic. When I asked the devs, “Why all the capybaras?” Marcin told me, “Since the beginning, pretty much, capybara has been a main pet inside the game when it first was shown on some recordings we were doing.” The community responded well to it, and the devs at Everwind listened. And that’s one of the things that Everwind does so well.
Everwind also has a deep RPG focus that has been crafted through boundless updates and changes as part of a community response. The devs have also focused on how the weapons work and you can tell, differing from the demo and making them more responsive and immersive. No fight feels like a waste of your time. Every enemy you take down, you get more loot. Whether that’s dropped coins, bones, recipes, runes, etc. or if an animal, plenty of meat to cook up on the fire. And there’s a great variety of enemies to fight, too, prowling the land of the differing biomes and ranging in difficulty. There’s also bosses, I’m told, but I’ve spent many hours in the game already and I’m yet to meet one.
It’s also worth talking about the skill system. While it’s simplistic in nature, there’s an interesting twist on how you spend your skill points. You’ve got a choice of three roles to invest in, or spread your points out, depending on your plans. There’s the Warrior, Arcanist, and Engineer. And while it felt a little laborious clicking through each skill to see what it has to offer, I was assured during my chat with the devs that it’ll evolve before the player’s eyes as they keep adding new active skills.
You’re a wizard, Grace
There’s also spellcasting in Everwind that I got to see demonstrated during the devs’ gameplay, marking yet another path for you to explore. Staffs and spellbooks will help you get ahead in the game with unique skills and abilities crafted in each one. Pick a spellbook, deploy a single spell, but sacrifice both your hands in the meantime. When it comes to combat then, there’s certainly room to expand and there’s a clear focus on mythical world building that I’m just a tad excited about.
While the Kickstarter campaign didn’t reach the fundraising goal for NPC villagers, the devs are including it anyway. On certain islands, you’ll find it inhabited not by danger, but by villagers who are weirdly okay with you looting the heck out of their homes and grabbing up whatever you find. They’ll even watch you do it. You can trade with them in exchange for your lovely coins, and sometimes a trade will make all the difference. I couldn’t find enough copper to smelt into an ingot, but I could buy one ready to go.
I was a little concerned about how I’d find my way around without a map and honestly, I actually quite enjoyed the freedom of not having one. If you want to find your way back to a specific island in Everwind, you can craft a waypoint and pop it down. I dropped one that simply said ‘FRIENDS’ so I knew that I could get back to trading. And if you die, you set a little death marker that you can return to to pick up your loot. There’s a timer on this though, so you’ll have to be quick. Fortunately, anything you’re holding or equipped with stays put. And that was a relief when I started circling the spot I died in, realising I had to fight the enemies still to get my stuff back.
Many hands make light work
There’s also multiplayer, which at the time of early access release, is P2P only. Though when I asked if they were going to introduce PVP, Igor Witula, QA Lead said, “We’d like to, but obviously as an optional part. So you can just turn it on and off because not everyone wants to play on PVP. But right now, in P2P multiplayer, we only focus on more cooperation in multiplayer. Definitely we’d like to expand it in the future with dedicated servers”.
When I watched the devs play, I could certainly see the appeal. In fact, I was a little jealous that I haven’t got anyone to play with yet. Everything’s a little bit easier with friends, right? And seemingly, you can get a lot more done with more hands on deck. Fortunately, it’s as simple as copying your world code and handing it over to your friends for them to spawn in, four in total. I’ll be happy to have company, if anything just so I can finally show off my wares.
Room to grow
Ultimately, if you love all the basics of a survival RPG sandbox game, it’s all here in Everwind. But, if you’re looking for a little more, like a flying ship perhaps, you’ve got a pirate dream and a sky full of endless possibilities. Yes, it’s all a little punishing to begin with, but isn’t any survival game? Your tools take ages to break things. Trees, for example, are upsettingly slow to knock down. Your combat rips off tiny XP from enemies. But, there’s upgrading and crafting to do to lighten the load.
What didn’t seem to improve much for me during my hours in Everwind was how fast the tools I had crafted needed repairing. I crafted a repair station, I crafted as many repair kits as I could, but then I had to keep doing this in a frustrating cycle, running desperately low on the items I needed. I also began to notice some identical parts of islands, like the strongholds laid out in exactly the same way, or the fact that I could drop things quite easily without meaning to. Or, that my ship continued to move and use up fuel even in the pause menu.
For early access, it’s a well-rounded game that’s totally playable. Sure, there’s certainly some tweaks I wouldn’t hate to see, but that’s why Everwind is open to feedback. What’s going to make this game truly shine is their response to what people have to say about it. Fortunately, they’re ready to listen. The team are using feedback gathered to play a huge role in what happens next, and with early access planned for at least a year, there’s going to be gradual content updates.
With a procedurally generated world and boundless freedom to explore, Everwind seems like the kind of game where I’ll blink and countless hours have passed. Already, I can see myself constantly distracted by other islands, changing course because it feels right, based on absolutely no knowledge and a heart full of hope. Oh, and the nose of a truffle pig that’s hankering for some loot. I’m ready to sink hours into this game. I’m intrigued, I’m excited, and I’m incredibly happy to see something new in the space that has such crazy growth potential.
