The game where you build a symbiotic village on the back of a giant monster is finally done

Delightful city building game The Wandering Village has hit its 1.0 release and celebrated with a delightful animated trailer about life in a toxic world where you're safest at home in your village—which happens to be built on a mesa atop the back of a gigantic six-legged monster named Onbu.

"We can’t believe it’s been 5 years since we first started working on the game," said developer Stray Fawn.

Over the past three years of early access development, Stray Fawn has added oceans and ruined cities for Onbu to travel through, improved the system of research and how you manage your villagers, added trading, Onbu parasites, new resources, and new buildings. They've also added controller support and, just this year, a full story mode that takes you on a journey across the ruined, poisoned world that Onbu and your villagers dwell in.

PC Gamer's Chris Livingston was ecstatic about The Wandering Village when he played some of it just before its 2022 early access release.

"I'm not sure what my speed record is for falling in love in a videogame, but the moment I laid eyes on Onbu in The Wandering Village my fate was sealed," he said. "Onbu is the massive, six-legged megasaur who handles the wandering in this village-building sim, and I'm in charge of the village, which sits on the huge plateau that makes up Onbu's back. I immediately love this gentle, lumbering giant, and all I want to do is make sure Onbu loves me back."

Which sounds like Chris will probably go for the "be good friends with Onbu" path through The Wandering Village. I'm told there are also "worship Onbu like a god" and "treat Onbu like a resource to be exploited, you horrible little parasite" ways to play. I'm not sure how anyone could be mean to Onbu, though. Seems hard.

Stray Fawn says that the first update post-release will be a 1.1 "Quality of Life/UX" update, followed by a 1.2 "Onbu Update" that will "tweak and add some more things related to your interactions and relationship with Onbu."

You can find The Wandering Village on Steam and on thewanderingvillage.com.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

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