The Crosswind Crew has announced that the day for the alpha playtest of their highly anticipated pirate survival game, Crosswind, has finally arrived. It will include around 30 hours’ worth of content to keep you busy while sailing, building, and exploring the islands.

The playtest has three biomes to visit while sailing around. There are densely wooded islands, tropical beaches with a lot of open land to build on, and a damp, swampy terrain. On these isles, you can discover dungeons, towns, and other players’ hideouts. Each environment has its own resources, enemy types, and hazards to deal with. You can claim one for your own base, which you can build from a selection of different materials. In the alpha test, six will be available, from twigs and leaves to wooden or stone walls. This is already a larger variety than most survival games, and it even comes with decorative structures like trophy heads. At your hideout, you can craft more powerful tools and farm to keep you and your crew well fed. It will also be a great location to think up a strategy to conquer dungeons and defeat the captain bosses, of which there will be three present. Each of them has their own fighting style and difficulty.

It wouldn’t be a pirate game if there were no ships to sail, of course. During the alpha, you can obtain four vessels, three of which are regular pirate ships, like a small sloop or a massive galleon. However, if you are skilled enough, you will be able to take control and command a merchant’s vessel.

This is the game’s first public test, but will have limited spots to ensure the stability of the servers as more players come in. It will start on the 25th of June and is expected to run for four weeks. If you haven’t requested access already, you can do so on Steam.

What features are you most interested in exploring during this playtest? Let me know in the comments.