The Wandering Village Review: A Charming City Builder Upon the Back of a Giant (PS5)

What happens when you take the city builder genre and combine it with a bunch of survival game mechanics? The results, a village survival builder set on top of a giant living creature that wanders a toxic landscape. The Wandering Village spent a few years in early access, but it’s finally fully released for every platform. Stray Fawn Studios has delivered an addictive experience that blends survival and city-building. At first, I felt overwhelmed with the UI and the controls, but The Wandering Village’s tutorial makes it easy to pick up for beginners. 

The Wandering Village is available on PC, PS4/PS5, Switch, Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S for $29.99/£26.99.

If you’re interested in our other reviews, here are a few recommendations:

1. Spirit of the North 2 (PS5) | Review: A Quiet Adventure With A Few Bumps In The Snow
2. FBC: Firebreak Review: Work and Tons of Play (PS5)
3. Spray Paint Simulator Review – Relaxing but not Quite a Masterpiece (PS5)

Story – More of a Backdrop Than the Main Focus

The Wandering Village introduces us to a ravaged Earth filled with toxic plants that infest the planet. You control a small group of survivors who have sought shelter on the back of a giant wandering creature they call an Onbu. While surviving on the giant creature, The Wandering Village does have a story to tell. It mainly focuses on your village interacting with a scientist named Nona, who asks for assistance with their research. Alongside this, you’ll encounter other characters that will ask for assistance in exchange for items to help with the main quest. Some of my favourites were a pigeon man and a cultist obsessed with Onbu dung. 

Even though I do enjoy the lore that’s being slowly built up, and some of the characters like the two elders, the story is nothing more than the backdrop for the game. Even though the main objectives were being completed, it mostly occurred coincidentally with my own goals in keeping my village alive. I liked that there wasn’t really a timer to complete them, but due to this, I easily forget it’s there until I’m pulled back into a cutscene. Not every game needs a complex story, but it would’ve still been nice to have had some mystery to chase or interesting story threads to follow. 

Interact with numerous characters, asking you to complete tasks to further the story

Gameplay – Developing My Mobile Village

Moving on to the real meat of The Wandering Village, the addictive gameplay. You have the choice of playing three different game modes: Story, Challenge, and Sandbox. Other than the modifiers and some story-related quests, the modes don’t differ much from the overall gameplay loop. The main ingredients of the City Builder genre are on full display within The Wandering Village. However, it mixes in survival mechanics similar to games like Frostpunk and Surviving the Aftermath. You’ll mostly be harvesting the resources found upon the Onbu to build your village. There are plenty of buildings and upgrades to research via the expansive research tree, offering plenty of different routes to go down. I mainly catered to farming, food processing and the safety of the Onbu.

When building your village, use the limited space wisely

The number of villagers you have will determine how quickly you’ll be able to complete your objectives. They can be recruited by finding them while scavenging, completing certain quests and keeping the village’s happiness up. Villagers can be used for numerous tasks like scavenging, farming, crafting, and building. A large village in full operation can help you breeze through the research tree and complete objectives fast to create everything you need to keep the village running smoothly. However, if you don’t fulfil their needs, then they can choose to leave, which could cause trouble for you in the future. 

Survival Management – The Onbu and Me

Outside of building your village, there’s the survival of both the village and the Onbu to worry about. The Onbu will wander the ravaged world, walking through different biomes. Some areas can put a damper on your plans, like crops not growing correctly, certain facilities not working, and unexpected dangers. Luckily, you can issue commands to the Onbu, like which direction to go, when it should eat, sleep and speed up. You’re also able to perform special commands unlocked via specific facilities, like feeding the Onbu mushrooms and petting them. Of course, the Onbu won’t always listen to you. If you don’t have a good relationship with the Onbu, then it’ll do whatever it feels like, which can cause some problems. I was able to mostly manage this, but I couldn’t fully determine if the trust was high or low.

The Onbu will need feeding, rest, and medicine to survive

Managing your villagers is equally important, especially with making sure they all have homes, food, and water. You’ll have to change how some facilities operate, like what crops are being grown or if the facility should even be operational. Luckily, the villagers are quite smart and will clearly inform you of what issues they have. I especially liked that I could lock facilities up to free up villagers for other tasks. This helped with managing my community on my desired plans for growth and prosperity.

Send villagers out to scavenging spots for rare resources

Scavenging is also a vital component for your village’s survival. You’ll deploy parties across the map to find unique resources and recruit more villagers. Other than trading, scavenging is the only other way to find these resources not found on the Onbu. One resource that’s difficult to find is tools, since you can’t make any till later in the game. This made the early game quite difficult when wanting to create numerous buildings requiring the resource. Luckily, you can create multiple scavenging buildings to increase the number of expeditions that can be taken.

Graphics & Audio – Surviving in a Ghibli-Styled World

The Wandering Village uses a mix of 2D and 3D elements in its art style. It’s stunning to look at the grand scale of the mighty Onbu you’re living upon. It’s even more impressive when seeing your entire village from a god-like perspective. When zooming in to take a closer look, the art style changes to a moe storybook visual design. Everything looks handcrafted and full of life. Sadly, there are downsides involving the camera controls since you’re not able to rotate or free-lock, which can be frustrating. It’s especially frustrating when I’m trying to select something that’s hidden behind multiple objects. 

Interestingly, The Wandering Village has a unique opening movie before the main menu. It resembles the look and feel of a Studio Ghibli movie that perfectly sets the mood. From there, all the character designs continue to fit this combination of Ghibli and storybook.

Regarding the audio, The Wandering Village has some effective tracks that present a relaxing ambient tone that games that would be considered “cozy” would have. From the tribal rhythms and tones, its soundscape never disappointed, but it also never delivered anything memorable. 

The Wandering Village was reviewed on PS5 with a code courtesy of Future Friends Games.