Do not put city-building games in front of me; it’s dangerous. It has become glaringly noticeable, and I try to avoid playing them because I blink and five hours have gone by. That is exactly what happened with this week’s game. I set up shop on a giant mythical creature to save the world.

This week is The Wandering Village Review

The Wandering Village is a city-builder/management game from Stray Fawn Studios and Whisper Games. The game launched into 1.0 in July and is available for all modern consoles and the PC, and retails for $30.

Huge shout-out to the developer and publisher for the key. I didn’t think I would get a key, but here we are! Thank you again!

Civilization has crumbled, and humans have returned to being purely nomadic, running from a toxic fungus that claimed the world generations ago. The story of The Wandering Village scoops up one specific tribe that follows your orders to settle on a mythical creature once lost to the world, an Onbu. Not much information is given about the Onbu; just that these creatures lived for so long because they tower over the spore clouds.

Perfect place to set up shop.

Just as quickly as your small tribe settles on Onbu, the player is thrown into a story that involves mystery, science, and, possibly, the cure for the fungus that plagues the world. As you grow your tribe, inviting more and more people to take up residence on Onbu, the plan becomes clearer: to build up your civilization and research the cure.

The narrative does the job. The older couple that talks to the player has depth, making it seem like more than a cookie-cutter story about saving the world.

If you’ve ever played a city builder before, then you will be at home in The Wandering Village. The game starts the player off with a small group of people to chop down trees, break rocks, and research and build new structures. Before you know it, you will have a blossoming village filled with mycologists, chefs, doctors, stonemasons, and farmers.

Once a structure is built, the player chooses what item to grow, produce, sell, etc, and the game takes over. If and when the villagers are happy enough, then more of them will want to settle on your Onbu, increasing the size of the village, giving you more able-bodied workers to research bigger and better items.

Everything is automatic except taking care of your benefactor: Onbu

The catch here is, while you are building up your society, you will have to take into account the health of Onbu. Onbu has a standard health bar, sleep, hunger, and poison meter. Throughout your playthrough, Onbu will walk, sleep, eat, and essentially get into trouble, and you will have to build structures like a doctor, a discipliner, and a feeder. Fail in this task, and Onbu can get seriously injured or lose trust in you.

The wandering in The Wandering Village comes in the form of Onbu walking to wherever it sees fit. There are a good number of biomes in The Wandering Village: A desert, a jungle, a city, a literal ocean, and mountains, all of which, in the beginning at least, will be Onbu’s choice where to go. Biomes offer welcome gameplay changes. The first time that I noticed that I couldn’t grow berries, and the fact that I was in a desert biome, had me frantic. I was running around changing crops to corn and cacti and making sure that everyone had water. Needless to say, I lost a lot of villages in a short time.

I did whatever it took to never hurt Onbu, ever. I love them

EDIT: I was thinking to myself recently about how many different buildings could be constructed, and I was overwhelmed with the options, but as the game progressed and my journey lengthened, the onboarding process for new structures and how they worked always eased my anxiety.

Research is extensive and often leaves me a little overwhelmed. Simple descriptions with simple resource costs are what I want, and I got it every time. From doctors for villagers/Onbu, scavenger teams to do runs, fisheries, dung collectors, IT’S ALL THERE FOR THE PLAYER. Towards the endgame structures gear more towards villager happiness as opposed to resource production/management, which allowed me to focus more on a functional city as opposed to a bunch of buildings haphazardly placed on Onbu’s back.

The Wandering Village has a lot of flat, light colors. It isn’t until you start utilizing the focus in/out option that you can really gauge how great-looking the game is. Onbu itself really embodies the mythical “god of the earth” with the rocks on its back, mud-like appendages hanging off its neck and sides, and how it towers over every structure.

Every time I focused in on my villagers really gained an appreciation for the hand-drawn 2D structures and characters; they are just so beautiful. The same goes for every time I zoomed out to see my surroundings and direct Onbu where to go; I got lost in the scenery that I was passing by. Ruined city centers are covered in enormous fungi with forever branching hyphae, colored in a deep purple, and toxic spore clouds dominate the area. Mountains are cool, the deserts are hot, and the ocean is my favorite, with schools of fish and the waves that Onbu makes when swimming through it.

The soundtrack is nice, nothing to write home about, but nice. Different biomes have different music, and when the going gets tough, the music ramps up.

1.0 has never looked so good. The Wandering Village offers up a great experience that is expected of city-builder/management games, while posing the thought of taking care of another life while trying to survive yourself.

The city building parts are great. I love going through, trying to make my villagers happy (though a lot of the time, they were rioting). The onboarding works well, though some moments can get overwhelming. The random events, whether it was the weather or the choices I had to make, kept me engaged. The story is fine, the game looks great, and it plays really well.

A solid 1.0 release.

8/10