• Price: $14.99 USD
• Developer/Publisher: BluSped Studio
• Release Date: April 10, 2025

A review code was kindly provided by BluSped Studio. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Note: This review is based on version 0.2.16 on Switch.

I love to see new farming sims make their way to Switch, so I was excited to see what Wind Story had to offer. The two-person team from BluSped Studio put their heads together and came up with some unique ideas that aren’t usually seen together in a farming game.

When you start up the game, you get to choose to play as a man or woman, and then choose from a limited selection of skin colors, hair styles and colors, and eye colors before moving on to clothing. I like that they gave us some variety by including pants, shorts, skirts, or dresses as options on top of the shirts and shoes.

Once you’re done customizing your character, you’ll arrive at Wind Chime Ranch by hot air balloon, which is pretty neat! The village elder greets you and gifts you with a pet; I’m not quite sure what they’re supposed to be (a lizard?), but you get to choose between options with different strengths (logging, mining, etc).

After that brief welcome, you’re kind of left on your own. I will say that the user interface is a little clunky, and there isn’t really much of a tutorial. I had to figure out what I could do by poking around the menus and a lot of trial and error. They do give you a checklist of tasks to complete in order to get you used to the mechanics little by little. Once you complete one checklist, they’ll give you another one.

However, the button mapping and controls overall weren’t what I was used to; for example, you have to press X to talk to people. X is also used for tools, so if you attempt to use one when someone is near you, the conversation takes priority and you talk to the person instead of using your tool.

Additionally, menus would occasionally pop up at inopportune times. When I’d go up to the counter in the general store and try to shop, the social menu would open on top of the store’s inventory menu with gift options and the opportunity to have the owner accompany you. (It is nice that they show you what gifts people like without guesswork, though.)

Eventually I got used to the controls, and there were a lot of nice quality of life features. If you open the menu and go to the crops tab, you can till the field and plant the seeds at the same time. I also really liked how they display the time remaining on each crop’s growth when you approach them. The only thing that was a bit odd was using the pickaxe to harvest crops. 🤔

There are a decent amount of crop seeds available from the start, including fruit trees. They also included the ability to take out a loan to purchase items you need, which I thought was great. I wish more farming games had that option.

When it comes to the livestock aspect of farming, so far I’ve only seen the standard cows, chickens, sheep, and also pigs. They don’t have you name them, which is probably a good thing because you can stab them with your knife to obtain their meat. (You don’t have to do this unless you want to complete the task checklists.)

Conveniently, you don’t have to purchase animal feed, and simply distribute food by entering their pens and selecting the feed option. The cows, chickens, and sheep then produce their milk, eggs, and wool for you. (It seems like the pig is only there for meat purposes?)

The livestock are oddly cute with their cartoonish art style. While you can let them wander around as free range animals and not have to feed them, it may not be the best option. Free range animals have a higher chance of being stolen…by pirates!

That’s right – pirates. Every once in a while pirates and/or boars will invade the farm and steal livestock or damage your crops. Wielding your trusty knife, you can kill the boars for their meat and kill the pirates to protect your livelihood. If you do manage to kill all of the pirates, you get to choose a reward.

Fighting can be somewhat awkward since there don’t seem to be any dodging mechanics. I had to attack and then back up to dodge a pirate’s attack before repeating the process until they died. (We also can’t run, which would have been nice to get to the invaders faster.) You’re the only one standing in the pirates’ way, so you’ll need to place some protections between the port and your farm.

Hilariously, you can plant a variety of mutant crops to stop the pirates in their tracks (the controls are different for planting seeds as crops versus mutants). At one point I’d planted so many of them that the pirates were defeated before I had to lift a finger.

You can also assign pets to attack. The village elder gave you one for free in the beginning, but you can capture additional pets by finding them wandering around and defeating them. They can then assist you in battle, gathering materials, and other farm tasks. Spend money to increase their abilities in those areas.

Besides the pirates and boars, once you unlock the second floor of the mine, a few strange creatures will attack you down there. It’s not too bad because there aren’t that many of them each time.

I did kind of wish that the mines provided a little more ore each day, but I suppose that would shorten the gameplay. You have to craft smelters to change the ore into iron, copper, etc. These minerals are all needed to build some important facilities.

First things first: you’re gonna want to build some windmills to generate the energy required to power those facilities – otherwise they’ll shut down. Despite frequent pirate and boar attacks, the island does get a lot of tourists. You can build an inn, a hospital, food facilities, and interestingly enough, amusement park rides!!!

I really loved the building components of the game. Getting to place a teacup ride and other attractions was so awesome. The facilities you build provide you with passive income and (seemingly) have no expenses after they’ve been built.

I was a little sad that we couldn’t go on the rides ourselves. Additionally, at first I couldn’t figure out how to heal my HP because eating different foods only restored minimal HP at a time. So I thought I’d have to go to my own hospital until I realized I just needed to eat a lot more. 😅

The good news is that if you are defeated, you wake up the next day with full HP and no money taken from you like in Rune Factory. 😂 I was also confused because it doesn’t seem like you use up any stamina? There’s a green bar on the left of the screen that could be it, so maybe it’s bugged – I’m not sure. Either way, not worrying about stamina usage sure is nice!

In between farming, fighting, and building, I checked in with my new neighbors. Unfortunately I don’t think they’re developed enough to be interesting. I spent some time giving characters gifts and increasing their hearts/friendship levels, but I’m not sure if there’s any romance or events to unlock.

You can invite people to come with you, but I’m not sure what the purpose of that is either. They also get in the way of things when you try to use tools due to the conversations and tool usage sharing the same button.

Additionally, while the English is understandable, the translation could use some work. (One example would be calling the watering can a kettle. I looked up watering can on a Chinese dictionary I use, and sure enough, 水壶 can apparently be translated as kettle, canteen, or watering can, with kettle as the first entry.)

I can’t really blame them too much for the translation issues because English can be quite challenging, dictionaries and translation can be complicated, and they are a two person team. Hopefully they can make the translation more natural at some point, though.

Everything ran pretty smoothly for me for the most part, with the exception of 2 crashes. I think that Wind Story has a lot of fun, neat ideas and combinations of genres. I’d like to see more livestock, pet options, and facilities (and perhaps even house decor), but I think the bare bones of the game do show some promise. It’s got charming visuals and a relaxing soundtrack.

This is out on Steam in Early Access right now, although they say that the current version “already includes a complete game mode.” They included additional islands, NPC scenes, “plot twists,” holidays, animals, craftable items, and more in their list of features they plan on adding. I hope they succeed with Wind Story; while it’s somewhat simple at the moment, I’m interested in seeing more from them.