The Wandering Village Is A City Builder With Heart

thegamer.com:

Most city builders pit man against nature. To lay down your own roots, you have to rip up the plant life and usurp entire habitats in order to facilitate another. This week’s Indie Spotlight is all about The Wandering Village, a game where you settle on the back of a giant, roaming creature and decide between symbiosis and parasitism.

Toxic spores are spreading across the land, forcing your villagers on a pilgrimage to find sanctuary. They soon come across an ancient creature thought long extinct - an Onbu. It’s sort of like a Brachiosaurus. Its back is a huge slab of forest and earth, the perfect wandering village. You clamber up and pitch your tents while Onbu slowly waddles off, taking you to new lands.

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The first hour or so of gameplay is like any other city builder. Make some accommodation, get food production up and running, gather basic resources, etc. But then I notice a crossroad on the map. One way leads to a group of nomads who could join the village, and the other leads to a cloud of poison spores. Time to build a giant horn and tell Onbu I wanna avoid the death cloud. How do I know what horn calls work? I have no idea, I don’t speak Onbu. but my villagers do, apparently.

Anyway, Onbu decides to ignore me because it doesn’t know me from Adam. Why on earth would it listen to me? My villagers are like fleas to the thing. I need to build up trust with it. It’s a somewhat hidden mechanic, but feeding animals always makes them friendly, so it’s time to build a feeding trebuchet. A few mouthfuls of grub later and it’s willing to go where I want.

Here’s where the decision between symbiosis or parasitism comes into play. Onbu will go