In engine: the wanderer stands small before the towering carved gates of the ravine, sunlight raking through warm haze.

The wind remembers what the world forgot.

A solitary journey through a buried world · PC & Mac

Waking

You wake beneath the sand. 

No name. No memory. Only a mark on your wrist, shaped like a star, 

and a wind that will not stop calling you onward. 

Chapter III · The journey

One walk.
No way back.

From the place you wake to the first guiding stone: a ravine, a blade of sand, an empty outpost and a long slide into the basin.

This is the real route through the first part of the game, traced from the level as it is built today.

The burialThe ravine gatesThe ravine mouthThe knife crestThe outpostSevenThe slideThe TeethThe engineto the engine · 0.73 km
Close on the wanderer waking half-buried in sand, one hand raised to the light, the cyan mark glowing on her wrist.

I · The burial

You wake under a crushed rib shelter, one slit of moving sand above you. Dig.

In engine: looking through a natural stone arch and a fallen rib down a sunlit ravine toward distant carved gate stones.

In engine

II · The ravine gates

A stone arch, a fallen rib, and far below the carved gates. The wind is funnelled through here, and so are you.

At the ravine exit the wanderer looks out over open dunes toward half-buried domes and a rust banner.

III · The ravine mouth

The walls fall away. Open sand, a low sun, and the first banner someone left to show the way.

In engine: the wanderer stands on a knife-edged dune crest, backlit by a low golden sun.

In engine

IV · The knife crest

A blade of sand ninety-five metres high. Keeper tether posts mark the only line the wind will let you hold.

From the lip of a dune the wanderer looks down on a Keeper outpost of rib domes, arches and banners.

V · The outpost

A walled court of rib domes, a cistern, a cold hearth. It gives you one thing: the hand vane.

VI · Seven

Seven.

Seven bedrolls in the sleeping dome. Nobody has slept in them for a very long time.

Inside a domed Keeper sleeping hall at dusk, light falling through oval openings onto rows of empty bedrolls.
In engine: the wanderer slides down a steep dune face into the basin, sand streaming behind her.

In engine

VII · The slide

One hundred and eighty metres of slipface. Crouch, and let the dune carry you down.

In engine: a lone rock stack, the Teeth, above a row of half-buried Keeper arches.
Concept art: a green Keeper settlement in the lee of the rocks, before the sand came.

Then

Now · in engine

VIII · The Teeth

Stone teeth over a row of buried arches. Drag the line to see what stood here before the sand.

The wanderer, scarf streaming, looks toward a colossal wind engine glimpsed through a ring of blowing sand.

IX · The engine

From the basin floor, far to the east, something still turns.

A towering wall of sand rolls toward the wanderer across the dunes, swallowing a rib ruin.

Chapter IV · The storm

The wind is
the world.

One wind moves everything: sand, cloth, grass, the beasts and you. Storms never come without warning. Learn the signs.

The voices in the wind fall silent…

Find the lee of a standing stone. Wait for the lull. Then move.

Inside a vast sand-sealed vault: a single shaft of light falls on the wanderer, tiny beneath ribbed walls covered in murals.

Chapter V · What the Keepers left

They saw it
coming.

Sealed vaults, carved walls, painted halls. The Keepers wrote down everything, then closed the doors behind them.

Carved in stone

You find their record a panel at a time: the first sand, the engine they built to hold it back, the storm, and the silence after. Read them in order and the story is not the one you expected.

The first sand
I · The engine
II · The tuning
III · The storm
IV · The silence

Chapter VI · Bestiary

The beasts behind
the fossils

The desert is full of bones. Domed skulls, rib arches taller than towers. You will learn what they were.

Rib rows of giant fossils half-buried in wind-combed dunes, running toward a green valley and a domed rib ruin with a faint cyan light.
Every rib row points west

Plate I · Field study

Hollowback

The walking whale whose ribs became the arches.

Hollowback skeleton, with a human figure for scale.Hollowback in life: a walking whale with rib-sails and a comb-like jaw.

a Comb jaw · sieves seed from the wind

b Rib-sails · the arches you will climb

c One Keeper, for scale

Scroll to strip it to the bone

A herd of colossal pale hollowbacks, walking whales with rib-sails, crossing windswept grassland at dusk while two Keepers watch with a banner.

Hollowback · 40–60 m

A whale that learned to walk.

It dragged its belly through the grass and combed seed out of the wind with a jaw like a loom. When a hollowback died, it lay down facing the wind. That is why every rib row in the desert points west.

  • Tumbler · Ox-sized

    It lets the wind carry it home.

    A soft animal in a spiral shell. When the gusts rise, it curls up and rolls downwind like a wheel, for miles, without a single step.

  • Sailwing · Wingspan 9 m

    It hangs in the updraft and never lands.

    Mantas of the sky that ride the ridge winds for days. The Keepers copied their shape for every kite they flew.

  • Lowback · Pack animal

    The Keepers’ oldest friend.

    Fleeced, slow and stubborn, with bronze wind-plates on its flanks. Where the lowbacks walked, the Keepers’ roads followed.

In engine: the wanderer in her red scarf stands on the sand before the ravine gates, wind pulling at her cloak.
In engine

Chapter VII · The wanderer

Her name is
never spoken.

She wakes with nothing but a torn scarf, a walking staff and a glowing mark she cannot explain.

No weapons. No combat. Only her wits, her footing and the wind, which pushes, carries and, when it turns, can knock her flat. She reads the Keepers’ carvings better than she should.

The wanderer strides into the wind with her staff, shading her eyes, scarf streaming behind her.

Field kit

Everything she carries.

Scarf
01ScarfRust wool, wind-torn. It tells you which way the air is going before you feel it.
The mark
02The markA four-point star on her left wrist. It glows when Keeper stone is near.
Goggles
03GogglesBrass and smoked glass, for walking into a storm instead of away from it.
Wrapped boots
04Wrapped bootsFlat soles for slipfaces. Every strap is a repair.
Belt satchel
05Belt satchelFinds, chalk, a cracked bowl. Nothing she can explain.
Waterskin
06WaterskinNever quite full.
Vane staff
07Vane staffWalking staff and wind reader in one. The ribbons do the reading.
Bedroll
08BedrollFor the nights the wind sleeps.
Tool roll
09Tool rollPicks and brushes for prising open the past.

The Watch

Sometimes the wind stops.

Pressed against a stone fin, the wanderer hides as a vast pale shape looms in the haze beyond the ruins.

That is when you should be afraid.

Chapter IX · Archive

Found
in the sand.

Everything here is in the world, somewhere under the dunes. Some of it you can carry. Most of it you can only read.

Things they left

What they built

What still grows

Chapter X · How you play

No map. No markers.
Just the horizon.

  1. i

    Read the wind

    It is your compass and your enemy. Gusts shove, lulls open paths, and the sand shows you where it blows next.

  2. ii

    Follow the stones

    Standing stones mark the old Keeper roads. Each one is shelter, a landmark and a question.

  3. iii

    Wake the machines

    Somewhere under the dunes the Keepers left engines that moved the wind itself. Restart one, and the world changes.

  4. iv

    Do not be seen

    When the wind voices fall silent and a low hum rolls over the dunes, something is watching. You cannot fight it. Keep moving.

A mosaic fresco of the great beasts and the Keepers living side by side in a green land under a bright sun.

Chapter XI

The bones were
never alien.

Somewhere in the deep sand, a fresco shows the beasts alive, the land green, and a mark you have seen before.

In development · PC & Mac

© 2026 WindsweptAll art is in-development concept art and in-engine footage; final game may differ.