About the Game
PLAY THE DEMO FIRST!!! It's the first 10-20 hours of the game, with full multiplayer, and your progress carries over into the full game.
New World to Discover: Start as a young, unaffiliated captain with an entire world open for exploration. Every campaign features a unique, procedurally generated map, ensuring no two games are alike.
Play Solo or Co-op: Brave the seas alone or sail with friends, the choice is yours.
Trade, Quest, or Wander: Engage in peaceful trading, take on quests for various factions, fish the seas, or dive for hidden treasures. Prefer a quieter life? You can simply sail and enjoy the open waters.
Dynamic World Impact: Towns and provinces need resources to grow. Supplying them leads to prosperity, while faction leaders will involve you in their agendas. Helping one may hinder another, and enough support can even let a faction leader take control of a province—without a single cannon being fired.
Fully Customizable Ships: Build the ship that suits your style, whether it’s a tough juggernaut that can take a beating, a quick schooner that rains fire from afar, or a support vessel keeping allies afloat. Swap out cannons for extra armor and turn your ship into a ramming juggernaut if that’s your thing.
Diverse Talent Trees: As you level up, unlock talent points to enhance Defense, Offense, or Support specializations. Each tree offers unique abilities and sub-paths, and you can mix talents across specializations to create powerful, personalized builds.
Crew & Captains: Expand your toolkit by recruiting crew, mates, and captains—each bringing their skills to your ship.
Upgrade & Expand: The gold you earn isn’t just for supplies, it’s your ticket to bigger and better ships, from nimble Schooners to powerful Frigates and versatile Brigantines. Follow storylines to unlock even more unique ships.
Forge Your Path: Whether you aim to be a feared pirate, a master trader, or a loyal faction ally, it's up to you!
Designed for Co-op: While the journey is yours, it’s even better with friends. Windward Horizon was built with co-op in mind, so bring your crew, set sail, and experience the chaotic endgame together!
Screenshots
22 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
- Changed the server address to remove old servers and force server admins to update their executable.
- Fixed a bug preventing summoned help ships from benefiting from Improved Useful Debris and other effects that AI normally can't benefit from.
- Fixed the ally boss of a 4-skull mission being spawned with the wrong name for when an explicit name was specified (ex: story quest mission).
- Fixed an issue with NPCs and players being unable to take damage properly when there was an odd interaction with Death Ward.
- Cloth animation distance is now based on the distance to the ship, not the sail itself, and setting it to '1' means only animate your own ship's cloth.
- Added /resetstories command to reset all stories to allow you to play through them again with a different set of choices. This is in addition to romance-specific ones like /resetAlvana, /resetSonya, /resetBella and /resetLani that existed before.
- Made flares drop outside of Kraken raids (but only at night).
- Made text more crisp at scaled-up resolutions (above 1440p).
- World population needed to spawn a trader is now a server-configurable value in addition to being a game config setting so admins can easily tweak it at run-time.
- Fixed inability to sell raid items via drag & drop.
- Cleansing Blast now triggers the effects of the source unit's Water Barrel on all affected friendly units.
- It's now possible to specify a flag on buffs that indicates that they can't be refreshed with Revitalize. Certain buffs, like the dock and respawn buff have it by default.
- Creating a brand new campaign with code-altering mods active no longer requires holding Shift.
- Item combining now checks for the item's presence in the player's inventory before creating the result.
- Added a button to the main menu options that lets you clear all Steam Cloud cache (temporary files like fog of war and preview textures).
- Resetting Bella's romance will no longer prevent Marcei from talking to you if you've already unlocked Aequitas.
- Marcei will no longer give you the dialog option to join Valiant once he moves on.
- Minor dialog tweaks.
- Disconnecting mid-raid should no longer prevent the player from being able to reconnect until all players leave the raid.
- Various other minor fixes.
I've been posting some tidbits on discord about the coming raid update, including what kinds of items to expect from the coming top tier challenges, but I know a lot of you aren't in there so I figured I'd share some here as well!
In short, raids are being designed for groups: with specific roles that must be filled in order for the raid to succeed (tank, healer, DPS). There are certain mechanics in the raid that have to be countered, or players will start dying. With the inherently long respawn timer, if everyone is dead, the raid fails and has to be started over.
I don't expect anyone to complete the raids successfully on their first try, but failing is a part of the design: you don't need to win to start getting the rewards. Like uncommon drops from any ship you sink elsewhere, you will find random items in raids that don't exist anywhere else that may alter the way you play. As you fail and acquire these items, you will become stronger, and the challenge presented by raid encounters will become easier to deal with, until eventually -- you will win.
While the drops from actual victory aren't set in stone at this time (aside from cosmetics), the drops you can find from participating in the raids have been shown in discord.gg/tasharen. Here are some examples for effects you may be able to find on crews or mortars:
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44983012/7e105fd821d3f5458403fc80ccee93f90bec3827.png"]
There is a lot of variety, and as of this update, all of this is fully moddable. You can set your own rules by defining what's possible via the text-based configuration files.
The raid mechanics testing is scheduled to start soon, but the actual update release is still undecided. You may have noticed that Q3 and Q4 this year are extremely packed with various game updates and releases. Unfortunately, Windward Horizon got no press coverage for its launch, and this update will be the game's last chance to get noticed -- and I'd rather not rush it or launch it when it will have an all-but-guaranteed chance of getting buried once more.
And now, for the patch notes leading up to (and including) this small update:
Added an XP bar to arfifact items that have stats that haven't yet been maxed out.
Added a variation of an offense crew that buffs haste, hull and damage.
Added support for cannons having variable firing rate. Adjusting this value increases the delay between shots, but also increases the damage of each shot.
Tweaked the observer's code a bit to ensure that it applies the correct buff/debuff even in duels.
Added support for combo buffs: buffs that improve skills. If a buff that improves some skill is present, the associated skill will be highlighted.
It's now possible to add effects that trigger on skill use. For example: using Volley applies a buff that improves the next Water Barrel.
Added support for instant proc effects that don't apply a buff/debuff. For example, water barrel cleansing negative effects on hit.
Added a Limited Immunity effect that prevents debuffs from being applied (ideally going on crews and triggered from Walk It Off).
Added a new type of a buff for raid items that records damage taken, and then automatically launches a mortar dealing a portion of it back to the enemy.
You can now bind multiple target-able skills (such as mortar and chain shot) to the same key and they won't conflict.
Kraken's swirl now does anywhere from 75% to 150% of ship's hull in damage over its duration, determined by the Defense specialization.
Tentacle attacks now have a visible 0.75 sec preparation animation, and the damage can be mitigated by physical resistance.
Tentacles now do 200% of the ship's hull as base damage, reduced down to 100% with 50 points in Defense, and further mitigated by physical resistance.
Items that have skills on them will no longer hide events on the item combine screen.
Added a chase camera option (right-click your ship with the mouse or hold (X) on controller with the virtual cursor over your ship).
Added seasonal pumpkins to halloween.
Made mortar hits trigger useful debris.
Hovering over a stat now shows a properly halved value over first mates on the Caravel and SotL.
Choosing the "quit to desktop" option now force-saves immediately before shutting down the application.
Item names are no longer saved with their localized version, and are now instead localized only when examined.
Province gossip entries such as trader transactions are no longer saved in their localized state, and will instead be localized on each client.
The "Edit Provinces" world option now also allows choosing the next workshop in NPC-established provinces.
Fixed the swirly red mortar attack bypassing resistance. This was not intended. Resistance skills and buffs (such as Brace for Impact) will now mitigate its damage properly.
Pirate kings should no longer spawn as temporary mobs (which was causing them to disappear when the player disconnected). This will likely also resolve the issue with them despawning.
Added /export <playerName> and /import <playerName> to export/import specific player data from one world to another.
Fixed the ship control key binding buttons showing "Any+Key" instead of just "Key".
- Main menu now has a button allowing you to easily restore player saves from a backup.
- Firework type effect with lights (like taunt) will now be slightly more performant.
- One shot protection was apparently being used incorrectly for quite a while. It will now correctly stop working as your hull gets low enough.
- The ship's gunner crews should now take advantage of non-standard cannon layouts much better (for example when all cannons are on one side, or when cannons have multiple crews servicing them), resulting in noticeably higher auto-attack DPS, particularly on ships like the SotL.
- Fixed towns not generating enough items even though their inventory size was increased.
- The tentacle sightings have started to attract attention.
- Day/night transition performance optimizations.
- Lighthouses will now have a slightly lower performance cost during the day.
- Fixed provincial town inventory size not being based on the size of the town.
- Added 12 more sail patterns.
- Various changes related to raid support, such as the ability to set the respawn timer and the new cultist faction.
- Fog now affects sight range by default, matching the night time sight range.
- It's now dangerous to use grog on tentacles.
- If faction rep ranks aren't specified explicitly, they will now have reduced rep requirements for solo challenge campaigns (1000 rep for rank 3 instead of 2500, for example).
- Ship (Ship Names.txt) and town names (Town Names.txt), as well as pirate phrase translator files (Pirate Phrases.txt) can now be included in mods.
- Fixed the missing resolution choices on macbook devices above M1 by adding them manually.
- The resolution size selection will now persist properly on macbooks.
- Province names will now generate with 2 syllables first before falling back to 3.
- Made the screen shake much more subtle and less jarring.
- Reverted the change that made explosion sounds too quiet.
- Fixed one dialog branch in the Alvana/Rowdy conversation that was blocking the ability to confront Alvana, thus always leading to a bad outcome.
- Fixed the night sight value not saving properly in world options.
- Fixed the erroneous tower/lighthouse placement bug.
- Added an optional camera screen shake effect when firing volleys, mortars, colliding with ships or receiving a lot of damage.
- Night-time performance optimizations.
- You can now edit player pref values directly via /set key = value. For example: /set resolution = "1280x800", or /set screenShakeStrength = 0.25
- Being near a light now shares unit sight with others, so using skills like Taunt counters night time's sight reduction and sight sharing penalty temporarily.
- Night sight range is now configurable in world options.
- Fixed the holding shift while placing towers not working as intended. It will now correctly prevent you from placing a tower if it's not max size for this region.
- If a resolution is requested via -screen-width and -screen-height command-line arguments, it will now always be shown as one of the possible choices on the list of available resolutions in options.
- Fixed the skybox star texture being sampled incorrectly.
- More Steam Deck compliance changes, chasing that elusive Steam Deck Verified mark.
- Some platforms appear to not have a list of possible resolutions when queried by Unity (for example M2 Macbook Airs). As a work-around, I now manually add the native resolution and its half size.
- Added optional night time to the game. It can be turned on via world options.
- Added new options to world options: day length. This is only visual, and is separate from the in-game day duration (which is always 6 minutes).
- Unified game's day length and visible day length to match one another. Before they did not.
- Various effects now provide night-time light sources, even if only temporarily (explosions, fireworks, grog, etc)
- Fixed the town UI's player inventory becoming invisible after swapping ships with inventory open.
- Ships won't share sight at night.
- Sight distance is halved at night.
- Added the ability to ask in town gossip for "story" to see if anyone in the world needs to speak with the player.
- If reflections are turned off, they will now still render the skybox to fix water reflections at night.
- Wind particles will no longer be affected by the wind past a certain distance from the player, saving a bit of performance.
- Added more anti-aliasing options, including temporal AA.
- If holding shift while building a tower, only allow the largest possible tower to be built.
2025-07-04.0
- Campaigns and all associated data are now saved on the Steam Cloud.
- Changed the hierarchy of where all of the data associated with campaigns is stored. It's now together, rather than being split between My Documents and AppData.
- Deleting the campaign will now delete all of the associated data: history, ship preview textures, fog of war cache, etc.
- Options are now also saved on the Steam Cloud. This finishes the save functionality conversion, making the game store its data entirely on the cloud and allowing for cloud-based gaming like GeForce Now.
- Traders created at world creation will now spawn with factions of the province they get spawned at.
- Item pickup range is now configurable (Items.txt)
- Added options to turn off reflections and shadows.
- Fixed incorrect scaling of UI on screen resolutions below 1080p, such as that on the Steam Deck.
- Fixed slower than expected virtual cursor movement on the Steam Deck.
- Fixed the virtual cursor being behind popup lists.
- Newer build players can now join instances hosted by older build players (but not vice versa).
- Unified the town UI and player inventory. It's now one window.
- All influence rewards from quests and other actions now affect not just the source province, but also neighbour provinces (to a lesser degree). How far and how much is set by the config file (infSpread value in Province.txt).
- Coups now only require 20% influence by default (coupInfluence value in Province.txt).
- Player tax cut is now 25% by default, up from 20% (playerTaxCut value in Province.txt).
- Fixed blurry fonts on the Steam Deck.
- Resolved another issue with /renaming characters online that was preventing players from rejoining.
- Fixed the tutorial popup on the main menu not reacting to the close button binding on the controller (B).
- Steam friends can no longer have controller input if they are not interactable.
- Skill target will now consume the controller button event, and won't let it fall through to activate other skills anymore.
2025-06-29.0
- You can now edit provinces created by NPCs as if they were your own if you're in single player (or server admin): rename them, manage workshops and modify terrain.
- Added support for localized conversations, and they won't mark the player file as modded.
- Loading the game with a previously set localization that's no longer present will now simply revert back to English.
- Fixed the rebound key notification not fading out.
- It should no longer be necessary to hold Left Shift to update mod settings/world config if you use the edit button instead of Continue on the main menu.
- Players in SotLs should now see greater enemy variety.
2025-06-27.0
- Added Steam Workshop / modding support.
- Made the /extract command extract actual game's files rather than the current data (which may include modded values).
- Added a new /newmod command that creates a blank mod without any data.
- The game now makes a backup of the player's save file before mods are enabled.
- Fixed the grog's projectile barrel not having the proper color the way explosive barrel projectile did.
- Choosing a different language now enables the legible text option by default.
- Language selection is now correctly persistent when re-launching the game.
- Added a way to replace entire config nodes, not just append to them.
- Increased the movement speed of the virutal cursor when the controller stick's direction is maxed out.
- The ship config file can now specify a default (starting) ship rather it being hard-coded to be the sloop.
- Changed how and when the world config gets reset/updated in order to make it work better with mods.
- Mods that include textures are now marked as having game assets, and mods only tie to player if they modify the relevant configuration or alter conversation files. Mods with assets or textures don't force the player to be marked as modded.
- Fixed player showing up under their old name in chat after choosing a new character on a public server.
- Fixed the mod manager not calculating the mod hashes correctly.
- The starting location is now more randomized, and is no longer in the middle of the world.
2025-06-19.0
- Added an /extract <mod name> command to extract all of the game's config, conversation and localization data into a brand-new mod. Use this to see how the game works. Change anything you want, or use it as a guide for your own mods. Guide coming soon (next week).
- Non-artifact items will now gain XP twice as quickly.
- Fixed the message of the day not showing up upon joining the server.
- Added a mod selection dialog window that shows up if you have mods available.
- Skills that apply buffs can now be used even if the buff is already active (which will refresh its duration and/or increase the number of stacks)
2025-06-17.0
- Added the option to replace the handwritten-looking fancy font with a clear, legible one.
- Added a way to set message-of-the-day with the /motd command available to server admins.
- Slightly improved SotL and Frigate's base turning rate.
- Added a more obvious way of editing existing campaign settings.
- Some more tweaks to /rename to make it work better.
- Your ship will now automatically anchor while fishing, diving, in a conversation or interacting with a town.
Current Release
Build 24342797
Uploaded Jul 24, 2026
System Requirements
How to Install
Windward Horizon.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
Needed when extracting (WinRAR / 7-Zip) — not a site login.
4976D599
c130e493b8bb8da351feac99748ed808dbdc1a3ab39fb40dcc3639fe801d1254
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Download Windward Horizon for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of Windward Horizon for free. Windward Horizon is a Action released by Tasharen Entertainment Inc..