Poor Locke

Executive Summary

Windmills is a combat-focused metroidvania set in a fantasy world. The player sees the story through the eyes of the narrator who is the playable character. The narrator is often misremembering or confusing his stories, leading to perilous or hilarious circumstances. As the player explores the world, they upgrade their moveset and unlock power-ups that help them both in exploration and in combat.

High Concept – Core Gameplay – Genre

Windmills is a souls-like metroidvania with challenging combat and platforming. The narration aspect also plays a great role in how the player will experience the game.

You will have to fight dangerous monsters and the only thing you can rely on are your abilities. The combat system is based on suppressing, deflecting, dodging and parrying. As you progress through the story, more mechanics are unlocked, giving you more options for combat and exploration.

A big part of the mechanics are the reversals. Deflecting at the right time or parrying projectile spells, gives the player extraordinary abilities for a small amount of time. For example you can parry a lightning spell and charge your next attack with the element of lightning.

Master your skills and slay the monsters that ravage the kingdom. Challenge powerful and ruthless bosses that will put your abilities to the test. The story unfolds in a unique way, based on the way you progress through the game. Depending on your actions, areas and enemies can change because the narrator will remember things differently, making each narrative unique.

The Story

The story has already taken place many years before its current narration. It is the player’s job to play the role of the last Crimson Cape as he tells his story.

The Crimson Capes were a legendary group of witch hunters that defended the kingdom against the tyrannical wizards that wanted to conquer it. After the war ended however, the king decided that the Capes were too big a threat to the kingdom and put a bounty on them.

Some of the Crimson Capes managed to get away from the kingdom and made their home in a secluded forest. The hero of the story, the Last of the Capes, was trained by his father to be a witch hunter like him. After his father went missing, the child was left on his own, until several years passed and strange events drew him out of his home.

However all of this happened many years ago. And now the hero is narrating his story the way he remembers it. Some events may seem far – fetched or outright unbelievable, but the purpose of a story is not to be true, but to be worth telling.

Mechanics – Narration

While the story remains mainly the same, each playthrough can evolve in different ways, depending on the player’s actions. With its unique narration mechanic, Windmills allows the player to experience events in a unique way.

For example the player may visit a place where the hero remembers that it was raining, changing the weather of the area, or the player faces an enemy somewhere out of the ordinary and the hero corrects his story to fit that enemy in that particular environment. This dynamic narration is capable of leading the player to hilarious and dangerous situations alike.

The abilities that the player discovers are mostly earned from NPCs and exploration. Completing NPC questlines and straying from the main path can reward the player with game – changing abilities and mechanics. There are the occasional “mandatory” abilities that you will have to unlock in order to progress, but there are many optional systems and abilities that are waiting for the player to explore. For example there is no obvious reward for killing enemies, but should the player decide to explore and complete certain quests, they will be rewarded with a whole new experience system that is not obvious from the start.

Media – Demo – Developer