Strange Winds

About the game

Strange Winds is a short survival game about one very long week. Your small plane has come down on the Antarctic ice in a storm, and something out there is not happy about it. Stand beside the wreck with a flare gun, point with the mouse and keep the creatures that crawl out of the snow away from the engine, because that is what they come for: they feed on heat, and the plane is the only warm thing for miles.

Each in-game day opens with a few lines of dialogue between you and your navigator, in a tired, dark-humoured voice, and then you defend the plane for a while. The second day brings a survival rifle that needs reloading between shots (the navigator tells you when a round is ready), and the following days raise the pressure while the navigator tries to repair the plane so you can leave. Every night the glimpse of a huge shape in the cliffs gets harder to ignore.

It was built in 30 days for the OpenGameArt.org Winter Game Jam 2022, with art, characters and sound effects mostly assembled from free-culture assets, and its credits screen lists every one of them.

Content notes

The dialogue contains strong language (swearing, including the f-word), and the story is mild horror: unsettling creatures and some blood, but nothing graphic. It is not meant for young children.

Playing it here

Click Play and wait for the page to load (about 14 MB, downloaded only when you press the button). Choose Start and click through the opening text. The game is played entirely with the mouse, so you need a mouse or a trackpad with two buttons. The Quit buttons do nothing on the main menu in this version (there is nothing to close in a browser tab); on the last screens they return to the title.

Controls

Tips

Keep the flares coming. The flare gun is slow, so aim ahead of where a creature is going, not where it is.

Listen to your navigator. He tells you when a rifle round is ready.

Protect the plane first. The creatures want its heat: when they get close they pull it out in glowing beams, so stop them before that.

Read the credits. The credits screen from the main menu shows who made every picture and sound in the game.

FAQ

Is there AI-made art in it? The portrait animation that came with the original download was built from AI-generated faces whose licence we could not confirm, so this version replaces it with a plain silhouette. Nothing else in the game was changed except the Quit buttons.

Does it work on a phone? No. It needs a mouse with two buttons and has no touch controls.

Is anything saved? No.

Is it really free to share? Yes. The game is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3, and every picture, sound and font in it is listed, with its licence, below and on the credits screen.

Credits and licence

Strange Winds: art by Yuri N. Martinez Laskowski; programming by Lui Wolff and Yuri N. Martinez Laskowski; GNU General Public License, version 3. It runs on Godot Engine 3.5.3 (MIT). Third-party works used in the game:

• Images: "Strange Winds Assets" and "HD Old Paper Cards" by YuriNikolai (CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC BY 4.0); "Free Wooden Crates" and "Metal Barrels Pack" by yughues, "Fire Explode" by reivaxcorp, "Clouds with Transparency" by WickedInsignia and "Mountain at Dusk Background" by ansimuz (all CC0); 3D models "Junkers-W34F" by helijah and "W34" by manilov.ap from Sketchfab (CC BY 4.0).
• Sound: "Shotgun Shoot + Reload" by Mike Koenig, "Chaingun, Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun Shots" and "4 Projectile Launches" by Michel Baradari, "Menu Selection Click" by NenadSimic, "Inventory Sound Effects" by artisticdude (all CC BY 3.0); "Synthesized explosion" by Iwan Gabovitch and "Wind Whoosh Loop" by SketchMan3 (CC0).
• Font: "PARPG Font" by Q_x (CC0). Code: an AudioStreamer snippet by natelastname (GPL-3.0).

Changes in this version: the navigator portrait is replaced by a silhouette (and its credit, "Animated Shadowy Portraits", removed), and the Quit buttons no longer close the game. The complete licence texts and the source of this build are linked from this page.