Swashbuckling co-op survivor Windrose sets sail into early access next week, which means it's time to battle Blackbeard and a big flower

Weigh, hey and up she rises, etcetera

Yo ho, me hearties. Windrose, the co-op pirate survival game which lured plenty of folks aboard its demo decks in the Steam Next Fest earlier this year, is set to launch into early access next week. Better start practicing those shanties and, er, preparing to stab a giant flower once you've fought weird plague creatures.

Developers Windrose Crew, who've now got the publishing might of Palworld developers Pocketpair behind them, announced with a fresh trailer at last night's Triple I showcase that their game's releasing in early access form on April 14th. The crew reckon it'll take them anywhere from one and a half to two and half years to be ready for a full release.

That trailer's full of the usual piratey stuff you might expect. You and your mates form a crew of custom buccaneers, you swan about on a frigate firing your cannons at other vessels. Sometimes you might be made to walk the plank. However, it's what Windrose offers once you make port that's most intrigued me. While the base building's cool, I can take or leave its insistence that there's "soulslite combat" against a bunch of enemies. Or at least I could until the trailer ended with a bunch of pirates trying to fight a big pink flower which looked to just be minding its own business.

Seriously, the whole trailer builds up to a sword swipe towards the contents of your mum's garden. Sure, the health bar above the flower says 'High Priestess' and it's found in some cursed swampland inventively named the cursed swamps, but it's a flower man. Blackbeard, he probably deserves a swipe of your sword. The weird plague creatures shown slightly earlier in the trailer, they probably deserve a barrage of shots from your twin flintlocks. The flowers? Surely pirates have better things to do than fight hydrangeas.

"Face and overcome a variety of enemies inspired by real historical figures and supernatural forces," Windrose's Steam page says of this flower-battering. "What begins as a grounded struggle for survival gradually draws you into a wider conflict, culminating in a swashbuckling tale of rival powers and an ancient, unspoken evil."

If you fancy giving Windrose a go prior to its early access release next week, it's got a demo out on Steam.