I was sent The Wandering Village as a review code. While I am very grateful for the opportunity, I won’t let it sway my opinions. This will be my honest review.
The Wandering Village is a cute and casual village builder with beautiful art, interesting mechanics, and a solid soundtrack. This game easily became one of my favorites due to its casual atmosphere. This game is simple enough to pick up quickly but offers enough of a challenge without becoming overwhelming. This game is the perfect entry point to the genre and a fantastic addition to any library.
The world has become toxic and uninhabitable. The few remaining survivors have found refuge on the back of a giant wandering beast, the Onbu. Together you will wander the world as you attempt to rebuild a symbiotic civilization on the back of the Onbu.
The Wandering Village is a beautiful game with many moving parts. I recommend you play a few runs without looking up guides. I believe most of the fun is trying to figure out how to grow your village properly, failing, and doing it better the next time around. I am sure there is an optimal way of running through this game, but I had as much fun failing as when everything was running smoothly. This game is casual enough that guides aren’t necessary.
The Wandering Village is one of the more casual village builders I’ve played. Worker, resource, and resource management are challenging enough to keep the game engaging without becoming overwhelming. There are settings you can tweak that makes the management mechanics more difficult, but I never felt like it lost its casual vibe. What does create a challenge is adapting to the random encounters throughout the Onbu’s journey. The types of scouting missions that become available, the types of biomes it walks through, and the Onbu’s health all affect the growth of your village. Players will often have to readjust quickly to changes. I lost a few villages because I wasn’t planning properly. You will eventually be able to have more control of the Onbu, but I enjoyed the random nature of the journey. It makes every run unique, giving the game lots of replayability.
I had a lot of fun with The Wandering Village, and recommend it to anyone in the market for a new game. The art is beautiful, and the mechanics are fun and interesting. The game just got an update that added a new biome, buildings, and encounters. You can pick up The Wandering Village on Steam and Xbox for $24.99 or play it for free if you have Game Pass.
