Windrose is a big surprise, this is a pirate survival game that ended up taking the PC scene by storm, now the game sold around 2 million copies, probably recouping the costs of development and earning more than them. This ended up being a big success for Kraken Express, who also got partnered up with Pocket Pair to publish the game. I wonder how this one would have been if it was an actual indie game rather than something promoted by a billionaire studio like Pocket Pair, but we got to focus on what the game is rather on what it could have been.
Windrose is a success
In fact, it is a massive success if you ask me, this has cooperative features so maybe it got people into the game via that way. There’s a current trend ongoing related to cooperative games and everyone, including indie developers, seem to be jumping on the wagon to create these kinds of experiences. I believe there’s still market for them despite the oversaturation of the genre, because cooperative mechanics are genuinely better than competitive ones. Sometimes one wants to unwind a be a pirate with their fellow mates, and Windrose brings the opportunity to do so.
Maybe in 2026, we will end up seeing that the game gets more than 3 million copies soul, and it would be something amazing to behold. We still have to keep in mind this is an early access title so there’s still a long way to go with adding new features and polishing game systems that need fixing. We have to remember that Windrose suffered from a bug that caused your SSD and other storage media to wear off faster than with any other game, but thankfully that got patched out. Errors like this can lead people to distrust the game, but showing that you care to fix them can regain some of that trust.
