Pirate game Windrose dethrones Steam's survival champion as it sails up the charts

Windrose is sailing with the wind at its back, and the new pirate survival game has proved such a hit that it’s even managed to dethrone the longstanding champion of the genre. With the publishing might of Pocketpair behind it (the studio responsible for breakout success Palworld), developer Kraken Express has built a gorgeous PvE experience that’s proving extremely popular, growing steadily over its first week. It’s now surpassed even the heights of Rust, which has long sat as a staple of the Steam charts. Who knows where the limit is?

You could already hear a huge launch coming for Windrose: an extremely popular Steam demo helped the pirate game reach a million wishlists a full month before it was even out. Still, that’s no guarantee of success, and the survival genre has seen its fair share of messy launches over the years. The good news is that so far Windrose is delivering, with spectacular visuals and a robust Early Access offering that feels like there’s more than enough to do.

If you’ve yet to take a look, Windrose is perhaps best likened to Enshrouded, with objectives to follow, lots of stats on its gear, ample building options, and combat that draws inspiration from soulslikes, albeit in a slightly more flexible manner that better suits its genre. Answering the call of the sea, you’re a 1700s captain who dares to challenge the legend of Blackbeard, which gradually pulls you into a conflict between pirate factions and “mysterious dark powers.”

With a vast ocean to explore full of diverse, procedurally generated island biomes, Windrose might have landed at the perfect time, capitalizing on anyone who’s been getting the pirate itch in the runup to Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag resynced. Kraken Express promises “over 100 hand-crafted dungeons and points of interest” to discover, so you’ll be well-served with a wealth of options even at this initial stage of Early Access.

Windrose also supports up to eight-player co-op out of the gate, which is no doubt helping it to further climb the Steam charts as players who took the plunge and are enjoying it gradually convince their friends to join them. Steam reviews currently sitting at a ‘very positive’ 88% will help make that an even easier sell, as will the 10% launch discount that’s still on offer for a couple more days at the time of writing. The result is a peak player count to date of over 183,000, pushing Windrose past Rust and Crimson Desert, and into the top ten on Valve’s platform.

Kraken Express estimates that its main story is currently around 50-70 hours, but you could easily pour much more time into Windrose if you fall in love with its survival systems. The building lets you construct anything from simple shacks to giant pirate forts that require dozens of hours of hard graft to put together. There’s been a nice gap in the market for something combining the swashbuckling fantasy of Sea of Thieves with the grand-scale constructions of Soulmask, and Windrose looks to be fulfilling that in style.

Windrose is out now on Steam in Early Access, priced at $29.99 / £24.99. A 10% launch discount is available, so you’ll pay $26.99 / £22.49 if you buy it by Tuesday April 21. Grab it here if you’re ready to set sail. Kraken Express says it plans to increase the price of the game once the full 1.0 version is released, which it estimates will take between 1.5 and 2.5 years to reach.

The final version is planned to include “around 50% more content” than what’s currently available, including additional biomes, boss battles, ships, and loot. Kraken Express intends to continue unfolding its story into a grand finale, but also says it wants “to explore additional gameplay systems, not just add content into the existing ones.”