Krafton's Project Windless: New RPG Based on Korean Novel Revealed

Krafton pulled the curtain on 'Project Windless' at Sony's PlayStation State of Play. The Krafton RPG based on novel series 'The Bird That Drinks Tears' is an open-world, single-player action game set in a Korean fantasy universe created by author Lee Yeong-do.

The Project Windless reveal is the first public showing from Krafton's Montreal Studio, a development team the publisher quietly assembled in late 2022 by recruiting senior talent from Ubisoft's Montreal offices.

For Krafton, the project represents a significant strategic pivot. The company's revenue has long been dominated by PUBG, a multiplayer battle royale title. Its previous attempts at premium single-player games have underperformed commercially.

What is Project Windless? Krafton's new open-world RPG based on The Bird That Drinks Tears, explained

The Bird That Drinks Tears is often described in Korean media as the country's answer to The Lord of the Rings. Written by Lee Yeong-do, who is credited as the pioneer of Korean fantasy fiction, the novels are built around four intelligent races: Humans, Rekon (towering bird-like warriors), Nhaga (reptilian beings who remove their hearts for immortality) and Tokkebi (fire-wielding creatures drawn from Korean folklore). The series has sold translation rights in 16 countries. Harper Voyager is scheduled to publish the first English volume, The Heart of the Nhaga, in June 2026.

Rather than directly adapting the novels' plot, Krafton Montreal set The Project Windless game roughly 1,500 years before the books' events, during a period the source material barely covers. Players control the "Hero King," a Rekon warrior armed with twin blades, navigating a continent-spanning conflict that will shape the founding of a new kingdom. Methe described the approach as giving players agency over how "wars unfold, how alliances are formed, and how history is written."

The game uses Unreal Engine 5 and a proprietary system Krafton calls "Mass Technology," which renders thousands of independently controlled AI soldiers and large creatures fighting simultaneously in real time. The studio pitched this as its core differentiator: players fight directly within these large-scale engagements rather than commanding troops from a distance, blending precise combat with battlefield-scale chaos.

Project Windless is currently in development for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro (no other platforms are confirmed). Krafton has not confirmed a release date or pricing details.

The reveal comes at a time when the AAA single-player RPG market is both crowded and expensive. Production costs for open-world games routinely exceed $100 million, and the genre's recent track record is mixed. Whether Krafton's Montreal bet pays off depends on how well a studio built from Ubisoft alumni can execute on a Korean fantasy IP that remains unknown to most Western players.

If Project Windless finds an audience, it could do for Korean fantasy literature what CD Projekt Red's The Witcher adaptation did for Andrzej Sapkowski's Polish novels: turn a regional literary property into a global entertainment franchise.