DEVBLOG #1

Ahoy,

We’re starting this devblog to keep you up to date on our journey!

Follow Crosswind on Steam so you won’t miss the next one! And let us know in the comments what topics you want us to address in future.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3041230/Crosswind/

Disclaimer: the game is in development. All information here is work-in-progress and subject to change. For now, the digest is in English only, but we will be adding more languages if you like the concept.

80,000 playtest signups

Wow, just wow. We are truly humbled by your excitement about Crosswind. Our goal was to get 8000 signups by mid April, and here we are with ten times more a week after the game page appeared on Steam. You are THE BEST! You have no idea how much your support means to us.From the bottom of our swashbuckling hearts – thank YOU!

With great numbers comes great responsibility.Frankly speaking, we are really nervous. It’s gonna be our first non-NDA test, and while making the decision to go this way, we never thought it would explode like this. We want you to have proper expectations:we are in the alpha stage. And the playtest will feature only a part of Crosswind as we envision it. You did see our graphical roadmap on the game page, did you? Let’s get it over with and call itAlpha Playtest. It makes us a bit less nervous, okay?

Just a heads-up:most likely we will delay the Alpha start from mid-late April to early May. With this amount of attention, we want to double check everything internally. We will be back with more info on it later!

MMO or Survival game? PvP or PvE? Why is it also single player? How does it all work?

That was one of the most popular questions, and we understand why: our vision of Crosswind has a lot of various gameplay types combined. Let’s decompose it in a brutally honest way, remembering that

not all of it will be implemented in the upcoming Alpha

:

• At its heart Crosswind is a survival game with biomes/bosses progression. Think of “Valheim with pirates and naval combat”. You explore a biome, master its challenges, craft the best possible gear, defeat the boss and unlock the next biome.
• The game structure: “a player-controlled world plus various shared zones”.
• Each player has their own worldwhere the main game story unfolds. It’s a big archipelago with a dozen islands, a combination of biomes, resources, enemies and secrets. The bulk of it is procedurally generated with some of the key points of interest hand-crafted, which meansyour world won’t be the same as your friend’s.
• You have full control over your worldin regards to who can visit it.
• You can keep it private. Or you can invite your buddies to explore, craft, build, fight with you.We want you to experience the core game story the way you want: solo or with friends. That part of Crosswind is a “play at your own pace and enjoy the adventure” type.
• The MMO part comes as shared zones for various PvE and PvP activities. During the main story, you unlock the ability to travel to other locations.These are shared among players. For example, on the playtest we’ll have a very early prototype of Tortuga. Right now it’s just a place to trade in some goods and meet other players, but in future we will turn it into a fully functional social hub brimming with life where you can find new activities, meet new friends...or maybe challenge someone to a duel!Other zones (for example, a naval PvP zone) and other activities will be added lateras development goes, expanding the MMO part of Crosswind.
• We see PvP as an additional way to enjoy the game. It will be optional, and it will take time to be properly implemented. That’s one of the concepts we strongly believe in: PvP should be there, it should be fun, but it should not be forced upon anyone.
• You can absolutely play the game solo, just like many classic survival games. That’s why we also have the “Single-player” tag. But – there is no offline mode, and we do not plan to have it, as it is not compatible with the MMO part.

To sum up: the upcoming Alpha Test is PvE/survival focused. We need to ensure you are happy with the “survival” part of the game before moving on to develop and playtest the “MMO” part.

Now, time to share some insights!

Naval combat

We’ve received a lot of questions about naval combat. There was no raw footage of it in the trailer, so that’s totally understandable. We’ll happily make a new showcase video for you a bit later!

In the meantime, let’s refresh a few points:

Naval combat is largely inspired by Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. So one player commands one ship. However, our aim is to go a bit further, bringing more room for tactics and skill to the table. It won’t happen immediately on Alpha, but that’s the direction we’ll travel.

Before introducing wind to naval combat as a factor, we need to test other things first. We already have a comprehensive wind system in the game, you’ll notice how plants, trees, flags and ship sails react to it. When we are happy with the core ship combat (which is mostly blasting other people’s ships to pieces), we will address the wind and its role in it.

Damage system in Alpha will be relatively simple. The aft of the ship is a weak spot, it will receive more damage when hit, so don’t let other captains broadside you from behind! When we get the basics right, we will be looking at additional layers of complexity, like cannonball ricochets, critical damage, ammo types, etc. There will be a lot more testing in the future related to this.

There will be boarding actions. We can’t imagine a pirate game without boarding, and hopefully you’ll see its first very rough implementation on the playtest.

Ship customization will be added later. We believe that your ship should feel like home, so there will be a lot of various ways to make her truly yours. No building ships from scratch though – we will be adding predefined, highly detailed ship classes, like sailboat, cutter, frigate and others, with the ability to customize them.

Life on your base and NPC workers

Another thing in development is bringing life to your future bases and outposts.

You will be able to automate mundane tasks. Chopping palm trees is reasonable when you’re a survivor stranded after your mission went wrong. But that’s not a task worthy of a seasoned captain! With time, you will unlock NPC workers and the ability to send them on expeditions. Keep them fed, well paid, and they will happily chop trees, mine stone and hunt some tasty wildlife for you and your crew!

It will take some time, butthere will be visible life in your base, too. Though, if you take a look at this butcher prototype, we may need to reduce his enthusiasm a bit. Someone may get hurt…

Character creation

We want you to feel grounded in the world of Crosswind, and creating your very own character plays a big role in it. When you start your journey, you can

go with a simple set of presets or dive into additional customization

.

You’ll be able to select

body type, thematic origin, and overall build—from bulky to slender

. Facial features such as

head shape, nose, ears, and brow

are all adjustable, along with eye color, hairstyles, and facial hair. Tattoos, scars, and skin details help round out your backstory without saying a word.

It’s still work-in-progress, but even now, these tools offer a good deal of flexibility—and we’ll keep expanding them as we go.

GO WISHLISTYOURSELFCROSSWIND!

And now — the winners of the Tag Our Game contest!

A huge thank you to everyone who took part. Nearly two thousand adventurers joined in, helped us set the right tags for Crosswind on Steam, and tossed their hat in for a chance to win a playtest key.

We’ve randomly selected 100 winners, and here they are:

[expand type=showmore expanded=false]

adizzy79

Adlet

Aeris

AngelLow

Arcaniat

Atlas Primus

Basjeseten

Bluelion_tv

BlutAura

Bobrito Bandito

BOT Marty

CoreDonut

CptCrits

CraZyToEzDK

CuCu4CocoaPuffs

Darmo

dazza386

db Idaho -_-*

Degril

Devaller

Disposable Henchman

DocAceZ

Drakeye

draug4

egonswag

Feller Nation

FubarGamez

GabShark

Gandork

Garother

Geuwl

goldun

Gr33nyZ

HellishMist_TTV

Hex: Gormless Stoner

HxToga

iamskitt1ez

ILSantu

Ingram88

Insin

InstructorTiny

ITS A TARP

jan20021

jimboslice

John H. Showdown

Judas

KalumStorey

kevengers

Kool kody

Krohm

LenisPord

Lightning Lay

Lil Draltarin

lubie placki

LUCKY

Mandar

marchefox

MashaDulo

Mato

Mikele

Mirandarp36

Mochi

moraden

Muirghen

MysticTrev

NukeLaCoog

Ostolach

P0ckii

Pepsy

Phorr

Poluf

ProfGaryOak

Pumpkin

reaper

Red Death

ReueLopes

RodrГ­guez

Saac

Skuior

SnodRod

SoloQStudios TTV

SoullessRob

SpeerSword

stark

THEBOAT

tomflappybones

Too Much Dog

varkitozz

vash

VonShadow

VooDoo

w h y

wolly

wy

Xari

Xill

YAR King

Zeyphrenn

zxdual

哎呦凉白开

[/expand]

🏴‍☠️ Congratulations to all the winners!

As we begin rolling out the upcoming playtest in several weeks, we’ll be reaching out to each of you via Steam DMs to deliver your keys.

Thanks for your attention, captains. It’s been a wild week, but we feel humbled and grateful thanks to all of you ❤

Don’t forget to follow Crosswind on the game page to stay up to date!

Yours,

Crosswind Crew.