Worlds Upon The Wind

What a breath of fresh air! I was worried it might be an overly complicated cultivation something-or-another, but it's a lot more straightforward than screenshots suggest. Great emergent storytelling, fun to see different cultures emerge, and enough depth if you want it. You can even use it as a Japanese study tool! Probably the most fun I've had with a game in a while.

An excellent game, with clever mechanics and well balanced progression. The art and music are also lovely. An absolute steal at this price!

Really beautiful deck building game where you're recreating a world through exploration, decision making and your chosen deck of glyphs. It's all rendered in gorgeous traditional Japanese art enhanced by the sound design and music. It's a real treat!

I played the demo for 13 hours and immediately got the full game on release. It's became a soothing daily ritual. I love the gentle, meditative, sometimes humorous narrative moments, the way the map updates to reflect the towns and structures you've chosen to build, the combination of luck and strategy involved in developing a site, and the overall story of this fractured world being drawn together, piece by piece. For people interested in Japanese history and language, the original ukiyo-e art that inspired the game's style is loving displayed and explained in a hub-gallery, and optional mini-games help players remember japanese kanji on all the cards. In a lot of ways, this game as a sincere and aspirational call to action: relax, find community, and make the fractured world better.

This is a really charming game. It is a bit like Against the Storm in that each settlement is it's own game and then you have to start a series of settlements but without the stress. I'm not much of a deckbuilder player but this one is fairly easy and straightforward. The music is lovely, as is the art work. It definitely has that "just one more round" addictive quality to it. The vibe is chill and relaxing, which is exactly what I've been looking for for the end of long, busy work days. Being able to learn about the history of the Japanese artwork is lovely as well. There is a minigame that can help you learn some Japanese but I haven't tried that yet. All in all a really lovely, relaxing vibe of a game.

A game of really enjoyable complexity without stress - I particularly love the ability to retry rounds with a fixed seed, I think this is not a game that would benefit from false urgency. Lots of interlocking, slowly revealing mechanics, but broadly speaking you receive a new challenge with each new tool, which stops the game from completely trivialising itself. A story that genuinely makes sense, and I love the shard culture system for giving you incentives to play towards unusual or weird goals - it's really helped me avoid running the same strategy every time. I will say that there are some very very centralising glyphs; I see no reason to ever stop myself running Six, for example. But the use to which I put these powerful glyphs, and the way I balance the priority within a specific foray vs my overall shard goals vs inspiration is really rich and satisfying. I am somewhat through the story now and there's still a lot to unlock; I think you could add shard cultures ad infinitum and keep me playing for hours and trying to do odd little playthroughs. Just a really lovely game.

I tried the demo and could tell within a few minutes it was a game I would enjoy. It's a peaceful solo experience, like a solo board game. There's unlocking complexity and a lot of artistry. It's definitely not going to be for everyone, but get the demo and try it out.