I've already played the demo of this co-op pirate survival game for 7 hours, but the boisterous sea shanties my crew sings keep me coming back for more

Pirates on a ship — (Image credit: Windrose Crew)

One completely unexpected side-effect of the pandemic: I got really sick of sea shanties. When everyone was stuck at home clinging to Tiktok for their sanity, it seemed like at least one out of five people recorded some sort of shanty-related content, and it didn't take long before the idea of hearing yet another spirited aquatic anthem made me want to throw myself off a boat.

Luckily, I deleted Tiktok a couple years ago and I'm fervently pro-shanty once again, which makes for perfect timing because the Next Fest demo for pirate survival game Windrose is out on Steam—and it's great. You can fix up a ship, hit the high seas, and listen to your crew of NPC pirates sing a whole bunch of awesome sea shanties. Just listen (and watch) the new Windrose trailer below and try not to get completely keyed up for a grand pirate adventure:

Windrose: Drunken Sailor (2026 Remaster) - YouTube

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Of course, this is a survival game, so the grand adventure doesn't happen right away. You begin the demo on a tiny island after an encounter with Blackbeard has left you shipwrecked and stranded with not so much as a single tricorn hat to call your own.

You know the drill: pick up rocks, gather branches, craft a cruddy axe and a crude pick and start grinding for resources. There's not a whole lot going on, survival-wise, that we haven't seen in a million survival games already, but at least you're a pirate covered head to toe in tattoos—which somehow makes a couple hours of chopping down trees and smashing boulders feel more like an adventure.

Besides, you've got an important goal to work towards: acquiring a boat to get off this island and visit the others you can see on the horizon. After defeating some surprisingly fierce Dodo birds (don't believe the history books, they're no pushovers), digging up some buried treasure (it's a pirate game, after all), and fighting some Drowned (that's what they call zombie pirates), I had a decent little base and a tiny, two-person boat I could use to start exploring the world. That led to finding a shipwreck I could repair (after a whole lot more tree-chopping and copper mining), and locating members of my crew that had been captured by Blackbeard's men.

After a bunch of battles with enemy pirates using my saber and an occasional carefully aimed flintlock pistol shot, I freed seven of my crewmates. I crafted new cannons for my ship and even located a new tricorn hat. Time to put to sea for some proper pirate adventures, and a few glorious sea shanties. (SOUND ON for the clip below!)

We got sunk. Immediately. I spotted one of Blackbeard's fleet prowling on the horizon and engaged in some high seas ship-to-ship combat, bombarding them with cannonfire and trying not to get broadsided, but we got utterly shellacked. As my ship sank I leapt on board the enemy vessel, but there were about a dozen pirates waiting and they cut me down quickly.

Thankfully, even though Windrose is pretty tough (even the Dodos are tanks), it's forgiving in the right places. To restore my sunken ship, I needed only 20 more timber, which only takes a couple minutes of tree-chopping. I lost my second fight with the enemy ship, but won my third, doing enough damage for my pirates and I to pull up alongside and board it for some chaotic melee combat.

While Windrose isn't doing a lot that feels different when it comes to survival, I'm loving the pirate adventure aspect of it: the exploring, the ship sailing and high-seas combat, and the boisterous NPC crew that feels like it's straight out of games like Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. I love the flintlock pistols, too: there's something about a really slow gun that makes for a more interesting fight.

The Windrose demo is meaty as hell, too: I played for seven hours before it told me I was finished, but it still let me continue and there's plenty more to do: islands to explore, ship upgrades to construct, and gear to craft. No word on a release date yet, or even a release year, but I'm hoping it won't be too long of a wait. I already miss my musical crew.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

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