#WINDBOUND CLAY POT FULL#

But aside from a basic boat and perhaps a sharpened stick to defend yourself with, none of it feels particularly essential.

There’s a fairly extensive crafting system at Kara’s disposal, as almost everything in her surroundings - from grass and sticks to animal bones and hides - can be gathered and converted into rudimentary tools like shovels and hammers or enhancements to her boat in order to make sailing speedier. Survivalist strips you of most of your inventory and returns you to the beginning each time Kara perishes, and I found those high roguelike stakes made me particularly careful about which beasts to engage with and which craftable objects to prioritise as I made my way from one island to the next.

#WINDBOUND CLAY POT FULL#

Before you begin the adventure you’re instructed that the ‘Survivalist’ difficulty setting is ‘the full Windbound experience’, and so that’s exactly what I chose to play it on.

Instead, Windbound leans hard into a survival-based grind that makes Breath of the Wild’s breakable weapons seem like little more than a minor inconvenience. While it does feature a lead character with an insatiable appetite for smashing pots, Windbound otherwise lacks the dungeons, environmental puzzles, flexible combat, or boss fights typically found in one of Link’s legendary adventures. A gorgeous painterly aesthetic gives the impression that Windbound could be set somewhere off the coast of Hyrule, but that’s largely where comparisons with The Legend of Zelda end.

Windbound clay pot