I’ve got to admit, when I heard about an “open-world, third-person adventure game set in 13th-century Mongolia,” my mind instantly went to Genghis Khan and military conquests, but there’s none of that in Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori. Instead of people, the only living beings that will attack you in this game are wild animals.
I love a grand historical adventure, but without violent conflict, I wondered, would it make an interesting game? After speaking with the developers from Aesir Interactive at Gamescom, and trying a hands-on 30-minute demo for myself, this unusual premise started to make perfect sense.
You see, the Windstorm games (there are several) are games about horses: riding, feeding, grooming, and breeding horses. But whereas horse-riding may be a fun activity in modern times, in the Mongolian Empire, horses formed an integral part of society. Without horses, there would be no cavalry (granted), but also no travel and trade for ordinary Mongolians. Just imagine having to walk through the endless grassland on your own two feet!
Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori underlines the importance of horse-riding by granting you the role of a young, inexperienced courier, tasked with delivering messages and goods between settlements through a quest system. As I quickly discovered while making my first deliveries, this job is not without danger, as wild animals, bad weather, and a hostile landscape form a formidable hurdle to overcome. I had not played for long when I narrowly escaped from a wolf, avoided a deadly plunge from a cliff, and nearly froze to death on a mountain peak.
Luckily, I received a bow (remember, for protection only), a map to help me navigate, and consumables to gain buffs. To obtain new arrows, potions, and medicine, I had to collect materials from the wilds and put them together in the crafting menu. It’s a good thing the developers were there to help me craft an anti-cold potion for my poor horse, or it surely would’ve perished on that mountain. Besides making me sad, that would’ve been bad for my progress, too: If your horse dies, it’s game over.
Despite these snowy troubles, I was glad to find such a highly varied landscape passing me by. The grassy steppes I expected, but the grassland is frequently interrupted by rivers, lakes, stony hills, jagged peaks, and patches of forests. Monotonous, it is not, and that seems very important, given that much of this game is spent traveling on horseback.
Naturally, caring for horses involves more than keeping them out of harm’s way. In Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, you must feed your horses, water them, and keep them happy. You can also buy, sell, and even breed your own horses. After receiving my second four-legged friend in the demo, the developers showed me their stat pages, which clearly showed some differences in strength and endurance between them. That’s great news, as I don’t want to use the same steed for every mission — it’s far more fun to find the best horse for the task among several options.
The horses in Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori are startingly realistic in both appearance and behavior. The latter can probably be attributed to Alice Ruppert, Aesir Interactive’s horse advisor (yes, horse advisor), who informed me that constant neighing is certainly not a realistic behavior. To accurately capture the horses’ likenesses, the art team was sent to a barn to observe them in real life, but they didn’t go alone; the sound team needed a field trip too — in their case, to capture how horses sound.
Choosing real horse recordings over generic, downloadable “horse sounds” is no easy feat. Aesir Interactive’s communications manager, Adriano Nicolosi, painted a rather funny picture of the sound team waiting around a particularly stubborn horse, unwilling to make the right noise. That must’ve been a long day.
Ruppert and Nicolosi told me that the quest for accuracy didn’t end there; capturing Mongolian culture and history was another major goal. Of course, no game can claim true historical accuracy, but besides practical necessities such as the horses being kept in fenced-off areas (Mongolians didn’t use wooden fences), Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori tries to be authentic.
“Not everything is possible,” Ruppert explains. “There’s always a choice of what we choose to portray and what we highlight. But it must be believable and respectful towards the culture.”
That led me to the single most important question on everyone’s mind: Can you name your horses? As player freedom clashes with historical facts, I am told that the team remains, thus far, undecided. Sir-Neighs-a-Lot may never join your 13th-century Mongolian stable.
Aesir Interactive is a German studio, but they hired Mongolian advisors, a Mongolian musician, and a Mongolian actress to voice the game’s protagonist. To my delight, I could hear the Mongolian musician playing outside while I was riding through Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori’s demo. After finishing up, I had a brief chat with him through Google Translate. He told me he was born in Mongolia and lived there until the age of 25.
“I thought of this song as a reflection of the history of Mongolia,” he told me when asked about the inspiration for the music. “I want people to experience the natural beauty of the Mongolian steppes.”
“I hope [Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori] reaches many people, and that people will learn more about nomadic culture,” he added.
Following this demo, I think that wish may very well come true. I’m the sort of player who likes to collect mounts and care for pets in other games, so I’ve no doubt I would enjoy the horse-keeping part of Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, but the Mongolian aspect is what really draws me in. Whether the quest system is interesting enough to keep my attention is too early to say, but I’m very eager to learn more about the Mongolian people within that timeframe, how they lived, what they thought… Horse game and historical adventure — it could be a match made in heaven.
Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori will launch in early access on Nov. 4 on Windows PC. The full release will arrive on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X/S in 2026.
