WINDBLOWN

Dead Cells dev's new roguelike has me afraid for my free time

- Justin Wagner

Everything in Windblown happens in a blink. The lightning-quick dash barely has a cooldown. Time only slows for milliseconds when you dodge just as an enemy's swing is about to connect. Downtime is in short supply, and the exhilarating flow state needed to survive Windblown had me thinking half a dozen inputs in advance.

My favorite expression of this is the game's alterattacks-special combos that only activate after you've swung a few times with one weapon and then immediately switch to another. There's a rhythm particular to each weapon, but the results are often explosive. I picked up throwing knives that mark enemies with a stacking debuff | could detonate for big damage.

However, the knives themselves PLA IT don't do a ton of damage, so I quickly learned I could risk my neck up close with a high-damage melee weapon, using the knives' alterattack for an influx of stacks, seamlessly capitalizing on the strengths of both weapons in tandem.

On the flipside, I could poke an enemy from afar with the knives and then use a melee weapon's alterattack to cleave anything that got too close.