- Minor Update: v1.3.3 - 19 September 2026
This update adds a few quality of life features, mainly relevant for the endgame. As usual, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Visit the game's GitHub repository for a full changelog. Quality of Life Improvements Added a bar at the top of the convergence UI that lets you view haunting/challenge effects at a glance and shows when they trigger without stealing your camera. Updated the goal listing for active settler quests to show partial progress (e.g. 2/4 Rabbit Warrens). Changed how debate topics from shards with no named cultures are granted. Previously it was a 50% chance on each trip. Now they are always granted until you run out. The previous behavior made more sense narratively, but resulted in a confusing and needlessly grindy experience. Added a warning for shard cultures when a main story shard culture will take precedence over them. Added font scaling to a few more U…
- Minor Update: v1.3.2 - 14 September 2026
This update adds a few quality of life features and fixes several bugs. As usual, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Visit the game's GitHub repository for a full changelog. Quality of Life Improvements Added a Relic Removal skill that lets you remove relics at the Endless Ruin landmark. Added a list of possible events for each development in the museum when viewing a site. Clarified the error message from Continue invocations that run out of slots to fill. When a glyph choice with increased rarity is offered from events or quests, the UI now shows the effective rarity including the bonus. Bug Fixes Fixed hand sorting sometimes getting scrambled when the hand contains negative glyphs. Fixed clicks on the map just under the top UI bar not registering when selecting a stage location. Fixed the UI for choosing guaranteed events not showing events which were encountered but where…
- Godot game Worlds Upon the Wind source code released - 14 September 2026
Always nice to see! The positively rated indie game made with Godot, Worlds Upon The Wind, has seen the full source code being released. Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/09/godot-game-worlds-upon-the-wind-source-code-released/
- Public Domain Open Source Release - 12 September 2026
Worlds Upon The Wind is built using the open source Godot engine and makes heavy use of historical public domain art. Now it's time to give back to the community. The game's source code and all of its assets are now released into the public domain (CC0) as an open source project. Other indie developers can freely study and reuse any of the code or art in their projects. The only exception is the audio, which I cannot release due to third-party licensing restrictions. The game will continue to be updated and distributed on Steam, and all updates will be mirrored to the public GitHub repository.
- Minor Update: v1.3.1 - 12 September 2026
This tiny update fixes several bugs, most notably a Mac crash related to the past expeditions viewer, and reworks the Gate glyph one final time. Balance Changes Gate Glyph: Draw 2 -> Draw 3 Fade Away: now removes all copies of the glyph. Quality of Life Improvements Added inspiration loss total to the convergence end screen, including blocked losses (e.g. from settler quest rewards or the Stone Heart relic). Added font scaling and zoom-on-hover support in a few more places. Bug Fixes Fixed a crash on Mac machines when viewing past expeditions with certain relics. Fixed the Connect task sometimes appearing before the relevant skill is unlocked.
- Major Update: v1.3 - 9 September 2026
This update adds new art viewer features, including geographic locations, historical period summaries, and a quiz. It also includes balance adjustments (hopefully the last major ones for a while), a bit of new content, and numerous bug fixes and quality of life features. As usual, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Art Viewer Features The art viewer will now display the geographic location for prints depicting meisho (famous places). The timeline bar at the bottom of the art viewer is now split into historical periods, and hovering each of these will show a brief cultural summary of this period. The art viewer has a new Quiz tab, where you can answer questions about art pieces, such as their title, artist, style, publication date, and (because I love GeoGuesser-style games) their location. It's an open-book quiz with no penalties, but you can still gain a few extra insights if…
- Minor Update: v1.2.1 - 31 August 2026
This update reworks some relics to better fit the haunting changes introduced in v1.2, adds a little more content, adjusts some balance, and fixes a number of uncommon bugs. New Content Added a new event, the Sunken Fortress. Added a new relic, the Muddy Print. Added a new haunting which triggers when the draw stack is reshuffled. Reworked 6 relics with new effects: Archivist Seal: OLD: Whenever you add a glyph to your glyph deck, gain 10 Knowledge. NEW: At the start of a stage, add to your hand a copy of the glyph most recently added to your glyph deck. Chisel Fang:OLD: Whenever you remove a glyph from your glyph deck, gain 20 Productivity. NEW: When there are fewer than 10 glyphs in your glyph deck, lower foray goals by 10%. Flavorful Stone:OLD: Gain 10 Food at the start of every foray. NEW: If at least 15 Food is gained during a turn, draw an extra glyph on the next redraw. Jade Shar…
- Hotfix: Toning down convergence hauntings - 27 August 2026
The 1.2 update introduced convergence hauntings that could really get out of hand and end up with minutes-long turn resolutions in later phases. This hotfix tames these to make them a little more sane. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on this issue! The severity of it deserved far harsher terms than you folks used. Limited the maximum number of convergence hauntings to twice the phase number. Amanojaku: only affects its associated site now. Kamikiri: "on Rare+ played" no longer includes negative glyphs. Kamikiri: Inspiration damage is now 3 and no longer scales with phase. Nigawarai: only affects its associated site/settlement now. Nopperabō: only affects its associated site/settlement now. Nopperabō: tops Blind instead of adding it to hand. Nurarihyon: only affects its associated site/settlement now. Ōnyūdō: only affects its associated site/settlement now. Raijuu: "on glyph cast" n…
- Major Update: v1.2 - 26 August 2026
This update focuses on hauntings, adjusting how they scale to reward more careful play during longer expeditions, as well as adding them to convergences from phase 3 onward. It also includes new content, balance adjustments, quality of life improvements, and bug fixes. As usual, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Haunting Changes First off, hauntings will now start appearing during convergence from phase 3 onward. They behave similarly to foray hauntings, but most are global, and trigger off actions anywhere on the map. Second, the way haunting difficulty scales has changed. Previously, they scaled in two ways: Haunting spawn chance scaled over a predefined curve based on foray number. Haunting slot count increased by one with each phase. Starting with this version, the scaling is more controllable by the player: The base haunting spawn chance is 15%. With every 100 points of…
- Minor Update: v1.1.4 - 16 August 2026
I'm working on an update that will add some new content, but since that might be a couple of weeks away, I wanted to get this tiny patch out to fix a few bugs. As always, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Quality of Life Improvements Improved event search in the museum and expedition setup to also search choice text, choice requirements, and discovered outcomes. Added an icon to indicate the pinned shard culture in the cultures list. Adjusted the cultures list UI to show the pin/record button at the top. Bug Fixes Fixed the relics selection UI sometimes appearing empty on some systems when the FPS cap is raised. Fixed predicted events on unique developments sometimes not showing up during the foray. Fixed rivers being invisible on some old Mac systems. Fixed some skill icons having smaller hitboxes than their visual. Fixed glyph search not recognizing "gain" and "lose". Fixed…
- Minor Update: v1.1.3 - 13 August 2026
This update adds many quality of life improvements, some balance adjustments, and a few bug fixes. Thanks to everyone who submitted bug reports and suggestions! As always, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Balance Changes Survey preparation inspiration and yield effects: 30% -> 50%. Charcoal Rod: restored inspiration amount: 2 -> 1. Stone Heart: blocked inspiration loss amount: 3 -> 2. Mended Teacup: maximum inspiration gain limit: 7 -> 5. Empty Lantern Frame: no longer unique. Crane Companion: 2nd slot Universal -> Connection; additional slots remain universal. Nopperabō haunting: essences per phase: None -> Radiance. First Dragon Companion event: required essences: 2 -> 1. Quality of Life Improvements Added special event choices that let you replace harmful relics (dead branch, golden persimmon, leaky inkstick) with powerful ones. Added special choices in monastery events b…
- Minor Update: v1.1.2 - 9 August 2026
This update improves the Steam Deck experience, adds support for click-dragging, adds some extra help for beginner Japanese learners, and comes with the usual bunch of quality of life improvements and bug fixes. As always, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Steam Deck Improvements The game now has an official Steam Deck control scheme. It is still cursor-based, but now all game features are available without custom configuration, and common shortcuts are mapped to what I think are intuitive inputs: The right pad is the usual mouse cursor, but with higher sensitivity and disabled haptics. The left pad is for zooming the maps and scrolling text. The left stick is for panning. A and B can be used for confirming and canceling, respectively. The triggers are for left and right click (drag and cast). The bumpers are for expanding tooltips and hover zoom. X is for viewing the draw st…
- Minor Update: v1.1.1 - 7 August 2026
This update adds new shard shapes, a central settler quests menu (after the main quest), various quality of life improvements, and a few bug fixes. Thanks to everyone for submitting your suggestions and bug reports! As usual, all applicable changes are also in the demo. New Shard Shapes Expeditions starting after this update will have their maps generated from a larger pool of shard shape templates. This doesn't have much gameplay impact, but should help your shards better stand out from each other. Here are a few examples of shards that could not have been generated previously: Settler Quests Hub After you finish the main quest, a notice board will appear in the haven. From here, you can access all the currently available settler quests. This UI highlights quests you haven't previously completed and supports search. The quests shown here are the same ones you could access by speaking t…
- Major Update: v1.1 - 5 August 2026
This is a larger update, introducing 12 new survey encounters, with their own glyphs and relics, as well as skills to preview and reroll shard maps. There are several balance adjustments to maintain endgame challenge, many bug fixes, and numerous quality of life improvements based on player feedback. As usual, all applicable changes are also in the demo. New Survey Encounters 12 new survey encounters have been added to the game, mostly clustered around swamps, seashores, and mountains. These feature new art pieces, and can grant 10 new glyphs (Ice, Snow, Carry, Chirp, Play, Plug, Thanks, Respect, Entangle, Pierce), as well as 5 new relics: Glass Pebble: Whenever a Radiance slot is filled, add a random Radiance glyph to your hand. Scallop Shell: Seashore settlements no longer have shortages. Spider's Web: Whenever a glyph with Connection essence is slotted, discard a negative glyph. Old…
- Hotfix: Saves lost when disk full - 31 July 2026
This fixes savegames being lost when there's no disk space available to write them. With the fix, if there's no disk space available, the existing save is untouched. Also, saves are now backed up locally (not synced to Steam Cloud) to protect against other potential future issues that may cause the save file to be corrupted or deleted. I apologize to those affected by the bug. While I cannot recover the lost saves, I can recreate an approximation - please contact me on Discord, Steam Discussions, or through email if you'd like me to do that for you. The update also fixes a rare soft lock when pacifying a haunting triggers a relic that tries to interact with the haunting or pacify it again.
- Minor Update: v1.0.6 - 30 July 2026
This update adjusts the balance of glyphs with Draw invocations to reduce endgame reliability, fixes several minor bugs, and adds numerous quality of life improvements, most notably removing the requirement to finish expeditions between era 4 debate speeches. As usual, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Glyph Balance Changes Show: Lost 15 Adventure -> 25 Draw 2 Starve: Lose 20 Food Draw 2 -> Adapt 2 Search: Divine 4 -> 3 Draw 1 Call: Divine 5 -> 4 Draw 1 Observe: Divine 3 -> 5 Draw 2 -> 1 Illustration: Target Beauty Draw 2 -> Draw 1 Quality of Life Improvements Removed the requirement to finish expeditions between era 4 debate speeches. Changed relic reward UIs to use hoverable underlines for terms rather than one big list. Clarified several relic and invocation descriptions. Added clickable links to settler quest titles in the active quests list. Made the pressed state for bu…
- Hotfix: MacOS Crashes - 30 July 2026
This fixes the MacOS version consistently crashing in various, seemingly unrelated situations. The fix is simply switching from Metal to Vulkan as the rendering API. It is still a mystery to me why these crashes suddenly started being reported by numerous users today, even though they are reproducible on all versions of the game since the demo release. In other news, I spent the whole day chasing these issues in vain until I found that the graphics API is the culprit for all of the reported crashes, so the next update may be a bit later than planned.
- Minor Update: v1.0.5 - 29 July 2026
This update adjusts the balance of several relics and one animal companion to avoid cases of extreme scaling, especially in later phases of the game. It also fixes numerous bugs, notably ones to do with endgame skills and settler quests, and includes minor quality of life improvements. As usual, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Balance Changes Reduced the power of the Tanuki companion: Reduced the amount of granted yields from 10 + 10 per phase to 10 + 5 per phase. Increased the activation cost by one universal slot per use. Capped usage limit to 4 times per stage. I will continue monitoring player feedback, so please let me know if these changes seem too harsh for your playstyle. Adjusted the Chopsticks relic to require non-universal slots. Limited the Monastery Chain relic to trigger no more than once per stage. Adjusted the Mended Teacup relic to grant no more than 7 maxi…
- Minor Update: v1.0.4 - 27 July 2026
This update adds a new graphics compatibility mode for older hardware that supports a lot more systems, fixes numerous bugs reported by players, and adds the option to delete save slots, inexplicably the most requested feature. As usual, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Older Hardware Support I have received about a dozen reports of people having issues running the game on older hardware. To address this, I have implemented a new compatibility mode that should be able to run on much older hardware, and also support all the operating systems which the standard mode supports. Although internally the map rendering system works quite differently now, the game should look almost the same in this mode, with the major exception of missing animated clouds on the map, and some animations being simplified. There are also several additional options that may help systems that are new en…
- Minor Update: v1.0.3 - 26 July 2026
This update adds furigana to the kanji practice minigame, fixes several bugs, and adds a few quality of life features. Thanks for everyone for reporting bugs and sending in suggestions! As usual, all applicable changes are also in the demo. Furigana in the Kanji Practice Minigame The kanji practice minigame now includes furigana and vocabulary tooltips for all kanji words in sentences. By default, furigana only appears after a question is solved, but you can switch it to always appear, or to not appear at all. Note that this feature is currently experimental. The base furigana and meaning assignment were generated by an automated dictionary-based tokenizer. I have done several scripted and manual proofreading passes and fixed hundreds of mistakes, but there are over 4,000 example sentences in the game, so it's likely that some issues fell through the cracks. The kanji practice minigame…
