The Wandering Village

I really enjoy this game, but you need to know what you're getting. The Wandering Village was built by a team that approached it from the beginning with a focus on the aesthetics. To that end, it's gorgeous with a studio-Ghibli-like visual style and lovely, if repetitive, music. The overall effect is calming and meditative, evoking wonder. You're helping a ragtag band of survivors build a happy little village at the end of the world. This was the first builder game this team had made, and the strategy mechanics were an afterthought. Whereas a game like Frostpunk is incredibly well thought out and tight in terms of balancing priorities while existing just on the edge of survival, The Wandering Village team only hired someone with experience in builder game mechanics after its released. The game can be incredibly forgiving when starting out, but at harder difficulties players may find t

Intense "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" vibes. I really liked the idea of 3 layers of gameplay: the village is a city builder with a twist, the "pet" huge Tamagotchi management, and the overland map with the path decisions and exploring parties. All those elements intertwine together, with decisions in one layer affecting your options in another.

Pretty good town management game, the theme is quite interesting. The only real flaw is if you've played any of the more challenging town builders, you'll find this one very easy with very little tension. Which can be good or bad depending if you want a more relaxed experience or not. -There is a little bit of micro management needed, but once you get most systems down, its very easy to overproduce everything to not have to be a concern, supply chains are very basic with no math needed. -The story allows you to progress at your own pace, nothing really overstays its welcome as you can quickly push through story events when you are ready to do so. So whilst this game is more on the casual side, I would still recommend it for anyone that wants a more laid back experience as its still a very beautiful game with lovely music.

The best co-op experience I've had in years is actually this single-player game. I've got four decades of gaming under my wrist and I'm tired of flavorless standardized AAAs. I bought this expecting a simple, chill city-builder to pass the time. I was wrong. It’s a logistical masterpiece, but the real magic happens if you play it as improvised couch co-op with kids (doable as early as 3, providing they can handle the spooky mushrooms, recommended after 6). We established a strict "Village Family Council": - Me (The Clicker): I provide the manual labor and the credit card. - My Daughter (6 yo): "The Onbu Advocate." Her sole mandate is ensuring the beast gets petted and fed. She spams high-frequency vowels the moment he looks even slightly hungry. - My Son (10): "The Village Union Rep." He couldn't care less about the beast’s feelings; he demands efficiency, resources, and enforced happ

Fun, but very easy. It's a great game to sit down with for a couple days and build a big sprawling village, and you'll probably get at least 10 or 20 hours out of it, but I don't see myself wanting to come back to it too much. It's biggest strength is it's visuals - it's still fun to zoom in and watch the villagers going about their day in the Studio Ghibli-esque visuals even at the end of the playthrough. Sadly, looking at things or fast-forwarding will occupy the vast majority of your time, because this game is very simple and not challenging, even on the hardest difficulty setting. It suffers from the problem that many similar settlement building games suffer from: the first 2 hours of your run will be difficult and you'll feel like your decisions matter, but as soon as your economy is set up, everything starts playing itself and you begin to grow exponentially way faster than the c