Take, for instance, the Gloomharrow, a skulking purplish lizard reminiscent of Randall Boggs from Monsters, Inc. wreathing itself in black cloud, it vanishes and reappears, ready to pounce at your back. The beast can be felled with arrows, whipped up from freshly hacked wood and fired from a silk-strung bow.

You can poke it with a spear, whittled from a stick and, in a sturdier variation, tipped with bone. Or you can creep past the creature entirely and bag yourself a razorback pig instead. These island routines-the dodging of hairiness and harm, and the acquisition of a flame-roasted lunch-are spiked with a rogue-like streak. Should death befall you in the default mode, “Survival,” you’re booted back to the beginning, with all but a few items lost. Though, I have to say, I wish you weren’t. One of the draining effects of a popular genre is that it may be donned, like an ill-fitting suit, without warrant. When Dark Souls saw fit to clobber you without mercy and to mug you of your amassed currency, you sensed that death was being wielded, by a judicious developer, like a knuckle-wrapping ruler. It was done to teach and to tinge: to encourage you to bolster your combat prowess, and to smear the world with mortal cruelty. Here the clashes yield no such complexity (simply lock-on, lunge, and leap out the way) and the regular elements of play-the foraging, crafting, and cooking-are established early and with ease. So why strip away our story progress?Īt its best, the power of the rogue-like is twofold: first, to provide mounting weight and momentum to your journey, sharpened by the knowledge that, in death, all is lost and second, not to impart wisdom but, rather, to demonstrate what has already been learned-to shine a light on the shrinking of once-daunting challenges. The problem with Windbound is that, when borne back ceaselessly into the past, you find you haven’t gained so much in skill and experience that you sail ahead. You still beat on, scrounging for materials and hunting. The actual work of advancement is hardly compressed. The other problem is that the plot isn’t as faint as it often is with rogue-likes, and repetition doesn’t do it any favours.

It lives in painted tableaux, unlocked at the end of each of the five chapters, and in gnomic quotations, like, “Our love is dead.

Gloomharrow windbound