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I’m going to freely admit that this was a bit tricky review as the city builder genre was never something I really got deeply invested in. They’re fun games and a nice break from the FPS genre, but that’s the extent of my enjoyment of them. So, I’m going to be approaching this title as a casual player and one who enjoys playing these games to just relax. With that said, The Wandering Village does succeed in that area, but does slightly stumble in a few key areas.
Right at the start, something I enjoyed was that, despite being set in a post-apocalypse, the world didn’t really look like a typical one you’d usually see in these scenarios. Yes, you are told something happened to the world when the game starts and there are hints throughout, it’s not really the main focus. The main and biggest focus, pun intended, is building a thriving village on your Onbu: A massive living landscape which your villagers call home. As the days progress, your Onbu will walk the land and traverse into various biomes, which will alter what you can and can not grow in your village, like cacti being able to only be grown in the Desert biomes. You can give it orders, once you build the required buildings, and these can be as simple as telling them to lie down or giving them a direction to move at intersections, which the Onbu will either obey or ignore your order. You can also feed it yourself with food you make via launching it with a trebuchet, which is actually pretty cool, and these can be either food you craft or, if you’re feeling sadistic, the villagers if you build a sacrificial altar. But, if you don’t keep up with your Onbu’s health by feeding it and removing any parasite that inhabits it, then it will die and the game is over. Along with the materials already present on their back, you can also collect its droppings to use as fertilizer and I had an immature giggle when I first saw the pop-up saying that the Onbu took a dump. Sadly, you can’t use the Onbu’s droppings as WMD’s as there is no combat or hunting in this game, though there are the aforementioned parasites that will appear on your Onbu you can fight off once you build the respected building.
Outside of the materials on your Onbu, you can also scavenge for materials. Once you build a Scavenger Tower, you can zoom out to the main map and choose an area for your villagers to scavenge and they’ll head out and bring back whatever loot they find after a while, with some areas having a small choose your own path pop-up window. Which brings me to the first major issue I have and what is the biggest problem with the game: The amount of waiting you have to do. Even at max speed, which is 4x, I was still waiting for villagers to deliver just the right amount of materials so I can research a new building I need, which is then followed by waiting for them to build it once they have the materials and that can take a while, even if you have the building set at the highest priority. The late Tom Petty once said that the waiting is the hardest part and that is true here.
The Onbu aside, The Wandering Village is, at its core, a basic city builder through and through. That means you build houses, construct pathways, and keep the citizens happy and well-fed. Right out of the gate, I was surprised by how easy this game was to get into and how fast it got me hooked. Most games of this type usually take who-knows-how-long to get going and, by the time it gets there, you’re either bored out of your skull or your city just went to hell in a handbasket faster than Raccoon City. Here, though? The moment I placed my first materials building and a few homes down, I found myself instantly hooked. I think it’s due in part to its simple gameplay and this almost cozy-like atmosphere that surrounds the game. It reminds me a lot of a Studio Ghibli film in a way, particularly if you take Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which the game was heavily inspired by, and mix it with the cozy feeling from My Neighbor Totoro. I equate it to something like Minecraft where, even if the day decided to give me the finger, I can just sit down and relax for a few hours or so, building and crafting the hours away. That’s how I feel about Wandering Village and I think what really helps this is the overall look and sound of the game. The music, for instance, has this peaceful tribal-like quality to it that never overshadows anything and has this ‘being one with nature’ feeling to it that just relaxes you. Same goes with the sound effects which have this nice ASMR feeling to them; From the simple hammering of nails to the chopping of wood to just the noises the Onbu makes. The artstyle is equally pleasant to look at, with beautiful Ghibli-like hand-drawn animated characters and buildings, though they do stand out just a bit when looking at the fully 3D Onbu.
Of course, it’s not a perfect game and it still suffers from some issues that many city builders have, but they don’t feel as serious as other games. For instance, when you start a new game, you only have a handful of villagers and just a few buildings to place, like a simple house and gathering huts like wood and stone, along with a dirt road you can place for villagers to traverse. Once you gather enough materials, which means waiting, you can then craft a Research Hut so you can unlock more buildings, grow new crops, and give new commands to your Onbu, alongside decorative items like bushes and a town square, both of which can raise your Happiness. To my surprise, all the buildings you can craft are useful, though there was one that was slightly concerning: a sacrifice building to turn your villagers into food for your Onbu. Yeah, the first time I saw that building, my eyes went wide and my brow raised high enough that I think The Rock was impressed. Anyway, speaking of food, that actually brings me to one of the other issues I have with this game and that is the Happiness meter. As long as you keep your villagers well-fed and the area looking nice, then their happiness goes up and the higher the happiness, the more villagers you can get. But, if it goes down far enough, then they’ll revolt which, if left unintended, will result in villagers leaving. There are times where I can see that everyone is happy and I think I got a good model village going, one that would even make Sandford proud and potentially jealous, but then get told their happiness is down for one reason or another, which tends to mostly be regarding food or lack of food consumption. I’ll see a villager, for example, complain that they’re hungry, only to walk over to the food storage, grab some food, and they’re right as rain. Other times, I’ll limit their food consumption just enough so that the kitchen can have some extra food, only for them to complain of starvation, when there are PLENTY of things to eat, so I don’t know what’s going on there. I understand fully that hunger is a basic need in real life but the fact that you can’t alter the food storage without the villagers getting mad is questionable.
Even with those little issues I had, I still enjoyed playing The Wandering Village, even as a casual city builder fan. To me, this is a good representation of what a Cozy Game can be and one game I can see myself returning to here and there if I want to just relax for a bit. Yes, the waiting can get tedious and the happiness upkeep is a chore, but, hey, like Meat Loaf once said: Two out of three ain’t bad. Besides, what other game allows you to live on the back of a giant docile creature that wanders a Ghibli-like world?
