The Wandering Village is a charming new city building title that has quite a few twists and turns. That uniqueness helps to make the gameplay more interesting and also sets it apart from just about every other similar title in the genre. Set in a post-apocalyptic world that has been destroyed by poisonous plants and fungi, you lead a ragtag group of nomads wandering through this cursed world just trying to survive.
However, you don’t stay on the ground for very long. Your lucky group runs across the most incredible discovery: a gentle but giant brontosaurus-looking creature whose colossal size makes it so that he can support an entire village on his back. He also has a very convenient flat area on his backside where you can build homes, resource buildings, streets, farms and other modern conveniences. So, your group decides to establish a new village there. And if that sounds cool, you can find The Wandering Village on Steam, the PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch.
The concept of managing a village riding on the back of a giant creature called an Onbu is interesting, but it’s also much more than just a gimmick. Yes, you will have all of the typical city-building challenges like you would find in a game like Timberborn, as well as the post-apocalyptic strife found in titles like (one of my personal favorites) Surviving the Aftermath or Floodland. But in addition to all of that, you also need to take care of your Onbu and help to keep him healthy and fed, since he is basically your home. You will also need to build up trust with him over time, which will give you certain advantages, not the least of which is being able to influence his wanderings as you explore the world, as well as his behavior.
Being a mobile village brings with it certain advantages and also challenges. For example, since you don’t directly control Onbu, he will often pick whatever path he wants as he wanders on the main map. Eventually, you can learn how to influence his decisions when he comes to a crossroads, but even if he trusts you, he will still sometimes go his own way. This can change the landscape and thus the environment for your village. For example, if Onbu walks towards a great desert, then your extensive network of rain catchers that you have built in order to collect water won’t work anymore. Thankfully, Onbu walks pretty slowly, so you should have time to quickly build a cactus farm to supplement your water production. But if you are not paying attention to where Onbu is walking, you can be caught flatfooted when the environment changes.
Besides building up influence over where Onbu wanders, you also will need to spend a significant amount of time and resources researching how to keep your colossus healthy. The title kind of hints that you could seek to control Onbu and become his master, and there are technologies that can help you to discipline him at the cost of trust. But who wants to do that? A much better path is to support your gentle giant, becoming his friend while building a symbiotic relationship where everyone benefits.
At first, building up trust will require basic things, like learning how to feed Onbu when he gets hungry, especially if the current environment you are wandering through does not support his go-to meal preferences. He likes to eat mushrooms mostly, so you can collect them from around the village or even farm them. And then once you research how to do it, you can bundle a bunch of them up into a ball and load them into a giant catapult to shoot them towards his mouth. He always looks so happy when he catches a giant mushroom meatball.
And while Onbu is massive, he is not immune to the poisonous fungi of the world. He can still get sick and poisoned by it. But have no fear because you can research technologies to heal him and even assign one of your townspeople to become an Onbu doctor. Your doctor flies around in a balloon to give Onbu his medicine, which is another charming and fun interaction to watch.
While much of the tech tree for The Wandering Village involves Onbu-related technologies, the rest of it has many of the traditional city-building advancements you will find in other similar titles. You still need to build up your town, feed your people and get them the tools they need to survive in this harsh world after all. You will need to research different crops, such as corn, which grows in warmer temperatures, and beets thriving when it’s a bit cooler outside.
There are also things like the standard wheat farming to windmills to bakeries chain to make bread, which is found in most city building titles, even ones like the recently remade Stronghold Crusader. So, expect a lot of the same kind of thing if you play a lot of builders. In general, the tech chain in The Wandering Village makes a lot of sense, with many branches so that you can quickly stretch out to earn key techs you like or need while avoiding others until later.
There is also a scavenging component, which is sort of a fun little mini game. Once you construct a scout tower, you can send out flying teams of explorers to gather resources in the world, which is especially helpful for things like iron ore that are not naturally occurring on Onbu’s back. Your scouts can travel a good distance away from the village to key landmarks around where Onbu is walking, and researching preserved food technology enables the construction of rations for much longer expeditions. It’s possible to make scavenging a key part of your village’s survival strategy, which adds another interesting element to the gameplay.
Finally, there is a story mode where you learn about the history of the poisoned world and also about Onbu. Eventually, you can take real, concrete steps to try and heal the land once and for all, but it’s a long journey getting there if you want to take that path. Thankfully, the story mode can be experienced while you are playing The Wandering Village, so it becomes a nice little extra that can be enjoyed while you are building up your town, petting Onbu (yes, that is actually a technology you can research) and generally surviving and thriving in the otherwise hopeless world.
As building titles go, The Wandering Village is something special. It successfully mixes familiar mechanics with imaginative new ideas, creating a balance between managing villagers and nurturing the giant creature that carries them through a toxic world. Whether you’re expanding farms, researching technology or catapulting giant mushroom snacks into Onbu’s mouth, there’s a constant sense of charm and wonder. For city-builder fans looking for something fresh, this is a journey well worth taking.
Developers: Stray Fawn Studio
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox Series X