- Minor patch notes: July 8th, 2026 - 8 July 2026
- Added a work-around for "ghost players" where the server list would show the number of players to be higher than the actual number of connected clients. - Changed the server address to remove old servers and force server admins to update their executable. - Fixed a bug preventing summoned help ships from benefiting from Improved Useful Debris and other effects that AI normally can't benefit from. - Fixed the ally boss of a 4-skull mission being spawned with the wrong name for when an explicit name was specified (ex: story quest mission).
- Minor tweaks - 21 April 2026
Just some small changes based on feedback. Fixed an issue with NPCs and players being unable to take damage properly when there was an odd interaction with Death Ward. Cloth animation distance is now based on the distance to the ship, not the sail itself, and setting it to '1' means only animate your own ship's cloth. Added /resetstories command to reset all stories to allow you to play through them again with a different set of choices. This is in addition to romance-specific ones like /resetAlvana, /resetSonya, /resetBella and /resetLani that existed before.
- Minor Patch Notes (March 28) - 28 March 2026
- Added /getServer and /setServer commands for admins. - Made flares drop outside of Kraken raids (but only at night). - Made text more crisp at scaled-up resolutions (above 1440p). - World population needed to spawn a trader is now a server-configurable value in addition to being a game config setting so admins can easily tweak it at run-time. - Fixed inability to sell raid items via drag & drop. - Cleansing Blast now triggers the effects of the source unit's Water Barrel on all affected friendly units.
- Feb 13 patch notes - 13 February 2026
- Rampage projectiles are no longer counter-able if the player has Giant Net, matching targeted mortar projectiles. - It's now possible to specify a flag on buffs that indicates that they can't be refreshed with Revitalize. Certain buffs, like the dock and respawn buff have it by default. - Creating a brand new campaign with code-altering mods active no longer requires holding Shift. - Item combining now checks for the item's presence in the player's inventory before creating the result. - Added a button to the main menu options that lets you clear all Steam Cloud cache (temporary files like fog of war and preview textures). - Resetting Bella's romance will no longer prevent Marcei from talking to you if you've already unlocked Aequitas. - Marcei will no longer give you the dialog option to join Valiant once he moves on. - Minor dialog tweaks. - Disconnecting mid-raid should no longer p…
- Raid Update: Now Available - 24 January 2026
Ahoy, Captains!As promised, the (admittedly long overdue) raid update is now here and to celebrate the game will be 30% off for a limited time!Jump back in to continue the game's story, unlock a new faction, gather your friends and test your skills with the new high-challenge raid missions where you will be able to earn new powerful artifacts that can greatly change your play style and even unlock entirely new ones!While this content is meant to be experienced in co-op together with your friends (and is indeed scaled with this in mind), it can be beaten solo for those of you that prefer the additional challenge -- just don't expect to be able to achieve this impressive feat until you've gathered enough raid items to make it possible.Speaking of raid items, once the night time falls, defeated enemies will have a chance to drop unique loot that you may find incredibly useful for surviving…
- Raid Testing - 20 December 2025
Ahoy, captains!The raid update is now in its final testing phases, and I wanted to give everyone the opportunity to try it out early (as in, now) and offer their feedback prior to the update's full launch which is currently scheduled for January 2026.To start a raid test, a handy /raid command has been added. It's usable while outside any province's sphere of influence, but only ships with a combat score of 2500 or higher will be able to start one. Challenge-wise, it's a tier above 4-skull, and is designed for 3+ players, ideally with all roles being covered (tank, healer, dps).As you sink enemies in raids, you will be awarded unique raid-only loot that may drastically change how you use your skills, and may open up new pathways for combo and chained abilities. Ever wished that your Water Barrel could cleanse debuffs? How about firing powerful Volleys from both sides of the ship at once…
- Progress on the raid update - 18 November 2025
I've been posting some tidbits on discord about the coming raid update, including what kinds of items to expect from the coming top tier challenges, but I know a lot of you aren't in there so I figured I'd share some here as well! In short, raids are being designed for groups: with specific roles that must be filled in order for the raid to succeed (tank, healer, DPS). There are certain mechanics in the raid that have to be countered, or players will start dying. With the inherently long respawn timer, if everyone is dead, the raid fails and has to be started over. I don't expect anyone to complete the raids successfully on their first try, but failing is a part of the design: you don't need to win to start getting the rewards. Like uncommon drops from any ship you sink elsewhere, you will find random items in raids that don't exist anywhere else that may alter the way you play. As you…
- Patch notes: August 21st - 21 August 2025
- You can now place basic decorations in your own provinces (various rocks for now). It's a new skill on your bar visible in your own regions. Right-click it/hold (X) on the controller for more options, such as the drop-down list of possible rocks. You can fine-tune your rock placement/options by right-clicking them (or (X) on controller). This is purely cosmetic, so don't be surprised if your town buildings start growing into rocks. - Main menu now has a button allowing you to easily restore player saves from a backup. - Firework type effect with lights (like taunt) will now be slightly more performant. - One shot protection was apparently being used incorrectly for quite a while. It will now correctly stop working as your hull gets low enough. - The ship's gunner crews should now take advantage of non-standard cannon layouts much better (for example when all cannons are on one side, o…
- August 15th Patch Notes - 15 August 2025
- Created an optimized way of the water shader rendering up to 64 lights with one draw call, so explosions will no longer drastically affect performance. - Day/night transition performance optimizations. - Lighthouses will now have a slightly lower performance cost during the day. - Fixed provincial town inventory size not being based on the size of the town. - Added 12 more sail patterns. - Various changes related to raid support, such as the ability to set the respawn timer and the new cultist faction. - Fog now affects sight range by default, matching the night time sight range. - It's now dangerous to use grog on tentacles. - If faction rep ranks aren't specified explicitly, they will now have reduced rep requirements for solo challenge campaigns (1000 rep for rank 3 instead of 2500, for example). - Ship (Ship Names.txt) and town names (Town Names.txt), as well as pirate phrase tran…
- August 5th Patch: Minor fixes - 5 August 2025
- Player ship will no longer save until after it successfully spawns. So if some odd issue occurs where player fails to spawn, game will no longer save at all. - Province names will now generate with 2 syllables first before falling back to 3. - Made the screen shake much more subtle and less jarring. - Reverted the change that made explosion sounds too quiet. - Fixed one dialog branch in the Alvana/Rowdy conversation that was blocking the ability to confront Alvana, thus always leading to a bad outcome. - Fixed the night sight value not saving properly in world options. - Fixed the erroneous tower/lighthouse placement bug.
- Patch notes: Raid pre-patch - 1 August 2025
- You can now encounter signs of the upcoming raid boss out in the world. I recommend caution. - Added an optional camera screen shake effect when firing volleys, mortars, colliding with ships or receiving a lot of damage. - Night-time performance optimizations. - You can now edit player pref values directly via /set key = value. For example: /set resolution = "1280x800", or /set screenShakeStrength = 0.25 - Being near a light now shares unit sight with others, so using skills like Taunt counters night time's sight reduction and sight sharing penalty temporarily. - Night sight range is now configurable in world options. - Fixed the holding shift while placing towers not working as intended. It will now correctly prevent you from placing a tower if it's not max size for this region. - If a resolution is requested via -screen-width and -screen-height command-line arguments, it will now al…
- Captain's Log: Nightfall Arrives, Visual Upgrades, and More - 31 July 2025
July brought a quieter patch cycle as I focused on improving core systems and prepping for major upcoming content, but it wasn’t without some big updates.The biggest addition this month was the introduction of optional nighttime, along with new world visual settings, better performance with reflections disabled by default, and improved UI and visibility systems. I've also added more anti-aliasing options, fixed lingering issues with ship swapping and continued improving the world map's dynamic features.Here’s what that shipped in July:Patch Notes Added an optional night time to the game. It can be turned on via world options.Added new options to world options: day length. This is only visual, and is separate from the in-game day duration (which is always 6 minutes).Unified game's day length and visible day length to match one another. Before they did not.Various effects now provide nigh…
- Optional Night Time - Patch Notes - 18 July 2025
2025-07-14.0 - Added optional night time to the game. It can be turned on via world options. - Added new options to world options: day length. This is only visual, and is separate from the in-game day duration (which is always 6 minutes). - Unified game's day length and visible day length to match one another. Before they did not. - Various effects now provide night-time light sources, even if only temporarily (explosions, fireworks, grog, etc) - Fixed the town UI's player inventory becoming invisible after swapping ships with inventory open. - Ships won't share sight at night. - Sight distance is halved at night. - Added the ability to ask in town gossip for "story" to see if anyone in the world needs to speak with the player. - If reflections are turned off, they will now still render the skybox to fix water reflections at night. - Wind particles will no longer be affected by the wind…
- Patch notes: Performance, Cross-play, Steam Deck improvements - 4 July 2025
2025-07-04.0 - Campaigns and all associated data are now saved on the Steam Cloud. - Changed the hierarchy of where all of the data associated with campaigns is stored. It's now together, rather than being split between My Documents and AppData. - Deleting the campaign will now delete all of the associated data: history, ship preview textures, fog of war cache, etc. - Options are now also saved on the Steam Cloud. This finishes the save functionality conversion, making the game store its data entirely on the cloud and allowing for cloud-based gaming like GeForce Now. - Traders created at world creation will now spawn with factions of the province they get spawned at. - Item pickup range is now configurable (Items.txt) - Added options to turn off reflections and shadows. - Fixed incorrect scaling of UI on screen resolutions below 1080p, such as that on the Steam Deck. - Fixed slower than…
- Windward Horizon - June Recap - 1 July 2025
June’s been a huge month for Windward Horizon. Since launch, we’ve been updating the game almost daily, introduced modding tools, patched major bugs, added Steam Workshop support, and are laying the groundwork for the upcoming raid content.Here’s everything we rolled out this month:Steam Summer Sale - 10% OffPerfect time to join the crew or gift a copy to a friendSteam Workshop Support - Now LiveYou can now browse, install, and share your mods directly through the Workshop. From skins, gameplay tweaks to full-blown community localizations. Some community members have already started working on some interesting projects, and I'm eager to see how they turn out!New commands like /extract, /newmod, and UI support for mod selection have also been added to make creating and managing mods easierFull Modding Guide Browse Workshop Mods here: Patch Notes2025-06-27.0Added Steam Workshop / modding…
- Patch notes: Steam Workshop / modding support and more - 27 June 2025
2025-06-27.0 - Added Steam Workshop / modding support. - Made the /extract command extract actual game's files rather than the current data (which may include modded values). - Added a new /newmod command that creates a blank mod without any data. - The game now makes a backup of the player's save file before mods are enabled. - Fixed the grog's projectile barrel not having the proper color the way explosive barrel projectile did. - Choosing a different language now enables the legible text option by default. - Language selection is now correctly persistent when re-launching the game. - Added a way to replace entire config nodes, not just append to them. - Increased the movement speed of the virutal cursor when the controller stick's direction is maxed out. - The ship config file can now specify a default (starting) ship rather it being hard-coded to be the sloop. - Changed how and when…
- Cannonball into Summer with us! - 26 June 2025
🌴 Summer Sale Ahoy! Windward Horizon 10% Off Until July 10Windward Horizon is part of the Steam Summer Sale!From now through July 10, the game is available at 10% off. If you’ve been waiting to jump in or want to bring a friend aboard, now’s the time to set sail.⛵ Get it here 🎵 Original Soundtrack Now AvailableThe Windward Horizon Original Soundtrack is now live on Steam! Over an hour of music from the game, ranging from calm exploration tracks to high-tension naval battles. Composed by Finn MK, it is available on all major music platforms. Featuring 20 tracks, including bonus exclusive ones! Take the Windward journey with you everywhere you go! ⚔️ A Storm is brewing...More to come soon... Can you guess what's on the horizon?Thank you all for your support thus far.
- Patch notes: bug fixes and SotL story - 16 June 2025
This week will be dry on patch notes as I'm going to be working on Steam Workshop/modding support. This means a good chunk of my time will be spent creating a modding guide, and there is a lot to cover... But in the meantime, here are the patch notes from the past few days: 2025-06-16.0 - Fixed ship type not being tied to the region's position properly in co-op type instances with level scaling disabled. - Removed bosses from co-op missions on lower tier difficulties in Solo mode. - Added a slider to world options that controls the speed at which provinces will grow their population, letting you raise it up to 10x the base speed. - Boss tier NPCs will no longer have the ability to repair themselves out of combat. - Fixed a bug in the networking code that was causing oddities, and was potentially the cause of the strange tower issues. (server admins should update their server executable)…
- Patch notes: Mostly QoL improvements and bug fixes - 11 June 2025
2025-06-10.1 - Fixed a long-standing bug that was messing up world map pathfinding and many other things (which was just the most obvious symptom of the bug). - Greatly improved performance of the world map. - Stratospheric clouds will now properly fade out in foggy conditions. - You can now turn off error sound on use for your skills by right-clicking any skill. - Server's admin can now rename provinces and towns at will. - Dropped the quick-leave timer from 60 sec to 20. - Items gifted to other players then passed back to the owner will now restore their vendor price value. - Using /rename command no longer creates a different profile and will now keep your reputation, unlocks and story progress. - Another fix for AI fog usage. 2025-06-08.2 - Halved the amount XP needed to level up higher tier non-artifact items. - Opening a UI window while in port will no longer anchor you if there i…
- 2025-06-07.0 - 7 June 2025
- Guard towers and lighthouses can now be placed anywhere within a certain radius of towns, and no longer require being placed on top of pre-determined building spots. - Added the ability to mix dyes together to create new combinations. - Upkeep resource consumption is now randomized, so provinces will consume a variety of goods now instead of the same ones over and over. - Fixed Summon Allies skill always being unusable after the world reset. - World map being open will no longer force the virtual cursor to be on if there is a dialog or a conversation window open. - Fixed flying ships by adding a work-around. Turns out my matter density code used in buoyancy calculations was all kinds of wrong. Fixing it completely altered the game's established physics-based behaviour, so it's not something that should be undertaken at this point. A work-around will do. - Added an option to turn off s…
