The Wandering Village Review – A Home Wherever You Are

One of the things that has come from the gaming market, where indie games can flourish, is that genres often dominated by one or two titles have exponentially grown. Take, for instance, the Management and city builder genre that had only a few games in it, a few experiences to have, and now you could wander Steam for days and never reach the end. Not all of these games are good, of course, but thankfully, The Wandering Village both manages to craft something unique in its approach and engaging in its execution.

The first noticeable thing about the game is its art style, which comes through more in its story mode than anything else. The character has the appearance of an old Hayao Miyazaki movie, in particular that of the 1984 classic Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. These comparisons become more evident during the game, in which the player can have characters scavenge using transportation that bears similarities to the Wind Riders from that film. This art can be at odds with itself at times, the game itself using smaller caricatures to represent the village you are building that feel far more generic compared to the rest of the world, but in cutscenes, the character representations draw you back into the nostalgic aesthetic.

The narrative also feels drawn heavily from the plot of this movie, as well, though with noticeable distinctions. The most obvious of these similarities, though, is the fact that the game is set in the post-apocalyptic future. There are remnants littered around that connect the player to a civilization they might have once known, but that is long gone. You take the role of chief of a village on the back of an Onbu, a wandering creature that has on its back enough land to harvest, forage, and cultivate a life for you and your group, but like in real life, this can be a challenging endeavor.

The twist to the usual city building management game is that the Onbu is always on the move, only stopping to rest where it can. This removes the concept of seasons from The Wandering Village, with the onbu traveling through biomes along his way. For instance, the player can build air vents to collect moisture for fresh water; however, these buildings become nearly useless in the desert. Crossing an ocean can bring its own opportunities, like fishing or collecting seawater, which helps to alleviate village needs. At first, you might feel limited, your creature wandering where it wants and how, but soon you are able to develop a host of functions that give you some control over elements like direction. The creature has stats like hunger and tiredness that play into the caretaking of your home. The Onbu might not listen if it hates you, and can die if you don’t take care of its needs, a bad way to end your journey.

The game has a massive amount of buildings to unlock and build, but as the game progresses, you might start to realize that it is too many. Balancing the needs of your villagers can be hard, with shelters almost all having pros that come with stiff cons, at least near the beginning. Your villagers want to work towards their well-being as well, though this is where you start to see the game bottleneck itself. Villagers with no job perform menial labor, i.e., building new buildings, but as you build new places of employment, you have more elements that need to be functioning to take care of everybody’s needs. You don’t need all buildings running all the time, but as you grow, you realize the ones that are needed might even outweigh who you have to manage them, thus making it harder to collect material to research new buildings, or build ones you are trying to place.

On top of this, the game constantly indicates to you when buildings like your mushroom farm are lacking staff, even if you need them for more important tasks. There are menus that handle this, so why I need the visual cue constantly warning me is beyond me. Depending on just how close together a series of issues hits, your village can drop from a 7 on the happiness meter to a 2 in the blink of an eye. The game then punishes you for struggling by barring things, such as new citizens, that could help you overcome this inability to put out all the fires because you don’t have enough people in the first place.

One of the more interesting uses of researching new abilities, though, is the farm, which allows you to learn a multitude of crops that you can grow on the farm. These are used to switch what you grow between different biomes, so your farm is always functioning. In comparison to this, we have the saltwater collector, which ONLY functions if you are over water, but can still be staffed. It seems pointless to build something like this when it will sort of just sit there, taking up space over multiple biomes until it functions again. You do eventually get the ability to upgrade buildings, which give minor buffs. It does help alleviate some issues you might have had with certain tasks, but it never quite makes up for the idea that you would think nomads could build structures that serve multiple purposes. This becomes evident when you have a structure for fishing and one for saltwater collection, which don’t feel too dissimilar to each other.

There are several modes in which to play The Wandering Village, in case you wanted a new experience. In one, you can set challenges that you must overcome, trying to travel 1000 miles. It is for people who have mastery of the game, which, obviously, I did not have, which is why I steered clear of that. The other mode allows you to simply set the parameters of the experience, such as making your Onbu immortal. That is a mode definitely made with people like me in mind. This keeps the game replayable, not like it needed anything else to feel that way.

Verdict

The Wandering Village has its issues, most games do, but even these issues I outlined never felt off-putting to me. There is an engaging experience here that you don’t get to see very often. Wandering the land on the back of your Onbu, feeling like you stepped into a Miyazaki classic. The struggle to keep your villages alive and moving ever forward draws you into it, even if at times you feel the struggle could be alleviated slightly. The Wandering Village definitely has a place in my gaming rotation, and one day, my village will be thriving.

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