Review: The Wandering Village (Switch)

The world is an unpredictable place, full of strife and economic instability. So, there will always be room for another cosy city builder.

Swiss developer Stray Fawn Studio sticks to the genre formula but delivers a charmingly fresh thematic twist. The Wandering Village casts you as the steward of a tiny community, striving to survive on the back of a gigantic creature that quite literally wanders a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Your chosen Onbu (which roughly translates to ‘piggyback ride’ in Japanese) ambles across the desolate landscape while villagers scramble over its vertebrae, carving out a life and unlocking the mystery of the world around them. Throughout the journey, your community makes contact with others scattered across the Onbu’s path.

Balancing the needs of your villagers with the well-being of their colossal host is a fascinating experience. At any point, you can pull the camera back to watch the Onbu’s thunderous footsteps, and zooming out even further reveals the wider biome it currently inhabits.

For the most part, this is a traditional management sim, complete with generic building types and a straightforward research tree. But nuances start to emerge once you tailor your playstyle to the living, breathing land mass beneath your people’s feet. The symbiotic relationship between the settlers and their walking province is where the game finds its unique rhythm.

Early on, Onbu meanders aimlessly, occasionally stopping to graze or curling up for a nap. As you progress, you’ll unlock tools that let you influence its behaviour and eventually guide its path.

You’ll need to feed Onbu, treat it when it gets sick, and steer it using a giant horn. As the game unfolds, your toolset expands. Unique synergy abilities range from the wholesome (yes, you can pet the big goof) to the unsettling (sacrificing your own villagers for the creature’s benefit). An even more sinister layer of control emerges, with abilities that discipline the creature and siphon its bodily fluids for your own gain. Exploit this strange animal that lets you have festivals on its back, or make an effort to nurture it? That choice is left to you.

The pace of the main campaign is steady, with a reduced sense of danger that makes for a mostly relaxing experience. The challenge lies in managing staff across your growing infrastructure. Each building requires a specific number of workers, and while nomads will occasionally join your settlement, increasing the population, your workforce is often limited. You’ll find yourself frequently reassigning roles to adapt to whatever issue crops up next.

Occasionally, Onbu will pass through hazardous areas that can make it sick. It also needs to be fed regularly, so keeping an eye on the map for nearby grazing spots is essential for its health. You can even build a catapult to launch food into its maw.

The story is a bit thin, revolving around the construction of a radio tower that receives transmissions from the world beyond. From there, your village elders try to uncover what led to the collapse of civilisation, while building relationships with other settlements. Aside from a couple of beautiful, Ghibli-esque animated sequences, most of the dialogue unfolds through static text boxes.

The size of Onbu’s back makes the build area limited and manageable. Still, things can get hectic. In the late game, you’ll have an army of villagers zipping around at 4x speed, creating a lively little metropolis. The Switch handles things surprisingly well, although zooming in while fast-forwarding occasionally caused a slight judder on the older hardware. Everything is pure controller input, with no touchscreen functionality. Performance on Switch 2 appeared flawless, with the larger screen complementing the format nicely while undocked.

While the main story is diverting enough, with multiple layers of difficulty to tweak your game, there are also a couple of other modes designed to encourage that just-one-more-go mentality.

Challenge Mode offers a collection of modifiers that adjust the experience, making it as punishing or forgiving as you’d like. There’s also a Sandbox Mode, which allows you to disable some of the Onbu and villager debuffs, giving you the freedom to coast through an endless campaign. This level of accessibility is greatly appreciated and often missing from other titles of this ilk.

Managing an ever-growing community on what is essentially a Tamagotchi the size of an aircraft carrier is an inspired experience that engages throughout its campaign and into the freeform modes. It delivers the familiar elements of the sim management genre, but with an added layer of responsibility: cohabiting with, neglecting, or even ruling over your adopted home.

Conclusion

The Wandering Village is a worthy addition to the city-builder genre. It’s a mostly undemanding hybrid that mixes sim management with a touch of pet care. A slight experience, with an uninspired and slow-moving story, but it still manages to charm in its own quiet way.