A full review of the atmospheric PSVR exclusive Winds & Leaves from Trebuchet.
Winds & Leaves from developer Trebuchet is advertised as a flora builder, but what exactly does that mean and why should you be interested?
First of all, thanks to the developer for providing me with a review key for this game but as always the opinions here are my own.
When I first heard of this game I was very curious. The name gives very little away, and the term flora builder gives the impression that it’s some kind of gardening simulator. However, this is hugely underselling what is actually quite a profound and highly original experience.
In Winds and Leaves you’re dropped into the middle of a barren landscape and more or less left to your own devices to find out what’s going on via a series of simplistic paintings discovered on rocks and canvases and through interactions with the environment and various ancient structures you find along the way.
The core mechanic is that you can’t survive for very long on the barren land, but you have at your disposal a selection of seeds in the form of fruit or berries, which when planted can grow into trees which bring the area directly surrounding them to life and make it more liveable. As you plant more and more trees you gradually bring more colour and fauna back into the world. The catch is that different parts of the world require specific seeds to be planted for them to thrive otherwise they just waste away. Throughout the game this mechanic is expanded upon by introducing certain other requirements, for example having to plant multiple trees in close proximity so they can support each other, or mixing seeds to create new seed types. As trees grow they also produce more seed-bearing fruits and berries, so these can be harvested to keep your stock levels up. One limitation here is that your seed pouch can only hold six different types of seed at once, so occasionally you will find yourself back-tracking to find the required type of seed if you’re not already carrying it, though thankfully this didn’t happen too often.
Now you might think it would be a bit tedious to have to wait for the trees you’ve planted to grow, and you’d be right, it would be. Luckily the game provides you with another tool in the form of a time accelerator. If you grab the device, which resembles a wind-powered paint roller, and hold it out in front of you, you can rotate it to speed up the passage of time. This causes the world around you to fast forward, where the clouds speed past in the sky and the trees grow rapidly before your eyes, much like those time-lapse videos we’re all familiar with from nature documentaries. This all looks really incredible to behold and it’s great just watching the trees weave and wind their way up in front of you as the days and nights pass by in a manner of seconds. I was constantly tempted to turn the device the other way to try and rewind time but unfortunately it’s only a one way trip forwards.
Navigation around the world is quite unusual as instead of just walking around you’re permanently on a pair of height-adjustable stilts. By alternating your arms back and forwards in a power-walking motion you can move around quite easily, although it takes a bit of getting used to at first and can be quite a work out for the arms in long sessions.
You can also climb trees, once they’re big enough, by reaching out and grabbing them then pulling yourself in whichever direction you want to climb. The speed of movement when climbing isn’t mapped one to one with your hands, so you move a lot faster than you expect, and you don’t actually have to have your hands in contact with the tree trunk or branches at all. Within the boundaries of each tree you can effectively grasp on to thin air to manoeuvre yourself around. This is all a bit disconcerting at first and creates a bit of a disconnect with the environment. However after getting used to it I can understand why it was done that way, to make it easy to quickly traverse the trees and not have to worry about exact placement of your hands all the time, and with the amount of climbing you’ll be doing this is probably just as well.
Later on in the game you also learn some new abilities that allow you to traverse the environment even faster but I won’t go into too much detail there so as not to spoil the surprise. These abilities go a long way to prevent any required back-tracking from becoming too tedious, so they were much appreciated towards the end.
Another tool you’re provided with is a primitive kind of battery, which will store a certain amount of protective energy allowing you to travel for a small amount of time on the barren land or through the sea of smog that separates the various islands in the game. Once this battery is drained you’ll need to top it up again at one of the recharge points dotted throughout the world before heading into danger again. Travel too far or spend too long in the barren lands and your walking will slow to a crawl and, quite terrifyingly, roots will gradually grow over your face until you’re eventually consumed by a blinding light and sent back to a recent checkpoint.
As you make your way around the islands bringing them back to life you’ll also activate various windmill-like structures and the interconnectedness and overall objective soon starts to reveal itself.
One thing I liked about Winds and Leaves was that it’s very much about the joy of discovery. It doesn’t spell out exactly what’s going on at any point, or indeed what you have to do. Most of the guidance or hints are purely visual, with only occasional text-based instructions. Conversely this did result in me getting stuck on a couple of occasions where I wasn’t sure what to do next, and there’s no overall map to navigate by, but if you look closely at your surroundings you’ll find that the game has some subtle hints available at all times suggesting where you need to go next, and what you’ve still got left to do.
Visually the game is really lovely to look at, with a simple but colourful pastel world unfolding around you, and the trees are really the star of the show as they weave their way into existence with hundreds of individual leaves blowing in the wind. Turning around to see an entire forest of trees springing up in your trail is really quite something. There’s a distinct lack of life beyond the fauna and structures however, with no other characters or creatures in the game beyond yourself it’s just you and the environment. The graphics aren’t the sharpest I’ve seen for PSVR with a slight blur and some jaggies, but the draw distance is quite impressive and a post-launch update has smoothed out some of the jagged edges. I never tired of watching the time-shift mechanic in action, with the accelerated day/night cycle, clouds flying rapidly overhead, and even an aurora borealis style display of lights shimmering in the sky.
This is all backed up by great audio design and a beautiful ambient soundtrack which rises and falls dynamically in line with your actions. The sound of the wind and the falling rain, the creaking trees and the chirps of unseen insects all adds up to immerse you in the world and is definitely best experienced with headphones.
Various comfort options are provided, with blinkers/vignettes and so on. There’s no teleportation option, with the original control scheme offering only smooth locomotion with various click-turning schemes, but a recent update has added an option for smooth turning with a choice of speeds, and the ability to set turning angles for the click-turning method. The game requires Move controllers and doesn’t support any other control devices. The game is designed for seated-play and handily allows you to reposition your various tools on-screen to make them as accessible as possible within the confines of your play area.
Overall I really enjoyed my time with Winds & Leaves and found it to be quite a unique and relaxing experience with a subtle underlying message about taking care of the environment. It won’t be for everyone as it does rely on a certain amount of repetition and it’s all about the atmosphere rather than any kind of fast-paced action. The core gameplay mechanic of planting trees to progress further and explore the world is really all there is to it. The game does what it can to keep things fresh by introducing new gameplay elements and abilities along the way but towards the end the planting did start to feel like a bit of a grind. I spent about 8-9 hours completing the game, although as mentioned I did become stuck for a while on a couple of occasions, so I’d estimate the game is more like 7 hours for an average playthrough which is probably just about right for it to not outstay its welcome. If you think it sounds like the type of game you could enjoy and you’re happy to just immerse yourself in another world discovering things for yourself then I’d highly recommend checking it out as there’s nothing else quite like it.
