Windborn: Journey to the South Review

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From Aery to Windborn

I’ve been following EpiXR Games’ ‘Little Bird’ games fairly closely, pretty much since the launch of the very first Aery – Little Bird Adventure back in 2019.

Since then, as the years have passed, things have evolved slightly. Aery has most definitely been the prime series, the main focus of EpiXR, but they’ve managed to wrangle out multiple other franchises, with Life of Fly working as an umbrella for the Murder Diaries, Paper Flight, Paper Plane Arena and Paper Dash games.

Basically, each and every one of those has you taking control of a flying protagonist, left to soar high into the sky, as relaxing overtones play out. I’ve not played every single one of those games, but I’ve certainly spent time with the vast majority of them; some are good, some are, frankly, not.

And now we have Windborn: Journey to the South. I don’t think I’m being too harsh to say that it’s the worst of the lot. It’s the one that has frustrated us the most, anyways.

Windborn Journey to the South Review 1 — Standard EpiXR Games stuff – but different

Taking Flight with a Flock

In Windborn: Journey to the South you take charge of a little bird (shock horror), flying high above a variety of landscapes (a beach setting, farmland, an icy-world and more), each signifying a different stage. Nothing to surprise there you may think, as that is what EpiXR have provided with every single one of those games mentioned previously. The difference then? The allowance for a change of name and – possibly – debut of a new series? Well, you aren’t the only little bird in this vast open sky. You have friends. A flock to tag on to.

Your goal in Windborn: Journey to the South is to follow your fellow avian friends through a series of rings, each opening up a pathway to the next. Keeping in touch with them will, ultimately, see you happen upon an end ring, a final goal, before you are left to flap your way to a new stage; 11 of which are present in total.

Frustrating Flaws: Visual Glitches and Gameplay Annoyances

Along the way, speed boost rings help aid your flight, and flying through these ensures you are able to just about keep up with your flock. Fall too far behind, take a wrong turn, and your mates will reach their nest, leaving you battling a short timer. If the clock should hit zero, Windborn: Journey to the South pushes you back to the start of the stage, left to try and prove yourself as part of this flock once again.

On the surface, that sounds fine. It takes the solo adventuring of Aery and provides some kind of companionship; a reason for being, a need to fly. In practice though, Windborn: Journey to the South pretty much fails to deliver.

In fact, we’ve walked away from our 90 minutes or so with Windborn: Journey to the South utterly annoyed by a complete lack of polish and care. Remember how we said this was the worst of the EpiXR Games titles we had played…

Windborn Journey to the South Review 3 — Just follow those rings. If possible…

Windborn’s Technical Issues and Level Design

11 stages make up the simple campaign that is present in Windborn: Journey to the South, although only 10 actually play out after each other. To access the final stage (the only one without an achievement attached, seemingly tagged onto the end without a care), you’ll need to head into the menus, the level select screen, and pick it out from a list.

Whether you wish to play Level 11 though will probably be dictated by how the previous ten stages work. If your experience is anything like ours, that will be a case of discovering more failure than success.

Why? Well, let me run through things for you, so you can get an angle on how Windborn: Journey to the South plays.

Level 1 is absolutely fine, and you’ll fly through it with ease, rising high, diving deep, barrel-rolling with all the freedom you need, all as you hit those rings, pathways evolving there on out. But then things take a turn.

Level 2 is awful, with more visual pop-in and hesitant graphical drawings than we ever care to see. We failed that stage multiple times, mostly as those all-important rings failed to materialise, leaving us lost high in the sky, unable to track our route or hit an end goal.

The same happened in Level 3, and 5 (with one ring popping in a whole jungle of trees that were near impassable), as well as levels 6, 7 and 10. The visual pop-in being about as bad as we could ever imagine.

Weirdly, levels 4, 8 and 9 were much less hassle, mostly as the landscapes and requirement for Windborn: Journey to the South to populate the world with background assets was less intensive.

Whatever, we’re making that about a 40% hit rate on whether the stages in Windborn: Journey to the South would be passable without any form of hassle. In our eyes, that is completely unacceptable. Consider that this took us 90 minutes or so to complete, and each stage is over in around five minutes, and you’ll fast see how the number of frustrations were all that padded out our Journey to the South.

Weirdnesses continue as Level 10 is completed and the game chucks you back to the main splash screen, all as the final achievement pings, 1000 Gamerscore in the bag. Perhaps EpiXR don’t want us to play Level 11? Who knows.

Windborn Journey to the South Review 2 — Where you off to?

Silence in the Skies

If you do manage to battle your way through, you’ll find that, aside from that visual pop-in, Windborn: Journey to the South is smooth enough. Your little bird is easy to control, and whilst we see zero reason to make the most of some barrel-rolls, and inverted controls should 100% be switched on by default, guiding this guy through the rings is simple enough. Until those rings vanish, reappear and then vanish again, of course.

There are also annoyances in any hit reactions and should you get too close to the rest of your flock, may well find yourself being pinged this way and that. At one point, as we approached a stage end, clock counting down, we mysteriously whacked into another bird, got thrown into the ceiling of the stage, left to glitch on the spot for a good few seconds. Another occasion saw us pushed back multiple rings previous, chances of completing the stage gone.

It’s only in those collisions with other birds where any sound effects come to the fore, and even then Windborn: Journey to the South relies on a simple old-school beep-boop to signify a collision. Aside from that, there is not a single sound to come from this little bird’s adventures; not even on the flap of the wings. Although, and we think we imagined this, we may have heard a flap once. That’s weird too, because we soon dived into the settings to switch off the ultra-repetitive, phone-hold soundtrack that was accompanying our flights. But to play in near utter silence just compounded the weirdness of the game.

A Disappointing Flight with Technical Turbulence

You’ll be glad when Windborn: Journey to the South is over, fully understanding why EpiXR have decided to separate this from the otherwise decent Aery series. With visual pop-in that is off the scale, whether you can complete a stage without hassle and annoyance very much feels like it is in the hands of the avian gods. And no amount of zen-like promise will ever overcome that.