Everwind is a turn-based tactical military RPG. Read on to learn everything we know, our first impressions of its early access build, and if it's worth your money.
Everything We Know About Everwind
Everwind Story
Embark on an adventure as you take to the skies on a flying island airship! Build a base, gather resources, craft various items, and loot different areas as you uncover the mysteries of the world at high altitude.
Everwind Gameplay
Everwind is a cooperative survival sandbox that is a combination of RPG progression and dungeon crawling, with base building and island exploration in a first-person perspective. Gather resources to craft items to upgrade your gear and improve your airship in more ways than one.
Explore different biomes and loot dungeons for rarer materials and items to quicken your progress. Fight various monsters to level up your character by investing in different skill trees to create the perfect build.
Everwind Release Date
Everwind will be released on Steam Early Access on March 18, 2026. The game’s developers are yet to confirm the game’s full release, but we’ll be sure to update this article once that information is available. Stay tuned!
| Digital Storefronts | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
||||||||
| Wishlist Only |
Everwind Review [Early Access]
The Shaky First Step to A Very Long Journey
Let’s face it, every blocky survival sandbox RPG will eventually purposefully pay homage to, get inspired by, or inevitably be compared to Minecraft. It happens so often that not many consider it a downside anymore; it’s just a simple fact of the genre. Hytale was a very excellent recent example. With how common this phenomenon is, it’s easy to say that copying Minecraft’s success is as simple as taking its formula and injecting a little razzle-dazzle in there.
Everwind, and by extension, Hytale, prove that it’s not as easy as it looks, and that even the most detailed of experiences made to differ from Minecraft without straying too far from it can end in the doldrums of design space. In the case of Everwind, I mean that in the most literal sense, as it's only taken one shaky step from demo to EA, and has more to take from EA to release.
Airships, Skeletons, and Capybaras—Oh My!
Let’s begin this review by talking about Everwind’s narrative. Simply put, there is none. This is a sandbox survival RPG after all, so the story is yours to tell, be that a spanning epic sailing across the skies, or a pathetic excursion that ended 5 feet past the starting area.
There isn’t much to comment on here, and that’s by design. Sandbox thrives on player input, so putting down a set story here would’ve definitely been the wrong move, though it’s hard to give something credit for benefitting from doing nothing.
On the topic of settings now, Everwind doesn’t really do much to differentiate itself from the standard fare of sandbox RPGs, particularly of the Minecraft-like kind. The game features a vaguely Medieval, vaguely fantasy aesthetic and environment, with some deeply adorable wildlife thrown in if you have the right edition. Capybaras have a special place in my heart, but they cannot save this game from looking too familiar for comfort.
To be clear, it doesn’t look like Minecraft. No, it’s much too detailed for that, which I can appreciate. But you know what other game is more detailed than Minecraft, but doesn’t have the glaring issues I’m about to go over shortly? Hytale. It’s hard not to compare when one clearly outmatches the other in every aspect except the very specific ones.
Even the enemy stock isn’t much different, and it’s mostly just been various flavors of skeletal adversaries so far, if you don’t count peaceful wildlife that only aggro when you smack them with an axe. There really isn’t anything interesting about the game for the first five minutes or so because it’s just the motions of a sandbox RPG post-Minecraft era.
Of course, that all changes after you build your first airship.
Sailing the Eight Winds, Jules Verne Style
Once you get past the requisite tutorial tower that teaches you how to cook, fight, craft, and place blocks, Everwind takes a sharp steampunk turn as you discover and build your very own airship.
It’s actually quite jarring going from banging rocks together to creating complicated airship parts using…well…the rocks and sticks you were banging together. You begin by salvaging parts from wrecked airships around you, and then it slowly comes together as you find everything you need to start sailing the skies.
This is Everwind’s most unique feature that I’ve not seen in any Minecraft game that isn’t modded all to heck. Free-floating structures controlled by players are darn-near engineering marvels in base Minecraft, so seeing an Around the World in Eighty Days-looking blimp made out of plant fiber and basic wooden planks is basically a dream for a long-time player like myself.
The best part about the airships is their modularity and upgrade mechanics, which operate on a base-building-area system that 3D sandbox survival games like Enshrouded use. You basically have the complete freedom of a master builder to create what airship you want, provided that it fits within the Airship Core’s limited range around itself. This, along with the airship’s base speed and altitude limit, is upgradeable by collecting materials and submitting them to the Core, which itself can be accomplished by hopping from island to island.
I, for one, like roleplaying the character of an old-timey blimp captain exploring the new world because the discovery of new lands always had an appeal to a younger me. Sadly, this is a dream fulfilled only aesthetically, as the reality of air travel times makes most of the gameplay a rather boring affair of sitting and standing as you slowly approach the next island.
Realistic Air Travel Times Wasn’t the Way to Go
How long do you reckon it takes to go from place to place in Everwind? Since the game’s core loop revolves around your airship and its many adventures across various islands, it only makes sense that getting around shouldn’t take very long, right? Wrong.
Everwind’s biggest flaw is tightly entwined with its unique feature: air travel, specifically air travel time, and how to improve it. See, it takes, on average, 5-10 minutes to get from one major island to another in Everwind. That might not sound like a long time at all, but if you have to do it every 15-20 minutes, which is usually how long it takes to clear the smaller islands, you’re going to feel those minutes pile up, and before you know it, you’ve been playing for an hour with nothing to show for it.
This speed, or lack thereof, is linked to the Airship Core, which determines your base speed along with your build space and maximum altitude. Those latter two are generous and helpful enough as they are, since build space really isn’t indicative of your ship's effectiveness of travel, and the up and down vectors aren’t as important as the X and Y ones. Base speed, though, was approached incorrectly.
What really peeves me about Everwind is that your airship isn’t upgraded by adding crafted parts like engines, balloons, pipes, and power sources. No, your base speed can only be improved by paying the Core what it asks for, and it asks for a lot. This system takes the fun out of airship design, making the building space upgrades little more than extra room for your chosen airship aesthetic, plus a bit of extra leeway for your farms.
Wouldn’t it be cooler if the game let you go faster by making more engines? Perhaps more agile if bigger and better balloons were attached? What about mooring cables to keep your balloon stable while docked? It really feels like Everwind wants you to make the airship concept your mobile base of operations by giving you the pieces to do so; it just doesn’t know how to use those pieces any better than you do, and ended up with this boring set of ideas.
I can see the inspiration, but if building mobile aerial bases was what you’re here for, you’d be better off playing Forever Skies for that.
Basic Mining, Crafting, Cooking, and Combat
Apart from the airship mechanics of the game’s core, Everwind also has exactly what you’d expect from a 3D sandbox survival game. It has simplified crafting the same way Hytale does, though to a notably lesser extent, as well as a different recipe unlock system from most other games of its kind, in that you need to find the recipes first.
Not always, of course, as receiving a new material gives you recipes that use it, as is usual for the genre. For the more advanced ones, though, you gotta learn them by finding blueprints as loot around the world. This at least encourages the game’s exploration aspect, so I don’t have too much of a problem with it if the devs promise to tweak the drop rates for these blueprints. As it is now, I’d rather live on basic brick airships than have to sail 5+ islands at a snail’s pace for basic railings.
Mining, farming, and cooking are also basic 3D RPG systems that Everwind incorporates into its core, though, as with crafting, they’re shells of the genre standards. Rocky surfaces and ore veins are much rarer in this game, owing to its mostly aquatic and aerial biomes, so ore is notably much rarer, even at the lower tiers like copper. This would be fine, but the frequency of recipes that use ore hasn’t changed, so they’re now just harder to get to.
Farming is weirdly inaccessible and ill-advised since you’re encouraged to be nomadic, and your airship’s real estate is limited by your upgrade tier and preference of style over substance. Cooking is also almost completely pointless since raw foods are overtuned to the point that you can heal to full with just a handful of blueberries, no cooking required.
Lastly, there’s combat, which I think has more thought put into it than the other core mechanics. It’s much more detailed than Minecraft’s but is less detailed than Hyatale’s. There aren’t fancy super moves, just basic and heavy attacks, and the standard array of weaponry like swords, bows, daggers, and shields.
What it does have are more weapon recipes and a stamina + stun system from single-player action RPGs like God of War, wherein blocking strikes costs stamina, and running out of stamina stuns a combatant for a few seconds. This gives the armor more use than just damage reduction, as it increases your block stamina as well.
Too bad the enemy variety is abysmal at best, with it all just being skeletons wielding various weapons, or the odd wild boar you accidentally attack. Not very engaging from that front, but I believe that’s a matter of adding new content rather than overhauling what exists.
Setting Itself Apart from Equipment-based Progression
Everwind also has a skill tree, which is not at all like the equipment-based progression other survival sandbox RPGs use. Operating on an EXP system, Everwind grants players skill points whenever they level up, which they can use to select and level up specific perks across skill trees sorted by application of the perks, such as combat, building, and processing materials.
This would be a great new feature for this game if it were implemented competently, or at the very least clearly. The tooltips for some perks don’t really explain what they give you, while others are basic stat boosts or cost reductions. The best example I have for this is the Parry perk from the Warrior tree.
It says I can parry enemy attacks, but it doesn’t explain when, how, or to what effect. Is it by blocking at the right time? Is it by attacking as they do? Do I negate attacks by parrying or just reduce damage? I couldn’t tell you if I tried.
The rest of the perks aren’t very inspired either, like lower stamina costs for sprinting, appraising the cost of materials (to what end remains a mystery), and hitting a bit harder. Yet another mechanic made to sound good on paper, but executed to dilute the experience instead.
This is the First Step, Now For the Other 999
Everwind is, in a way, the first step in many directions, with a very long journey ahead of it. It has unique features that set it apart, but it did not execute them in ways that help it stand out in a good way.
The airship mechanic, in particular, though novel and well-enough executed on paper, was not given the proper wings to fly. Progression is too slow and attached to the wrong mechanic, and its most basic use—that is, to fly from one place to another– is the least entertaining aspect of the entire game.
The skill trees give the game’s RPG aspect some flavor, but the game failed to support it with clear perk descriptions or nuanced perks that transform the gameplay rather than just making the numbers go up. I see this game’s potential, and it’s at the end of a long road to full release. Until then, this shaky first step will have to do.
Game8 Reviews
You may also like...
Everwind Product Information
 |
|
| Title | EVERWIND |
|---|---|
| Release Date | March 18, 2026 (Early Access) |
| Developer | Enjoy Studio S.A. |
| Publisher | Bohemia Interactive |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Survival, RPG, Simulation |
| Number of Players | 1-4 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Everwind Official Website |
