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.

The route is the real one through the first part of the game. Beyond the basin, the hamlet and the engine are still being built.

A hand-inked map of the region: the ravine in the south-west, the knife crest, the outpost on the basin rim, the Great Sand Basin and its Teeth, the Drift Hamlet and, far to the east, the engine.
Close and low on the wanderer waking face down in a sand drift on the ravine floor, one hand clawing forward into a band of late sun, the walls rising on both sides.

I · The burial

You wake on the ravine floor, buried to the shoulders. A slit of sky, a long way up. 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 wall at a time: the green age, 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.

Before · The green age
I · The first sand
II · The engine, woven
III · The storm
The sleeper
IV · The silence
V · The last days
Where you find them

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, six-legged, rib-sails standing bare.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

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 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.

From the sketchbook

Into the windEyes shaded, head down. The scarf points the way.
ListeningCheek to the staff. It hums before the gust comes.
Concept artA Lowback at full stride, and someone who forgot to be afraid.
Ear to the stoneThe Keepers built things that still answer.
SlipfaceBone slats and cord. Down is the fast way.
Outfit sheetWool, linen, leather and the mark. Everything mended twice.

Field kit

Everything she carries.

01ScarfRust wool, wind-torn. It tells you which way the air is going before you feel it.
02The markA four-point star on her left wrist. It glows when Keeper stone is near.
03Wrapped bootsFlat soles for slipfaces. Every strap is a repair.
04Walking staffBone, bronze and three hollow tubes. It hums before a gust and bites the sand like an anchor.
05Sand anchorBone and a bronze ring. Someone left it a long time ago. Driven in, it holds.
06Hand vaneTurns before the wind does.
07Bone whistleBlow it into the wind. What is buried answers.
08Sand sledBone slats and cord. Slipfaces stop being walls.

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

Where they lived

Drowned houseThe sand came in through the door and never left.

  • GatehouseYou entered every outpost from the lee side.

  • Long houseTwelve ribs, one roof. Everyone slept under it.

  • Hamlet ringHouses turned inward, backs to the wind.

  • Wind shelterA bench, a roof, and the storm outside.

  • Raised cisternWater, lifted above the drift. Dry now.

  • Vault shellSealed. Whatever they saved is still inside.

  • Wind engineIt turned the wind into work.

What they kept holy

  • IStaff-bearerVeiled, like all of them. No one carved a face.

  • IIHarperPlayed for the wind, not for anyone listening.

  • IIIOpen armsFacing the storm, as if to greet it.

  • IVOffering handsThe bowl was kept full. Now it holds sand.

  • VAltarThe great beast, carved where hands would rest.

  • VIFallen headThe ring behind it once caught the sun.

  • VIIWind rattleShaken at the edge of a storm, to ask it to pass.

  • VIIIPrayer cairnEach stone set by a different traveller.

What they walked on

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.