'Please, let us cook more': Windrose devs aren't ready to give players a release date yet

5 hours ago 6

A shirtless, tattooed pirate pointing a pistol

Pirate survival game Windrose is having a moment. It's one of the most popular demos at Steam Next Fest, it's got so many concurrent players it shows up on Steam's most-played charts, and earlier this week it cannonballed to over 1 million wishlists. Plus, its combination of survival systems, open world pirate ship battles, and uplifting sea shanties makes for a heck of a lot of fun.

So when developer Windrose Crew announced a new trailer would be released today, a lot of players (including me) assumed a release date, or at least a release window, would come with it. The trailer shown today for IGN Fan Fest, while boisterous as always, doesn't give any indication of when the game will be out, however.

Windrose - Official Trailer | IGN Fan Fest 2026 - YouTube

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"Guys, I know many of you hoped for the release date reveal today, and we understand your passion—trust me, we are so eager to lock in the date and announce it to you as well," the development team posted in the game's official Discord about an hour after the new trailer appeared. "But now is not the time to do it."

Noting that the full version of the game "could be several times bigger in content and scale than the demo" in terms of numbers of islands, points of interest, ships, and enemies, Windrose Crew said it wants to polish the game further and incorporate some player feedback before taking the step of announcing a release date.

"The process of building the game for you is a huge inspiration, your attention to Windrose is very humbling, but please, let us cook more," the team said on Discord. "When we feel confident enough, we will announce the release date. I promise, we are not holding this information to tease your anticipation. We are holding it because we want to lock this in firmly and ship the game on time and in [the] best condition possible."

As Tom Petty, who himself would have made a fine pirate, once said: "Waiting is the hardest part." But much better to hold back a release date than promise one that can't be met. I'm sure that boisterous crew of over 1 million wishlist pirates will agree.

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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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