Everwind Interview: Sailing Toward PvP And Sky Battles

Everwind combines the freedom of sandbox games with a strong emphasis on exploring our original world and developing your character through a progression system, gaining skills, discovering new recipes, and exploring new locations. The game world consists of an endless ocean that players can swim or travel across by boat, and flying islands that can be reached by a flying ship that players build themselves. We want players to feel immersed in the world we are creating and feel satisfaction from creating and progressing their characters. We believe that the game should have its own unique identity that will remain in their memory for a long time.

We are a small indie studio from Poland, with 20 people currently working on the game, which has been in development for less than two years. We are a close-knit team of friends who are passionate and enthusiastic about creating games. Our headquarters are located on the outskirts of Warsaw in a cozy house with a garden, not in a skyscraper in the city center on the 30th floor. We are advocates of on-site work, which greatly facilitates teamwork and problem-solving.

Flying the ship. I think this is the most important and demanding mechanic in the game; without it, there would be no Everwind. It’s a complicated topic because the ship has to have its own collision, physics, and the ability to build on it while it’s moving. I think the flying mechanics will be developed and balanced throughout a large part of the game’s Early Access production, once players get their hands on the game.

We focus on exploration and combat, both of which require constant development on the part of the player. In order to visit higher islands, the player must upgrade their ship by improving its characteristics, maximum reachable altitude, and flying speed. To find the right parts for the mechanisms, they must explore dungeons and obtain the required items by defeating increasingly difficult opponents and bosses. We want them to evolve while exploring new islands that should be interesting to them.

The difficulty level mainly scales with the altitude at which the player flies, and the limit is really high. However, this does not mean that after a few hours of play, they will not have to return to lower islands. The player also has a lot to discover – recipes for items and objects that the player can place must be found or purchased from merchants, with only a small portion of the recipes available from the start of the game. There are already over 200 different structures in the game, and let’s not forget that the player has the ability to edit the terrain block by block and create their own structures, bases, and building complexes on every island they see. Player engagement should also be increased by the multiplayer option.

Absolutely, and that is the plan. We know dedicated servers are something players strongly want, and it’s only a matter of when and not if. Our current priority is making sure that the core gameplay loop and overall stability are where they need to be first. Once that’s in place, dedicated servers will follow. Players can be confident that by the time we hit full release, dedicated servers will be a part of the experience.

I can reveal that the “steamer” technology doesn’t originate from the starting world, hinting at mysteries beyond what players first explore. As for the mechanics, I can reveal that in addition to the basic tools, a pickaxe, shovel, and axe, the game will feature a special technological tool that will allow you to destroy metal blocks. The mechanics seem simple, but they introduce an important rule to the world. The player will find tightly sealed structures that they will not be able to access until they find this tool.

Yes! It is our ambition to allow players to experience battles with sky pirates or PVP battles between players on multiple ships simultaneously. I believe the game is perfectly suited for such mechanics. The design assumes these solutions, we have the idea and the knowledge to do it, but it’s still too early for that. These mechanics require a lot of work, and we are currently focusing on making sure that the basic mechanics of the game work flawlessly and refining what is most important at the moment in order to deliver the game to players.

Players can develop their characters independently with three different classes, meaning they can mix and match skills from different classes depending on their needs. They can also undo their skills if they think they’ve made a mistake and want to redistribute their skill points differently – but of course, this comes at a cost. Developing in several classes at the same time is somewhat forced on the player in order to progress, unlock new skills, and even recipes, so hybrid class development in the skill tree is recommended, but it is up to the player to decide in which direction they will develop more.

We are constantly receiving feedback from closed tests, analyzing it, and making the necessary adjustments. I think there will be much more of it when the game enters public demo and Early Access. I am a little worried about it and excited at the same time. I know that player feedback will be essential to polish the game, and I personally believe that this is the most interesting stage of production, where the game is refined according to the suggestions and opinions of players.

Similarity between the two games is inevitable, because both share a comparable visual style and the fact that the worlds are built from voxels. That said, Everwind pushes things much further in terms of technical fidelity, since it’s built on Unreal Engine. Players can expect a lot more visual richness and eye candy. On top of that, every point of interest in Everwind is packed with detail and clutter to make the spaces feel alive and full.

We’re extremely sad to see how Hypixel’s situation evolved, as we were genuinely excited to see that project come to fruition. Our own approach, however, is built around being as transparent as possible about what we’re doing and developing, but without spoiling too much of the fun, so players have a lot of things left to discover for themselves. For example, we’ve released many devlogs that offer deep dives into mechanics, and importantly, the footage you see in those videos is always recorded from real, playable game builds. That way, players know they’re looking at the actual state of the game, not just concepts or rendered videos. It’s a way of building trust with the community from the ground up.

The whole game was written from the ground up with optimization in mind, and that already shows during our internal tests. For example, we’ve been running the game on the MSI CLAW and consistently reaching 90+ FPS with XeSS turned on. Of course, optimization is never a one-and-done process. The game itself will continue to go through many rounds of optimizations leading up to Early Access and throughout it as well.

The camera from the TPP view of the flying ship – we didn’t take this into account during production, as we wanted the player to have the best possible immersion experience with the surrounding world, and switching the camera mode could knock the player out of that rhythm. After many comments, we checked if this mechanic would actually work, and yes – it definitely did.

We are also working on a TPP mode for the player themselves, we know that players expect this – they like to see their character from a different perspective. I doubt we’ll be able to do this for the public demo yet, but we are working on it. As for the smaller things, I still have a flood of comments in my head about the bow shooting animation. The player character did it very awkwardly, the position of the right hand was very unnatural, and it just looked ridiculous. We fixed it recently, and players immediately noticed the difference. It’s satisfying.

We want Everwind to become our flagship and long-lasting project. I believe that the game has a lot to offer. The game world is infinite, and there will always be room for new, interesting, and engaging locations or mechanics. We have a team that knows the game code inside out, so it’s convenient and safe for us to work on and develop one game for a long time.

We could fill several thick notebooks with our ideas for the game, but we’re saving a lot of them for later, when we have a solid foundation for the game itself. An example of such an idea is completely filling the ocean, which is located at the lowest level of the map. Currently, it is a sheet of water, and the player cannot explore the depths. What if they could explore depths reaching thousands of blocks, playing out sunken civilizations? That would be something!

Our ambition is to prepare the game to support mods – unfortunately, this is still a distant prospect, but it is definitely realistic. The modding scene is something that the game and players need, we know that, but we are unable to deliver everything right away.