- Patch 0.4.0 - New Mission + Features - 14 July 2026
At long last, time for a new update... First off:4th mission addedThe new mission takes you on a 2km x 2km size terrain. On the game's standards, it's absolutely huge, but I wanted it to convey the feeling of wandering in the middle of nowhere. The terrain type is inspired by the endless monotony of dwarf birches on the highlands in northern Norway.New enemies have new tricks and so do you, so don't expect it to be just more of the same gameplay.Here's a new trailer, which is mainly targeted to new people so much of it is not new, but there are also some glimpses of new places and features.Additions and improvements:1. HandcarsFor traveling around on the huge landmass, there's a network of rail roads that would've supplied the ancient blast furnace with materials. You can select tracks with railroad switches and move objects like bombs in carts.2. Hiding in foliageIn the new mission, yo…
- Hotfix - water physics - 10 October 2025
I noticed using boats was broken with the last patch. Also fixed a small optimization hiccup in Mission 2.
- Patch 0.3.6.2 - Character looks, small fixes, mission 4 sneak peek - 8 October 2025
Change of looksI've been constantly pondering whether or not to add a hood to the main character. On one hand, having the head uncovered gives more personality to the character and makes it easier to see what you're doing. On the other hand, it doesn't help with the game looking like a stealth game.I've had some earlier attempts to design a hood (like this early 3D model), but haven't included it in the game, since it made the character blend too much in the darkness (which I guess makes sense but isn't very convenient), and I wasn't much into them.However, by adding some other apparel as well, I've finally ended up with a hood design that I like:Other changesMade the max brightness much brighterAdded crouch toggle (only on keyboard)Some changes to climbing that make jumping from rope to rope, as well as sliding in some situations, more naturalThe lightness system got another small reva…
- Fixed a blocker bug - 9 July 2025
I noticed and fixed a game-breaking bug: Trying to pick up a key in the second mission caused an error which blocked progress. Apologies to those affected. It came with the last updates, when I rearranged the objectives a bit. I also fixed some smaller things: torches no longer cause burning unless hit with (it would've been kind of realistic but was annoying) "big text" option was on by default unintentionally in mission 3, tavern keeper was in visible in some situations
- 0.3.6.1 - small fixes - 27 June 2025
added optional bigger text for smaller screens (always on on Steam Deck) camera doesn't clip to walls in leaning anymore enemy vision adjustments for the difficulty options other small fixes
- Patch 0.3.6 - New tutorial, leaning, lighting improvements + - 23 June 2025
It's been a long while since the last update. My freelance work required more attention, and I also made a pretty massive blog post comparing the cinematic tools of Unity and UE, which took most of the time I would've otherwise spent on the game this year. If anyone's interested in the topic, here it is.However, the last couple of weeks I've had ample time to focus on a new update.New tutorialThe first mission used to be also the tutorial. This forced me to steer the player in a certain direction with some artificial triggers and indicators, although the mission is pretty open sandbox-like in nature. Now there's a wholly new tutorial level explaining the basic things. Though it still continues a bit into the first actual mission, the tutorial elements there are much less disruptive.Update to Unity 6 and lighting improvementsI was using a pretty outdated version of Unity, so I updated to…
- Small patch - changed tutorial back to the way it was - 11 October 2024
I played the first level after a while and realized the new version of the tutorial was boring. I had cut out boat trips and climbing from the first scene in favor of speed, but I think it's more important to show more of the interesting mechanics right off the bat, even if they require patience and thus "thin the herd". Also, it's been a recurring problem that people play the game as if it's a Dark Souls, going straight to the first enemy instead of avoiding him. Using NPC conversations to force the idea of being stealthy to people's heads doesn't seem to be sufficient. I added a trigger that loads the game from autosave if they try to attack the first enemies instead of following the tutorial. It's a bit annoying, but it ensures players have the best possible experience in the rest of the mission. Just wanted to get these small changes pushed before more people play it.
- Tutorial revamp - 28 September 2024
I changed the layout of the tutorial (the route player has to go through, and updated the positions and content of the prompts). Now it's more linear and should be less confusing. The layout of the ship itself stayed almost the same. Some other tweaks in this update Doors connected to a room become invisible when exiting that room, and for a (very short) moment you see through them. Fixed by adding a black plane. Screen becomes black and white on death Lantern stayed lit when falling in water with it Stairs changed to be less of a pain for player (now the player character doesn't use any special animations in them, the NPCs still do) Map view adjustments
- Small fixes - 19 September 2024
In the beginning of the intro level, mayor stood up automatically due to an AI mistake in windowed mode, window size was reset to screen size on scene load getting to climb ladder at the beginning of first mission was difficult, now player snaps to the ladder automatically made it a bit more difficult to skip the climbing part of the tutorial made cranes not useable since they're just confusing and I haven't figured out a way they'd be useful walking over bodies is easier when ceiling is low throwing indicator and "ready to throw" animation got stuck in some situations preventing jumping when ceiling is low (to avoid some bugs)
- Patch 0.3.5.0 - Steam Deck support, Difficulty options, NPC allies that fight - 24 August 2024
A couple of months have passed just twiddling my thumbs, but not in an idle way! I got myself a Steam Deck, which definitely makes the game more fun for me to test. With numerous iterations of test builds, I've gotten the game to a great shape with optimization improvements and other polish. The game is now in a state where I'm happy to shift my full focus on just making new content after this update. However, here's what it contains: Steam Deck readiness While the "Steam Deck Verified" badge will have to wait for possible approval process whenever Valve may have time for it in the unforeseeable future, the game runs well on my Steam Deck (which has the original, 1280x800 screen) with a certain adjustment done in the device's options. In these videos, the colors are a bit blown out due to my camera, or skills of using it. I optimized the game's Medium quality to run well on the Deck. I'…
- Small update - 16 June 2024
These small fixes: -map view doesn't have weird extra panning movement in the beginning -made grappling hook glow in the dark, when it's not carried by player -fixed small objects not being selectable when right next to a body -grappling hook got dropped when winching, instead of attached to back -door highlights haven't been working for some time -it was possible to fall through deck in big frigate
- Patch 0.3.4.2 - Polish all around the campaign - 25 May 2024
I did a couple of rounds of playing through the campaign, making notes, and fixing bugs and other details. I've also been working on the new iteration of the game's website that sheds some light to the game's mechanics with shorter and longer clips of gameplay: https://gustofwindgame.com Here's a list of fixes in this patch: Small additions to 3rd mission (stealable boat, another trader) Made some pipes on the walls on Mission 2 climbable Saves now handle dialogs better (loading the current state of conversation rather than starting it from the beginning) Interaction highlight improvements, especially with doors (still room for improvement with overlapping items though) Storing the current state of time bombs in save Map view improvements Small changes to missions after a couple of playthroughs Fixed weapons dropped by passing out/dying enemies falling through floor in the mine Solved s…
- Patch 0.3.4.1 - Mission 1 outro adjustments - 14 April 2024
Having learned what the actual bottlenecks were in the trial and error process of optimization, it was necessary to go back on some of the changes I did on Mission 1 outro that didn't really improve frame rate but took away from the experience. I've now combined the best parts of old version and new version, without compromising frame rate. The changes of this patch have to do with character placements, dialog and objectives in that scene.
- Patch 0.3.4.0 - More optimizations, along with a blog post - 1 April 2024
If you're interested in how the sausage is made, here's a blog post about various tricks and techniques I've used in Gust of Wind to keep the number of shadows, draw calls, dynamic physics objects and the overall number of polygons on screen to a minimum: ːsteamthisː Pretty much all the points in the post have been in use for a long time, but here's a few optimizations added in this update: Terrain details (like rocks and trees) that are far away are more performant and look much better, because I changed them to "impostors" from low-poly meshes All doors that are not connected to the room player is currently in, are hidden A bunch of code optimizations Updating the water plugins used allowed me do improvements like disabling floating scripts from objects that don't currently need them, and disabling the water renderer when not needed (instead of masking it out from the camera) I used A…
- Patch 0.3.3.4 - Rimlight as lightness indicator + some dialog polish - 17 March 2024
I replaced the lightness indicator in HUD with a rim light for the third person perspective. The character is split in 8 parts corresponding the points in player that AI can see when they're lit, so that the rim light can be shown in those body parts separately. The indicator introduced in the previous update still remains in first person perspective. Here's a video of the rim light in action. As you can see, it adjusts to the color and intensity and changes in appearance depending on which direction the currently most affecting light source is. Also, this video is a bit older so it doesn't have the rim light, but it shows some changes I did to the dialog in the second part of Mission 1 (mainly making the dialogs shorter while introducing characters one by one without much of going back and forth).
- Patch 0.3.3.3 - lighting indicator, bugfixes - 16 February 2024
Added a lighting indicator that helps with keeping in shadows: Other changes: progress in the first mission was sometimes blocked by a notification "Enemies know the door is open, loading from save". Fixed a bug that was causing this. fixed double music sometimes on in mission 3 for mission 3, changed Behemoth layout a bit, added another guard, adjusted their paths, and made a bunch of bugfixes smoothing out this environment specifically character got stuck when jumping to shallow water sometimes lantern got extinguished just after lighting it character got stuck after canceling lighting lantern
- Hotfix: pushing doors and some guards in mission 3 unfrozen - 7 February 2024
Pushing open doors from inside is easier guards unfrozen in the frigate in mission 3
- Bugfixes and a layer of overall polish - 6 February 2024
The most visual change in this update is probably some layout changes I did for the interior of a huge frigate in the third mission. I split it into three sections divided by walls, so that only one section's contents need to be visible at a time, which helped a bunch with optimization. Here are some views of the renewed interior: I also added a carriable horn that guards can use to alert nearest enemies on a radius. The player can use it too of course, if they wish to make a grand entrance or just want to see how the enemies react. In addition, there are just lots of small bugfixes on the mechanics and missions, like the points below: AI: fixed enemy door interaction animations not working when he's coming to view from a different room fixed enemies not following player to different rooms very likely enemies now wake up more easily enemies rotated suddenly enemies don't try to find wea…
- Patch 0.3.3.1 - Landscaping - 31 December 2023
I made new vegetation models and textures for the island in the third mission, trying to match it close to the barren highland landscapes of northern Norway as possible. Here's what the island looks like now: If someone's interested in how the sausage is made, I added some time lapses of making the trees in the comments of this X post: https://twitter.com/GustOfWindGame/status/1737552467456336033 Optimization I also made some progress in optimization. There was a CPU-capped moment in the second part of the first mission, where there are a dozen or so NPCs visible at the same time. It's the part I've probably spent the most time banging my head against a wall with, but I finally got a substantial increase in framerate by a very simple change in the hierarchy of the scene, following the instructions of this blog post in case anyone's interested: https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/best…
- Patch 0.3.3.0 - "Smoother sailing" - 19 November 2023
To start off, a couple of visual improvements. The first one I did mainly for optimization reasons. The rigging of this frigate, the Seashell, used to have 82 separate skinned mesh renderers for ropes and such. I replaced ALL of them with line renderers and static meshes (allowing me to combine the static meshes into one big one). There was some improvement for performance, but less than I hoped, to be honest. Anyway, at least those chainplates I added to the sides as new additions look pretty cool. I did the same change also to a brigantine that's featured (as different variations) in both missions 2 and 3. Here's a video showing some details in the revised ship: https://x.com/GustOfWindGame/status/1716875722172871132?s=20 Also, I changed the graphics of the objective elements: List of other bugfixes / improvements: forced camera to be in third person when climbing (afterwards it reset…
