The Wandering Village (2025)

Stray Fawn Studio

Linux · Mac · Nintendo Switch · PC (Microsoft Windows) · PlayStation 4 · PlayStation 5 · Xbox One · Xbox Series X|S

3.35 from 23 ratings

248 members have it in their collection · 3 playing now · 113 backlogged · 55 wish listed

The Wandering Village is a city-building simulation game with survival and rogue-like elements. Build a village on the back of a giant, wandering creature, farm crops and forage resources to keep your villagers alive and form a symbiotic relationship with your giant host to survive together in a hostile, yet beautiful post-apocalyptic world.
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Release dates

  • Sep 14, 2022 (Early Access) (Worldwide) Linux, Mac, PC (Microsoft Windows)
  • Jun 29, 2023 (Early Access) (North_America) Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
  • Jul 17, 2025 (Full Release) (Worldwide) Linux, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Related

DLC

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Rating distribution

5 stars
2
4 stars
7
3 stars
11
2 stars
3
1 star
0
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Community All Reviews Statuses

BMO

Status BMO Apr 24, 2026

For how wondrous and powerful the image of a civilization on the back of a giant creature is, I find this special edition from Serenity Forge rather disappointing:

Collector's edition of The Wandering Village featuring a succulent planter in the shape of the wandering creature

It's cute and all, but as a person who doesn't buy collector's editions much, I think a detailed scale model of the creature may have actually suckered me into buying this.

Read more

For how wondrous and powerful the image of a civilization on the back of a giant creature is, I find this special edition from Serenity Forge rather disappointing:

Collector's edition of The Wandering Village featuring a succulent planter in the shape of the wandering creature

It's cute and all, but as a person who doesn't buy collector's editions much, I think a detailed scale model of the creature may have actually suckered me into buying this.

Read less
sharknado

Review sharknado 4/5 · Oct 16, 2025

A Charming Town Builder Game

The Wandering Village is a neat little city building game that centers around its gimmick of constructing your town on the back of a walking, giant dinosaur. Though it has a lot of overlap with the ideas of other city building games, it does a good job of using this gimmick to make for interesting gameplay mechanics.

You can expect …

Read more

The Wandering Village is a neat little city building game that centers around its gimmick of constructing your town on the back of a walking, giant dinosaur. Though it has a lot of overlap with the ideas of other city building games, it does a good job of using this gimmick to make for interesting gameplay mechanics.

You can expect the usual resource management out of Wandering Village that you can out of other games - wood and stone are needed for basic buildings, those buildings unlock new tech, and that tech lets you build more advanced buildings and collect more advanced resources. As a part of its tech tree, you can also research a variety of technologies that allow you to interact with the Onbu itself - these open up a number of interesting and important gameplay mechanics that become important as the game progresses.

Instead of having seasons, like a traditional city builder often does, the Onbu wanders the world and finds its way into new biomes. These biomes have different modifiers that change crop climate, the amount of water you can collect, and different unique encounters. As the Onbu travels, you'll have to help manage its hunger, tiredness, and its health in order to keep your village going.

In the world of The Wandering Village, there is a poisonous blight that has sent the world into a sort of apocalypse, with some of the only respite being on your Onbu's back. Certain biomes will be much more toxic and dangerous than others, and many will have things like parasites that can infect your Onbu, and these conditions must be managed by your village to prevent collapse.

The Wandering Village essentially consists of a story mode that has a moderate amount of challenge, a cute narrative, and a surprisingly good "final boss" - something that I can't say of many games in the genre. Following this, there are survival-style game modes where your goal is to walk a certain distance with your Onbu, with difficulty modifiers that add extra challenge.

I'd overall say that The Wandering Village is definitely worth a play - I ended up doing one playthrough of the story and a few runs of the survival mode. I don't think I'd say this game has the depth of other city builders like Oxygen Not Included, but that can also be a good thing! If you enjoyed games like Frostpunk, this one will probably be for you too.

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