Free soulslike RPG Where Winds Meet prepares to drop a huge new expansion, with Steam Deck support finally confirmed

Barely a month after opening the doors to China circa 1000AD, big (free) soulslike RPG Where Winds Meet is gearing up to add an entirely new region to its already vast open world. Thursday December 11 marks the day that players will get the chance to explore an area of the map that's been blocked off since launch, and sorry if I can't help but cast my mind back to the magical time of Dragonspine opening in Genshin Impact in those first few fleeting months after launch.

Outlined on the Where Winds Meet roadmap not so long ago, the map expansion into the Roaring Sands is nearly upon us. Eric Zheng, the head of publishing at Where Winds Meet dev house Everstone Studio, recently hosted the game's first post-launch update dev talk. It's posed as a chance for the developer to check in on the biggest questions from the community, discuss what's on the way, and apparently threaten us with a goose that may or may not have broken into the studio.

The new Roaring Sands biome, which you'll find nestled between the two main regions, is said to be "a place of eerie oddities, ancient prophecies, and legends that refuse to fade." An angry goose still fits into any one of these, so I'm going into this expecting a veritable army of feathered fiends. You can't stop me. Only the geese can. And although the short 19-second clip below shows no white-feathered winged beasts, it doesn't show enough to convince me otherwise.

Coincidentally (or not), the launch of the Roaring Sands is also the day you'll be able to play Where Winds Meet on the go as the missing-in-action mobile client lands alongside it. There's also good news on the Steam Deck version (more on that in a moment). Now, Where Winds Meet is already a massive game. Launching with just two (big) regions in the middle of November, the core download annexed over 100GB of your increasingly precious storage space.

Given the map was darkened and not entirely invisible like the rest - this won't be the last map expansion, not by a long shot - there's every chance you already have the landscape of Roaring Sands sitting on said drive.

New Region Roaring Sands

Beyond Kaifeng lies the Roaring Sands.
A place of eerie oddities, ancient prophecies, and legends that refuse to fade.

On Dec 11, explore a region that spans nearly a third of Kaifeng, and follow the whisper of the Purple Star Calamity and the River… pic.twitter.com/CJUhWdiQOD

- Where Winds Meet (@WhereWindsMeet_) December 6, 2025

But if that doesn't end up being the case, you might have to drop that newly condensed Helldivers 2 client straight into the recycling bin. After all, you can't kid those soldiers into thinking you'll be on later to protect Super Earth from whatever's causing a ruckus this time. Players in China kept the fight going during that game's Second Galactic War, literally against the odds of the developers. Working some Wuxia magic on yet another angry Chinese goose is the least you can do to return the favor. Maybe the strongest goose subduer can free the developers from the tyranny of the goose overlord.

As for the rest of the developer update, it starts with an example of how the localization team is working to clear up some of the in-game text issues that happened to "make the story hard to follow." This includes the cleaning up of a puzzle that leads to the Panacea Fan unlock, which may render my guide on the matter obsolete overnight, but it does at least vindicate my decision to cover it at launch. It's the little victories.

After that, well, it gets lost in the weeds a little. While I don't doubt someone wanted to ask the team what their favorite upcoming skin was, it seems more like a sly way to highlight the next round of paid cosmetics, especially the "tell us three things you like about it" part. But hey, it's a free-to-play game. They have revenue targets to meet.

Turns out one of these upcoming skins isn't even really a skin at all. Fleethoof is a mount skin that makes you run like The Flash and slide down hills like you're about to humiliate someone (likely yourself) in Apex Legends. "You don't have to worry about someone stealing your mount," is a fun comment from the developers, but does that skirt the pay-to-win accusations? We're not getting into that debate now.

Most of the seven-minute dev diary covers the mobile launch, cross-play plans, and console optimizations, which we won't go into here for obvious reasons, but it does end on a high note. Where Winds Meet Steam Deck support is on the cards. Will it rival the mobile version that apparently matches the PC client in terms of graphical goodness? Who knows these days, honestly, but at least we're getting "separate tops and bottoms for outfits." Maybe the goose overlord will leave me be if I literally look like a million bucks.