Available on: Steam PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox
Played on: Steam PC
City builders and colony sims are enjoying a bit of a renaissance lately, but chances are The Wandering Village has caught your eye thanks to its dinosaur-like mascot. The Wandering Village’s walking behemoth isn’t just a gimmick, but a unique, well-implemented feature that elevates the genre into something special.
Read on for our review of The Wandering Village!
In Onbu We Trust
Unlike most colony sims, The Wandering Village features a strong Story Mode, with the player’s tribe discovering a miracle: a living Onbu. The Wandering Village is set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, where the hubris of mankind has left much of the world dangerously toxic. The gentle titans known as Onbu once lived in peace alongside their human denizens, and the story follows the mystery (and solution!) to what went wrong.
One of the first main missions is unearthing and repairing an old radio tower. As my Onbu travels ponderously across the world, I’m contacted by fellow survivors and villages. By completing their quests to construct buildings and produce certain goods, I earn extra rewards. The quest system cleverly teaches various structures and their uses, without dry menus and tutorials. I loved the Ghibli-esque design of the characters, and particularly the writing of the two tribal elders who help guide the player.
The Elders help guide the player through Story mode
I wasn’t expecting such a serious, heartfelt story that helps connect the player to their Onbu, and the wider world, along with some pretty obvious environmental and animal abuse messages. Ultimately it’s up to the player how to manage their relationship with their Onbu. Do I exploit the beast by extracting its blood and digging deep into its body for more resources? Do I irritate it by mining its rock spikes to clear room for my buildings? Do I feed it my own villagers, creating a cult-like following?
Or do I nurture my gentle giant, researching better nutrition, providing anti-toxins, and directing it toward good food and sleeping spots?
And yes, you can totally pet the Onbu.
Onbu’s never-ending journey introduces new biomes and weather patterns as it journeys through arid deserts, chilly mountains, tropical seas, and toxic ruins. Each biome has its own challenges and effects on my resources. Tomatoes don’t grow in the cooler weather, for example, while my water-collecting Air Wells produce zero water in the desert, forcing me to rely on my reserves, and water-producing cacti at my farms.
The Ocean biome yields extra resources, but swimming is harder on Onbu
On the other hand, rarer resources, such as sand or spores, can only be found in certain regions. By constructing Scavenger Huts, I can send out search parties at various sites within a radius of Onbu, retrieving resources. When I begin preparing rations, I can send teams further out on the map, and occasionally a little story decision pops up that could yield different rewards, such as handing over water for grateful survivors who then join my group.
In addition to the lengthy Story mode, players can play Challenge mode, imposing certain restrictions or difficulties and surviving a 1000km journey, or Sandbox mode to essentially add cheat codes.
Toxicity of Our City
Starting out, I need to lay down woodcutters and quarries for wood and stone, build ramshackle huts, and get my research hut up and going.
Space is somewhat limited on Onbu’s back — though after a nearly 20-hour Story playthrough, I never quite ran out. I enjoyed the interesting challenges of placing certain buildings in certain areas. The Dung Collector must be placed near the rear, while the Hornblower, which can command Onbu, must be placed near its head.
The colony sim keeps things simple and manageable with four factors to consider: food quality, food variety, housing quality, and decorations. Villagers need food and shelter, and their happiness rises with improved food and better homes. When happiness is above a certain threshold, additional villagers are attracted to join. In other words, happiness is directly tied to growth, which is nice and simple.
As a colony sim, I don’t directly control my villagers. Instead, I build new buildings and assign workers. I try to place buildings to create an efficient logistics chain between storage and manufacturing — not to mention food stalls, farms, and kitchens to keep the population fed and content.
The UI and menus are attractive and intuitive; with the press of a button I can turn off a building, instantly freeing the workers. Free workers automatically become builders and gatherers. Many buildings don’t have to be staffed all the time. For example, Fisheries and Saltwater Collectors are excellent while in the ocean biome, but literally useless everywhere else.
Despite the post-apocalyptic world, there isn’t much danger in The Wandering Village. It’s not exactly relaxing, however; there’s a steady increase in research, upgrades, and building complexity. The biggest challenge is the environment — the poisoned world, especially when traveling through the ruins biome, and during the tense survival finale. Healing villagers, and Onbu, is a constant drain on resources, not to mention fighting the toxic spores and parasites that can infest Onbu’s back, infecting crops and trees.
Managing the normal challenges of a colony sim while dealing with a constantly shifting, and occasionally dangerous environment is a satisfying experience, though I discovered a few quibbles. The hand-drawn art style and limited camera perspective can make it tricky to spot certain objects — like meddling toxic spores. For some reason you can’t queue research, and constantly juggling workers and shifting crops can grow tedious.
Day 147 – my little village is coming together nicely
The Rating
The Wandering Village is rated E for Everyone, with Crude Humor and Mild Fantasy Violence. Onbu defecates, though it isn’t really shown, and players can harvest the dung into gas and compost. Workers can burn away fungal infections, and use pesticides to remove unwanted parasites (which simply fly away). Colony sims can be challenging to manage, though The Wandering Village’s welcoming art style, excellent UI, and solid tutorial make it perfect for newcomers.
The Takeaway
The Wandering Village is the colony sim I didn’t know I needed, and absolutely fell in love with. The world is interesting without being overwhelming, and Onbu’s management is perfectly ingrained in the tech tree, resource production, and environment. Wonderful music and a lovely art style make it a joy to grow the village, and the tutorial is a perfect jumping-on point for new players, and newcomers to the genre who are looking for a sim with a lot of heart.
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