Winds & Leaves
Winds & Leaves brings a garden view exclusively to PSVR headsets later this year. We see the game in action…
As you explore and reforest the world’s four regions, you awaken “landmarks”.
Since Prison Boss VR’s release in 2018, VR-focussed studio Trebuchet has seen significant growth. Starting out with three founding members, the studio has expanded to 20 developers in total, and its latest project will boast a vision to match when it goes into full bloom later this year.
While Prison Boss VR was designed with a confined playing space in mind, Trebuchet’s latest sets its sights further afield. Inspired by the 1987 short film The Man Who Planted Trees (itself an adaptation of the book of the same name), this VR title tasks you with reforesting a desolate world. You need the trees as much as they need you, and if you venture too far away from them you’ll end up becoming food for the worms. Avoiding enemies or certain death is far from the name of the game, though, and this feature is designed to keep you focussed rather than raise the stakes.
Winds & Leaves initially began development as a small secret garden growing simulator and grew from there. In development for three years, the title’s now described by the team as a ‘Flora Builder.’ Aiming to evoke the same calming, cosy vibes as planting crops in games like Stardew Valley, Trebuchet felt there was a gameplay loop worth exploring in planting your own forest one tree at a time.
BRANCHING OUT
It all starts with your stilts. Rather than use a teleportation mechanic, Trebuchet wants exploration to be an engaging process – hence stilts. By waggling the PlayStation Move controllers up and down, you feel every step. Angling your hands in the direction you want to go allows you to drift right and left. Once you’ve found a spot you like, you pierce the earth with another stick from your collection before perusing your pack for a fruit or seed to plant. Collecting new seeds is as tactile as navigation and sees you scrabbling up trees to pick fruit from their lofty branches. Later on you’ll even be able to glide from tree to tree.
It’s a non-linear experience that aims to make the reforesting process feel organic, and early on you can plant where you please. But as your forest grows and you venture further afield, you’ll find vegetation can be quite particular about where it will grow, with some trees requiring particular soil types and environmental conditions. As you choose what to plant, soil conditions and plant preferences are represented as a colourful set of symbols – pair the right ones up or risk nothing taking root. Using the Time Mill, you can watch your forest grow in the blink of an eye.
As your crop reaches for the sky, something else might be brought to the surface along with it. As you explore and reforest the world’s four regions – each with its own unique varieties of trees – you awaken what Trebuchet calls “landmarks”. The largest of these is the Panemone and lies at the centre of the four areas. Each landmark you uncover will tell you a bit more about the world and how to reawaken it, even sometimes granting you new equipment or fruit to plant. The idea, according to creative director Alexandre Pernot Lopes, is to enable the feeling you are the ‘missing link’ that will breathe life into the buried plants hidden beneath the desolate world.
OH, THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!
Made by a small team, early builds of Prison Boss VR did not see extensive
playtesting. As a result, Trebuchet was surprised by the speed at which players moved through its various challenges. Winds & Leaves has conversely seen more playtesting and its slow-paced, meditative gameplay has been much more informed by player behaviour.
When Trebuchet was founded in 2017, VR gaming was in a very different state, especially on PlayStation. The team felt there was a lack of variety in the sorts of experiences available on PSVR, with an overabundance of shooters at that time. Trebuchet’s mission statement ever since has been to create innovative experiences that draw inspiration from genres that don’t already have a strong foothold in VR. Beginning with the Tycoon-like Prison Boss VR, it moved onto the VR arcadeexclusive Jousting Time, a multiplayer title in which you have to yell to make your horse go faster. Winds & Leaves is in many ways, then, a natural progression for the studio.
Winds & Leaves debuts exclusively in our neck of the woods later this year. Got virtual green fingers? Tell us about your in-game gardens @PLAYgamingmag.