The Wandering Village is an RTS game that isn’t one that has a deep and engaging story. The story in the game is that the world has been filled with toxic spores. You find yourself in a village on the back of a wandering creature called an Onbu. The elders you meet in the village hand over the village leadership to you as the player.
That is the extent of this game’s story. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of a story behind the game given how it plays and what the game is like. I mean you have games like Starcraft and Warcraft which have really engaging and exciting stories that play themselves out over the course of the franchise. I appreciate and understand this is an indie title, but it still would have been nice to have more of a story than what we get with this game.
So The Wandering Village doesn’t have much of a story, but how does it play? Well this game is an RTS game with a focus on survival. You’re tasked with building up the society you’ve been put in charge of. You have villagers gathering things like clay, stone, wood, and food like berries. You use these resources to help grow the civilization that has found itself living on the back of this living Onbu creature. Besides gathering resources, you will build things like tents for villagers to live in, buildings to research additional technologies, storage locations to store resources and buildings to enhance the villagers ability to gather resources.
During the course of the game you will be able to use the tech tree in the game to eventually give orders to the Onbu that you’re riding and living on. Though you can give orders to the Onbu, the orders you can give are strictly limited to movement in the world and to top off the limited orders of movement, there is a chance that the Onbu will not obey the order. If the Onbu does respond to the order, you can get it to move in a given direction when you come across a fork in its path, that’s really it.
As much as I really enjoy the aspect of being able to have the living landmass of which you reside on being given orders, I would have like to see this expanded upon. I would have liked to see the Onbu be able to assist the villagers by gathering resources it passes by, but sadly that’s just not the case here. I believe this was a huge missed opportunity to give more prominence to the giant landmass you’re traversing the world on.
One aspect I really do like with the game is when the Onbu traverses through the different biomes. Each biome has an effect on your village. For instance when going through the snow/winter biome you run the risk of your villagers and crops freezing up and not surviving the trek.
Graphically, The Wandering Village has a very nice artistic look to it. Everything in the game has a cell-shaded look to it. This gives the game a bit of a hand-drawn look to everything. It’s really one of these games that you really have to see and play for yourself to appreciate the artistic direction this game took. Even with the 3D model of Onbu, everything looks like it was hand drawn. Even the animation of the villagers in the game look like they were hand drawn and animated like Disney would animate their early animated feature films.
I know it might sound odd to be comparing a video game to a Disney feature film like the original Snow White or Cinderella, but it’s the one example that really drives home the graphical look to this game. For all I know, they may have hand animated the villagers. Whether they did or not, the fact that it looks that way is very impressive. This is especially impressive when you look at this game and realize that this is an indie game. This is a game that artistically looks like a AAA game.
The cell-shaded art style, the hand animated look to everything just really makes this game special and unique. Given this art style and the way the game plays, it performs as one would expect on the Xbox Series X of which this game is being reviewed on.
I wasn’t expecting the game to perform poorly on the Xbox Series X. I mean it’s a 2D RTS survival game that has the look of a 1960’s animated film. I am not saying this is a negative aspect of the game, but rather the opposite. I can’t see the game taking a 3D approach and have it perform this well. I could see there being some performance issues and long load times. Well with the art direction this game took, the load times are very quick which is nice and as one would expect, it performs with zero issues.
As artistically beautiful as the game is, how does The Wandering Village sound? Well while the graphics look like an animated film from the 60’s, thankfully the audio doesn’t sound that way. The music in this game is both calming and enchanting. It is so beautiful that it could be almost meditative in its tones and melody.
I mean at times you could forget you’re playing a game, the music feels that out of place. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, as it feels more like an auditory work of art that feels like it should be on an album or a film instead of being in a video game. The quality of the music is crystal clear and is some of the best music I’ve heard in an RTS game that is rooted in survival.
The Wandering Village is a game that looks like it was animated at Disney, has a soundtrack that is worthy of being found only on a music album, has fun and addictive game elements, and could be seen as a AAA title. I mean the fact that this game has so much going for it, the game really doesn’t feel like an indie game at all.
The Wandering Village is worthy of being called a AAA title. Everyone should be playing this game and I can not recommend this game enough. I mean it is just so good that everyone needs to experience this masterpiece!
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.