As my first venture into solo-dev, Windward will be a cozy sailing game about navigation and seafaring developed in UE5. Check the weather, set sail and explore a magical archipelago as you discover the world and find where you fit in the vastness of the sea.

Beyond the genre

Most cozy games rely on two design patterns:

• Content-based progression (like the seemingly endless decorations you can buy in Animal Crossing).
• Labor intensive yet often shallow and repetitive gameplay (farming, cleaning, etc).

One of the main goals with Windward is attempting achieve the Cozy-Genre experience and gameplay aesthetics, but with a Clockwork Game Design at the core of its underlying mechanics and systems, hopefully achieving a deeper gameplay experience with a more elegant design.

This should result in:

• Progression comes from mastering the clockwork instead of unlocking all the content.
• Labor remains interesting as it is built as a decision-making contest instead of repetitive gameplay.

Current Status

A 3C's prototype has already been built as a proof of concept for the major risks and technical challenges, while providing a set of core mechanics that allow stablishing Rational Game Design metrics for scoping, level design and tuning.

The prototype currently supports:

• Custom Endless Gerstner Ocean
  • Capability of handing Wind directions that change wave and swell directions over time.
  • Shader and gameplay logic stay in sync while simulating the waves independently thanks to the deterministic characteristic of Gerstner Waves.
• Dynamic Weather
  • A modular system sets global weather targets and then each subsystem, like the Wind Subsystem, internally handles transitions and any relevant gameplay context.
  • Day/Night Cycle.
• Simplified Sailing
  • Core sailing mechanics that interact with the custom water and weather solutions.
  • Simple controls for challenging the player's understanding of sailing without a high physical skill bar to keep the cozy aesthetic.
• Curved World
  • To reduce world size and travel times without losing the vastness aesthetic of the sea and the need to interact with the navigation mechanisms, a curved world shader has been developed.
    • Keeps the horizon near the player.
    • Allows precise control over viewing distance, with the extra gameplay layer of making taller things visible for measurable, farther distances.
• [WIP] Celestial Navigation
  • Currently in development, celestial navigation will be at the core of the macro gameplay of the Clockwork.

From there I am iterating on the supporting systems/mechanisms for the Clockwork core, and in so, polishing a Core Loop with enough depth to support the game while keeping the scope within target.