Wind's Heartbeat

About this game

Latest news

• Announcements·28 Jul 2026Official

  Who wants more inventory space?

  It's only been two weeks since I posted, but we've had some exciting, progress and I couldn't wait to share it.We've completed the ability to upgrade your inventory, and here's a demo:'You now start with a basic satchel mesh which gives you 5 slots on your inventory (excluding the toolbelt, which will be upgraded separately). You can then gather plant fiber and berries and craft a new item: a Small Pack. When you apply it, you will get an additional 5 slots and you are now shown wearing the small pack. There are more upgrades planned for you as the game progresses!There is basic food and special food, and special herbed food now gives a day-long buff to certain things. Is it annoying to boil water? Eat the food that decreases hydration loss. Want more stamina? Eat the food that decreases stamina drain while running. There are three tiers to each food which increase the potency of the effect. BUT you can only eat until you're full, so choose your buffs wisely!In the spirit of making the game more survival-y, food now spoils. The base ingredients like hopniss and carrots do not spoil, but crafted food does, so eat it quickly! The inventory slot shows how spoiled a particular food is.We also fully implemented the respawning berry bushes and now you can pick the berries and the bushes will have new berries for you ready in three days.Finally, here's the great animation for the loading screen:Next up is a visual update to the journal, along with adding some functionality we've been wanting for a while! The journal is going to be your central repository of information. This is where information lives about how to train the horse, the environment's plants and their uses, and the character's backstory, as well as your current main quest. If you ever have questions about what you should be doing, the journal will tell you!After that is wood chopping - you'll be able to chop down trees for wood which will be used around the camp for various upgrades, as well as auto-feeding t...
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• Announcements·15 Jul 2026Official

  Going Survival

  The last few months we've been working on making the game more survival-y!There are now notifications when you pick items up or drop them from the inventory. These notifications will also be used to tell the player they can't do what they're trying to do, and why.We've added weight to the inventory and soon will size the inventory down and give the player options to upgrade their inventory. If the player picks up too much stuff they won't be able to move!We've updated the UI to show the player's food and water stats, and will eventually use the sun and a moon icon to show how far along in the day it is.A big part of making this survival game a game in which you have to work to survive, the player now starts with a canteen! They can fill the canteen with dirty water and then boil that dirty water in the pot on the campfire, and finally drink the clean water.We're pushing for the ability to upgrade almost everything about the player's initial camp. First up is giving the player upgradable storage options in their camp, starting with a carpet bag. Players can now keep items in their bag if they don't want the items in their inventory.We've added some new foragables, including a salmonberry with an "unpicked" and "picked" state.And (drumroll) we have several new Points of Interest! This is the fishing hut, all modeled and textured. We have another one added as well, but it's a secret. :)Otherwise, we have completed the touching minigame!So what's next? We're working on being able to upgrade the number of slots in the player's inventory through crafted items. Then we'll be adding food that gives buffs to the player for the day. We have some awesome music being developed, and finally we'll be working on having food spoil. We also have an incredibly cute "loading" animation that will be on the initial loading screen, and I'm excited to share that with everyone.-Leslie
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• Announcements·28 Apr 2026Official

  Planking the horse

  A new month and more updates!When gentling a horse, an important step is to get the horse used to weight on its back. This often takes the form of a person "planking" on the horse, easing their weight on and off of the horse to the horse's comfort level. That's the training minigame we've fully completed since the last update, and here is a taste:Be careful to pet her in the right spot or the horse will bite you!This leads into the next minigame I mentioned in the last post: the player pets the horse to get the horse used to human touch and being touched where the horse can't see. We've created touch zones - areas on the horse where the player is allowed to touch - and are finalizing the zone's look, scoring, and kicking the player out of the game if they mess up too badly.Once this minigame is finished the demo will be very close to being feature-complete! Due to the intense nature of creating animations, only small progress on creating the Points of Interest was made, but here's a sneak preview of the fishing hut, where the player will be able to find the items necessary to make a fishing pole:To tie all of these elements together we have the Journal. In general, we don't want the player to ever be confused about what they should do next. While this is a semi-open world game and the player may explore, gather, and craft at their leisure, the game has a through-line where the player should gentle the horse, tend to her wounds, and set off into the world. So as the player progresses through the game there will be different goals and game mechanics that the player will need to complete. This is where the journal comes in. The journal contains the information necessary to help the player know what task is next and how to accomplish it. As the player progresses, new journal entries become available.The journal functionality is now complete.Another thing we've been exploring and finishing up is having the horse use something called root motion. Overall, we don't like ho...
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• Announcements·17 Mar 2026Official

  Our history and road to the demo

  Hello and thank you for checking out Wind's Heartbeat! I'm Leslie, and Nayaki and I are the two developers on the game. We've been working on Wind's Heartbeat for about two years now and we're excited to finally have a Steam page for it. I want to share some of the things we've built so far, and what our next milestone is.The First Two YearsWe started by creating the horse model and skeleton, and building out a basic item, inventory, and crafting system, along with interactions like picking items up and placing them down. Below are VERY old screenshots, and you can compare them to what things look like now in the trailer.We started to build out the environment, the main character, horse interactions, and some survival mechanics like placing and collecting from noose traps.More recently we've built out some training games that the player plays with the horse to get the horse used to the character and get them ready to ride, added a day-night cycle system, and added a variety of animations around horse mounting, character idling, tapping sap from maples trees, and jumping. Next Destination: The DemoSo what's next? Where are we heading? We're working on getting the demo ready. Since we have a lot of major systems in place, we've spent the last few months ironing out bugs and making the game function more smoothly and generally look better. Recently we created animations for the character using the cooking pot, and for the character to be able to sit down in a chair.We still have things to add, such as another training game for the player to get the horse comfortable with being touched, adding a quest tracker / journal system so the player always knows what they should be doing next, creating assets for points of interest that the player can explore and find rare items at, adding items and icons for new crafting recipes.We're hopeful to have a demo available in the next couple of months! In the meantime I look forward to sharing more updates. - Leslie
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