Windward Horizon: bring your crew, build a fleet

If Skull and Bones had you hoping for a naval sandbox to disappear into with your mates, put Windward Horizon on your list.

It's an open-world naval RPG from Tasharen Entertainment, the people behind Windward. Round up a few friends, pick your ships and head out together. Some of you will be here to trade. Others will have brought rather more cannons than the trip called for.

We've teamed up with Tasharen to give your crew a server of its own. More on that in a moment. First, the sailing.

A fresh map and a few friends

Every campaign gives you a procedurally generated world to explore. Pick up faction quests, trade between towns, fish or dive for treasure. There's no need to spend every evening looking for a fight, though bringing backup is a good idea when you find one.

Trading has a purpose beyond filling your hold. Towns need resources to grow, and helping a faction can change who runs a province. Give the locals what they need and you can make your mark without firing a shot.

Find your place in the fleet

Your ship's equipment, crew and talents give you plenty to tinker with. Go heavy on defence, bring the firepower or help keep your friends afloat. Offensive, defensive and support talents can be mixed to suit how you want to play.

As you earn more gold, you can buy different ships and try a new approach. A quick schooner for exploring? A frigate for the next fight? Have a look around the shipyard and see what takes your fancy.

Your Windward Horizon server, without the babysitting

With Windward Horizon server hosting from CreeperHost, your shared world runs on our servers. Your friends can play without waiting for you to switch your PC on, and you can choose a location that works for the group.

CreeperPanel puts your settings, files, console and backups in one place. Start or restart the server, tweak a config, check the logs or grab your saves from your browser. It's our own panel, built for the games we host, and our team is there when you need a hand.

Premium is our pick for Windward Horizon. It starts with a smaller plan on newer hardware, includes automatic world backups with SaveGuard, and lets you give friends their own panel access. You can also run other supported games alongside Windward Horizon, within your plan's resources.

If the crew wants to chip in, Playments gives you a link to share. Contributions go straight to your hosting account, less payment processor fees.

We like getting stuck into the code, too

We're developers as well as hosts. We've been working with Aren at Tasharen, getting to know the server code and feeding back what helps when you're running a game for a group of people. It's the sort of conversation we enjoy, and the sort of partnership we want to build.

Got your crew together?

There's a free demo on Steam with full multiplayer and roughly the first 10 to 20 hours of the game. Progress carries into the full version, so you can give it a proper go with your mates before everyone buys a copy.

Ready for a server? Our Windward Horizon partnership page gives you 10% off Premium hosting, including renewals. No code to remember.

Pick your server. We'll keep it running while you lot get on with the sailing.