There is a moment about an hour into Windward Isles when the tutorial reef falls behind you, the southerly picks up, and the game simply lets go of your hand. What follows is the best pure sailing this magazine has ever reviewed.
Reading the water
Wellington studio Tasman Forge built their archipelago on a real sailing model — point too high into the wind and your sails luff; run before a storm and you will surf swells twice the height of your mast. Crucially, none of it is homework. The boat communicates everything through sound and motion, and within a few hours you are trimming sails on instinct while scanning cliffs for the glint of a cave mouth.
And what cliffs. The islands take their silhouettes from the wilder ends of Aotearoa's coastline — windswept headlands, black-sand bays, bush that comes right down to the tideline. Each island hides shrines, wrecks, lighthouse keepers with rumours to trade, and a cartography guild that pays for every coastline you chart.
A gentle adventure, mostly
Combat exists — reef pirates will occasionally harry your route — but it is the game's thinnest system, a simple broadside exchange that never evolves. Tasman Forge clearly knows where their hearts lie, because the storms are the real bosses: multi-stage weather events that force you to choose between shelter, cargo and time.
By the final act the cartography contracts tip into busywork, asking you to re-survey coastlines you have long since memorised. It is the one place where the game's patience curdles into padding.
Verdict
Windward Isles held our attention for forty hours and our affection for longer. It is that rare exploration game where the journey is genuinely better than the destination — and it flies the flag for local development with real class.
