The Wandering Village is such a sweet idea for a city-builder, taking place on the back of a huge walking creature. It's in Early Access with Linux / Steam Deck support and a big new update just arrived.
The Story Update brings with it the chance to finally learn more about the world and its inhabitants. The new Story Mode adds in many new characters and a main quest that sheds more light on the past - and future - of the world and its inhabitants, adds over 10 side quests, multiple new soundtracks, new world map locations and an intense final showdown. Sounds like fun and a unique addition to the game.
I was absolutely hooked on this one when it released but it did suffer from a big lack of content. However, over the last year they've really expanded it across multiple updates that have really helped. The Ruins update back in March especially with the addition of the new biome to walk through, which came with lots of additional content.
Really can't wait for this one to be content-complete to dive in for another full play-through. It's already great right now though with all these updates.
Full patch notes, click me
What's New
- "Story Mode": Introduces many new characters and a main quest that sheds more light on the past - and future - of the world and its inhabitants, adds over 10 side quests, multiple new soundtracks, new world map locations and an intense final showdown
- Added "Food Compostation" research - allowing the Compost Heap to turn food into compost/biogas
Improvements
- Save files will now show an icon representing the corresponding game mode
- Updated icons for all game modes
- Various fixes for RTL languages in the UI
- Completely reworked how the world map is generated - this should hopefully fix a whole category of map-related bugs. Map bugs may still be visible when loading an existing save file, but they should not affect gameplay too much and should fix themselves after a while
- Performance improvements across the board
- Gamepad: Radial menu resets when using tools and reopening. No direct filters anymore.
- Gamepad: Left on the D-Pad now navigates to the sidebar
- Gamepad: Reworked and improved navigation for Research window
- Gamepad: Improved navigation for Glossary
- Show resources in food stand even if it is disabled
- Festival section in Onbu command bar shows all available buildings on a single line
- Improved readability for difficulty mode entries in Glossary
- Updated sound effects (radio tower, clay deposit)
- Resources in food stand can now be traded (e.g. for scavenging events)
- Improved display of long titles in Glossary
- Proper icon for experimental health potion and some other Onbu missions
- Removed obsolete popup when building a monument for the first time
- Reworked most game systems to use persistent deterministic random number generators. This should make some random effects that should be consistent actually consistent (such as outcomes of scavenging decisions, spawn locations of wild plants etc), and it helps us to reproduce issues more reliably in the future
- Ending credits got a makeover and special soundtrack
- Gamepad: hide sidebar glyph while menus are open
- Gamepad: costs and rewards of scavenging missions can now be navigated
- Added missing UI icons for various status effects and horn commands
Bugfixes
- Fixed Hostility popup not appearing after surviving for 1000km
- Fixed UI elements not visible on OpenGL
- Fixed some Glossary entries not displaying correctly
- Fixed command rejection notifications not always being displayed
- Fixed resource category "Knowledge" not being localized
- Fixed several cases where tooltips would stick around
- Fixed drag-mode persisting when zooming out of village while dragging and then back in again
- Fixed loading screen issues
- Fixed an issue in villager job distribution
- Fixed a potential issue with worldmap models not getting reset properly
- Fixed tutorial glyphs for gamepad
- Fixed a bug that lead to Onbu’s back turning brown when villagers cleared out storages in some cases
- Fixed food stand resoure slots not getting cleared if building was disabled
- Fixed toggling of food stand slots not having any effect
- Fixed food stands sometimes not getting filled properly
- Fixed tutorial sidebar navigation
- Fixed an issue where the Worker Management overlay could be used to unassign scavengers from ongoing missions (and other employed workers on missions)
- Fixed Worker Management showing sliders that should not be visible after changing language
- Fixed an issue where dialogues that focus on a building could toggle the harvest tool when playing on a gamepad
- Fixed automatically pressing the Pinned button when glossary was opened through ring menu on gamepad
- Fixed not being able to rename villagers
- Fixed Credits autoscroll not being interrupted when dragging with mouse
- Fixed Credits not being mouse-draggable from every position (e.g. from gaps between text segments)
- Fixed an issue in glossary when no tutorial was active
- Fixed Onbu movement states that should not be shown being visible in horn command tooltips
- Fixed 00:01 remaining time shown for non-postponable decisions
- Fixed side display scaling
Balancing
- BileExtractor storage size 50 -> 20
- BloodExtractor storage size 20 -> 50
- Decrease min. poison/starvation death interval with higher population
- Allow feeding Onbu while running
- "Sound of Thunder" side quest should now be easier to complete
- Reduce max. worker count of Liquefier: 5 → 4
- Increase production speed of Onbu Pharmacy and Food Liquefier at max. worker count
- Bring berry macarons recipe in line with other recipes of the same tier
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Zlopez 5 hours ago
I will probably try it again. The story mode sounds interesting.
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scaine 4 hours ago
Such a cool game and concept, and really nicely executed too. I'll give this another go, I think. I was slightly turned off by how suddenly certain events could crop up and leave you grasping to get the necessary buildings/infrastructure in place. But with a story-mode, this should be much better guided and telegraphed.
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I'd like to think it includes a giant turtle
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