A Few Words from the Developer

Hi everyone! I’m the developer. I never expected people would actually buy and support this little desktop companion game. Thank you so much!

How It Started

The first spark for this project came during the recent Typhoon Bavi. While slacking off a little at work, I wanted to check the storm’s projected path and see what kind of wind and rain to expect. Normally, I would turn to the more professional Windy.

Windy provides an incredible amount of detailed information, but what I wanted was something much simpler—something that could sit quietly on my desktop, that I could glance at every now and then and casually click around a little.

Then an idea struck me: what if I made a desktop idle game driven by live weather data? A little world in the corner of the screen that would slowly change along with the weather outside—and perhaps give fellow cloud watchers the occasional little surprise.

Much like wonderful games such as Neko Atsume, Birdwatching Notebook, and Tiny Pasture, I wanted it to quietly keep players company without getting in the way of their work.

That sounded pretty good to me, so while waiting for the typhoon to arrive, I built the first version of the game. Later, I wanted an easy way to install and play it on different computers, so I thought, “Why not just put it on Steam?”

And somehow, that’s how the game ended up here.

As another strange coincidence, the release happened to line up with the second typhoon in this little story: Dolphin. Its track also looks surprisingly similar to Bavi’s, which feels strangely fitting.

About the Price

Truth be told, I didn’t expect anyone to actually buy it. When Steam asked me to choose a launch price, I simply went with what felt right at the time.

Later, the feedback from my coworkers turned out to be more positive than I expected. By the time I decided that I wanted to lower the price, I ran into some limitations in Steam’s pricing rules, and it was already too late to adjust the base price before release. So, I chose the maximum launch discount of 40%.

I hope the discounted price feels reasonable. Whether or not you decide to buy the game, thank you for taking the time to visit its page—and a sincere thank-you to every player who has chosen to support this little project. (bows)

What’s Next

I’ll continue developing and improving the game, just as I described in the Early Access section, gradually making this little desktop world better and more complete.

If you have any feature suggestions, bug reports, or even some fun and unusual ideas, please feel free to send them my way. I’ll read every piece of feedback carefully. :)

Once again, thank you all for your interest and support!

About This Game

Windborne is a live weather wallpaper that quietly lives on your desktop — and a gentle, unobtrusive collection game. It paints the world's real weather as a hand-drawn map behind your windows: wind streams, rain falls, cyclones turn slowly. And when the right weather arrives, small visitors drift in on the wind — waiting to be noticed, and collected.

It never fights for your attention. No forced interaction, no punishment, no timers. Keep working, browsing, watching — the weather and its visitors simply drift by in the background. Glance over now and then, and you might find a rare guest who only came today.

A living weather map

• Real-time global weather, rendered by the wallpaper itself — a soft cartoon palette with ink coastlines only, no borders, no clutter

• Live wind-flow particle animation; switch between wind / rain / temperature color layers

• Live tropical cyclone tracking: past and forecast tracks, a category-colored spinning icon, particles swirling around active storms

• City labels in 中文 or English, switchable in one click

• Worldwide presets: global overview, continents, ocean basins, East Asia detail — or custom coordinates

Guests on the wind

Different weather brings different visitors. Clear skies, sudden rain, high winds, the edge of a rain band — each condition invites its own little creatures, each with its own rarity, coming and going with the weather. There's nothing to grind: leave it on your desktop, and the codex fills in on its own, day by day. Tend a small desktop ecosystem, too, and watch it grow with the weather and the hours.

Restraint by design

• Low-contrast, slow, and never in the way — it's wallpaper, not a pop-up

• Zero forced interaction, zero punishment: miss a moment and it's fine — the weather comes again tomorrow

• Light on your system: only the particle layer animates; weather refreshes every 30 minutes by default (adjustable)

• Multi-monitor support, with per-display region and layer settings

Data & disclaimer

Weather snapshots come from Windy-Data-API (built on Open-Meteo AWS open data / NOAA GFS); cyclone data is parsed from GDACS; map outlines are from Natural Earth. An internet connection is required for live data; when offline, the map and cities still render and cached data is shown.

This is an ambient visualization and casual game. Weather and storm information is simplified and stylized, and may be delayed, cached, interpolated, or unavailable. Do not use it for emergency, navigation, aviation, maritime, or any safety-critical decisions. Not affiliated with , Open-Meteo, GDACS, NOAA, or Natural Earth.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Pre-generated AI: GPT Image 2 was used during development to create 2D paper-cut-style images included in the app, specifically sprites for weather phenomena, collectible visitors, and ecosystem entities. GPT Image 2 was also used to create the key art used in the Steam store capsules and library assets. These images were selected and edited by the developer, including cropping, background removal, color and alpha cleanup, and export. The app does not use generative AI at runtime.