With many roguelikes coming in, and all of them emulating 2020’s GOTY Hades, it’s really no wonder why we’re seeing lots of them popping up from then up until now. And most of them seem like carbon copies without the sauce that makes them stand out from Supergiant Games’ major efforts.

Even the makers of Dead Cells, Motion Twin, are taking a stab at the genre and its isometric trappings. But what can it add beyond just window dressing and theme? How about “co-op” and “arcade controls without cooldown”?

Leaping Lizards

Windblown brings “speed” to the isometric action table. Everything about this title is fast, fast, fast. You play as a Leaper, an anthropomorphic guardian of a sky haven called the Ark who has to protect it from the vortex and the bad guys coming out of it. This requires you to trek from start to finish through different biomes and stages, roguelike style. Your Leaper is agile and has a lightning-quick dash that lets you dart around the arena in a blink of an eye. You can dash from platform to platform on the floating islands and peninsulas, and you can run rings around enemies who are trying to keep up.

The Leaper isn’t just agile, but gifted with weapons they can amass during their island run. They can use trinkets that have cooldown timers after use, but usually have powerful area-of-effect properties and debuffs like bombs or spinning blades. They can switch between two weapons ranging from giant sword feathers with hard-hitting combos to crossbows that shoot out powerful bolts if you time their consecutive launches just right (like a rhythm game mechanic).

One of the standout Leaper abilities you can get in your first few runs is the Alter Attack, where after you do a simple combo with one weapon, you immediately attack with the other weapon for an even more powerful attack or special move. This mechanic takes a while to get used to and does make you a sitting duck in the initial attack animations. However, once you get the second attack out, you’re pretty much invincible until the animation is over. This is a huge risk-versus-reward scenario in a game where you have to go fast to stay alive. Do you attack enemies with combos while risking getting flanked by projectiles and heavy attacks? Or just go for broke then switch targets with your Alter Attack?

Windblown’s flexible controls and ability to cancel one action from another seamlessly is its selling point and justifies the difficulty of the game. When I ended up on the second biome, enemies hit harder and have even wacky modifiers that make them nigh-unapprochable at first glance. But with actual skill, they can be taken down.

Still, even if you bite the dust, you just go back to the Ark and try again and again. Usually you’ll get a bunch of quests that will progress the main story of the game: find memories while you’re in your run or rescue lost animals and bring them back to the Ark. It’s pretty standard, but at least you have goals that will help shape the plot and open up new biomes further. Plus, recovering memories and rescuing afterimages of former Ark denizens means extra power-ups for your current run. So win-win!

You don’t have to go through Windblown alone. Players can team up with other players for a co-op experience online. I admit, I didn’t get much of a chance playing this with more than one player, but I do know that up to three people can play in the same roguelike session, and the challenge ramps up significantly based on the players on-screen.

While some of its animations and up-close models need work, everything about Windblown delivers as promised so far: fast-paced roguelite action that tracks your progress even after multiple deaths. The overall skyview aesthetic and ethereal music are a breath of fresh air as we’ve seen way too many roguelites of this nature taking place underground and in deep dark areas. Yes, Windblown does share some strands of DNA with the studio’s past effort Dead Cells: the multi-item loadouts, the twitch-heavy action controls, the colourful aesthetics. That isn’t a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, and does make this isometric roguelike a title to keep an eye out later this month.

Windblown will be out in Early Access form later on 25th October for PC (Steam). For now, you can play the Steam Nextfest demo this week.