Embark Studios’ mega-popular extraction shooter Arc Raiders has some competition on Steam’s most-played game chart, as there’s a newcomer on the list: the free-to-play, open-world Wuxia fighter Where Winds Meet.
Where Winds Meet is the debut title from Chinese developer Everstone Studio. Set during ancient China’s Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (about 907 to 979 AD), the game is this fantastical amalgam of MMO, action-adventure, and RPG mechanics that seamlessly blends into an open-world environment you can play either in solo or multiplayer modes. There are epic sword fights with flashy combos, Tai Chi moves to basically force-throw animals and enemies, and bosses that rival a From Software game in size and difficulty. Not to mention the wealth of content in the first two regions–Kaifeng and Qinghe–that easily contain hundreds of hours of stuff to do, secrets to find, puzzles to solve, and baddies to beat up. The best part is it’s all totally free.
Almost everything you experience in Where Winds Meet is free to play. There are premium currencies to buy, a battle pass to purchase and upgrade, clothes and accessories to fill your (digital) wardrobe with–you know, “free-to-play” stuff. However, the action of the game–the bosses, the weapons, the main and side objectives, the minigames, etc.–doesn’t cost you anything to play. That’s true of future content as well. Since the game’s Chinese servers get new features before the global ones do, players on those servers have shared what’s coming to the game in upcoming updates, like new regions to explore and weapons to fight with.
