Diluvian Winds

Diluvian Winds

released on May 25, 2023

Diluvian Winds

released on May 25, 2023

Diluvian Winds is a management game set in a small hamlet at the foot of a lighthouse. Welcome weary travelers and help each other to try and survive the unpredictable weather. Grow your hamlet on land, under the sea or among the clouds.


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Cosy settlement game with great art and animation plagued by balancing problems. There wasn't any point in the game where I didn't have more resources than I could hold which more or less removes any sense that you are managing anything. I didn't pay attention to any of the perks associated with food or weather that affect production as I was operating at a permanent surplus. Later on new habitats are introduced that either have no real function or have a new set of confusing mechanics you can totally ignore and still maintain a giant surplus.
The story gates the mechanics such that you are having new mechanics introduced right up until that last few minutes of the game which is fine but the theme of climate refugees surviving adversity is undermined by the near impossibility of anything approaching failure. The story feels bolted on after the fact since none of the individual story acts have more than a superficial relation to any of the others, which is most evident in the conclusion when the game suddenly stops without even a bit of dialogue acknowledging completion of the final mission. I played an exhibition build of this game two years before release and it seems like some of the criticism related to the game being too challenging. The solution seems to have been to keep adding extra mechanics that give the player yet more efficient ways to generate resources without correspondingly scaling the challenge. Its a shame this game is so shallow as the shear amount of stuff in it points to a huge amount of work, its unfortunate that few of the games elements are able to succesfully synthesise with one another.