Windbound Is Expanding With Free Content, Photo Mode Available Now

Windbound will expand with a trio of free major updates over the next few months. The first of three major patches is out now, and it contains some new stat-boosting skins, a photo mode, and and new endless mode for the survival game.

The new Witch Skins are made up of three items--the Witch's Hat, Witch's Outfit, and Witch's Staff--which give you a healthy stat boost when equipped. The hat makes potions last longer, the outfit gives you easier, closer respawns, and the staff is an unbreakable weapon that fires out enemy-seeking orbs after each melee attack.

Photo Mode, meanwhile, lets you pause the game and line up a photo, changing how Kara's posed and adding filters. It lets you change your position, camera orientation, and mess with field of view, exposure, and time, just as in most photo modes. You can also equip Kara with a variety of different hats and accessories, getting some nice shots of your adventures.

The new endless mode, meanwhile, is called Eternal Voyage, and it allows the game to continue on past Chapter 5. The game will continue to get bigger and more difficult as you go--while it won't expand indefinitely, you can expect challenges beyond what the base game offered.

All of these new features are offered for free, which will also be the case with the next two updates. The next one, which will arrive before the end of the year, will come with more Kara skins, a free sailing mode, and improvements to the Nautilus tower system. New towers, with fresh challenges, will be added.

The next update, coming in early 2021, will introduce more changes to the Nautilus experience, along with new enemies and attacks. A "corruption" system will be added, too, although it's not clear what this will involve yet.

Kara's Ancestral gear, which was available as a preorder bonus, is now available for purchase, too. This includes the Ancestral Attire, Oar, and Knife.

Windbound received a 5/10 in GameSpot's review. "Windbound has its moments," wrote reviewer Andrew King. "Much of the time, it was relaxing enough to zone out and search for crafting materials. But the game is built around finding towers, and that process becomes significantly less fun after the first level. There are only so many times you can search for a tower, no matter how winsome the presentation."