52,162 concurrent players. 92% positive reviews. Number one on Steam’s top sellers chart. Not from Ubisoft, not from EA, not from any AAA publisher with a nine-figure budget — from Kraken Express, an indie studio that used to go by a different name and used to be building an entirely different game.

Windrose launched into Early Access today and immediately started punching like a heavyweight. The PvE pirate survival game sits atop three Steam charts simultaneously — Top Sellers, Specials, and Featured Win — with a Very Positive rating from 365 reviews and a peak player count that was still climbing as the day wore on. IGN France reported 30,000 concurrent players earlier in the day; by afternoon, that number had ballooned past 52,000.

The launch price is $26.99 (€26.99), a 10% discount off the $29.99 base price. For a game that reportedly racked up 1.5 million wishlists ahead of release, according to iXBT Games, the discount looks less like a promotion and more like a victory lap.

The Game Ubisoft Couldn’t Ship

The top Steam review doesn’t mince words. After six hours of playtime, one player wrote: “THIS! is the AAAA Pirates game Ubisoft promised us!” The reference lands like a broadside. Ubisoft spent years trying to recapture the magic of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag — first with the troubled Skull and Bones, which endured multiple reboots and a rocky 2024 launch, and then with… nothing, really. The open-world pirate fantasy that players had been begging for remained unfulfilled.

Another reviewer cut even closer to the bone with just four words: “Valheim 2: Black Flag.”

That comparison is telling. Windrose isn’t trying to be Sea of Thieves. According to IGN France, players who tested the demo are quick to point out that Windrose has “practically nothing to do” with Rare’s pirate adventure, given its strict PvE focus and survival-crafting backbone. This is Valheim with cutlasses — build, craft, explore, fight bosses — wrapped in a pirate skin that actually fits.

What Players Are Getting

Windrose starts with a classic setup: an encounter with Blackbeard leaves you shipwrecked, and you’ve got to gather resources, build a base, repair your ship, and start rebuilding a pirate empire. Up to four players can co-op, or you can go solo.

Ship-to-ship combat is the standout feature, according to PC Gamer’s hands-on. The system leans heavily into the Black Flag playbook — you steer, you shoot broadsides, you press a key for repair kits. No fiddling with wind direction, no running out of cannonballs, no tedious manual repairs. It’s fast and accessible, if not particularly simulation-heavy.

Melee combat uses a parry-and-counter system described as “soulslite” — wait for the enemy to swing, parry, punish. Firearms add a wrinkle: pulling the trigger starts a short fuse, so you have to hold your aim while the gun decides whether it’s ready to fire. It’s a small mechanic that apparently creates genuine tension.

The survival systems are lighter than hardcore fans might want. Hunger and thirst work like Valheim — food buffs attributes rather than killing you through starvation. Weather is visual only for now. Base-building resembles Palworld’s system. Crafting pulls from nearby storage chests, a quality-of-life touch that saves tedious inventory shuffling.

The Road Ahead

This is Early Access, and Kraken Express is transparent about how much is missing. According to PC Gamer, the developers estimate Windrose has roughly half of its planned content and expects to spend one to three years in Early Access. Fishing, shown in trailers, is absent. Farming is limited to a few crops. Performance hiccups crop up when new chunks load during exploration, and co-op hosting can slow things down, though the game is reportedly stable with no crashes.

The studio itself has undergone significant changes during development. The game was originally called Crosswind, the studio was Windrose Crew, and the whole project was planned as an MMO before pivoting to its current survival-crafting form, according to IGN France. Pocketpair Publishing — the Japanese label behind Palworld’s breakout success — is handling publishing duties.

Early negative reviews focus on the usual Early Access growing pains: no community server browser, a UI that some players describe as feeling like a mobile port, and the absence of PvP. Whether that last point is a feature or a bug depends on what kind of pirate fantasy you’re after.

But the numbers don’t lie. Fifty-two thousand players chose to spend their Tuesday sailing with an indie studio’s first major release. Sometimes the market doesn’t need a AAA budget — it needs a team that actually ships.

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