The Wandering Village

The Wandering Village (2022) is a strategy game where you build a city on the back of a giant, wandering creature called Onbu. It's unusual because as well as building a thriving settlement, you have to also take care of the creature on whom you are building. You need to establish a symbiotic relationship to survive together in the hostile, yet beautiful post-apocalyptic world through which you trudge.

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Like other simulation games, you need to gather resources, farm various crops, send out foraging missions to gather ores and survive a variety of different biomes and events, build a relationship with a giant and influence its actions. Unlike those simulations, you have to also deal with the toxic spores as you travel through different biomes with specific and different challenges each time you play.

As you progress you realise you can interact with Onbu in a number of ways. You can fling food into their mouth, you can treat their ailments with medicine and even a horn to issue commands (provided you have built up enough trust). This last interaction enables you to control how fast Onbu moves through the biomes which can help (or hinder) the civilisation you are creating on their back.

Living on the back of a wandering creature comes with challenges. You need to maintain their health and build trust. Your goal is to find a place where you can settle down with the creature and live in peace. It's an Ecology/Biology-inspired game that puts gameplay and imagination rather than issues first.

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked The Wandering Village 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 8 months ago.