The Wandering Village

One day, a group of developers watched Nausica and they went "Yoooo ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" And thus, this game was born.

It is a decent city building game with vibe of Nausicaa of the valley of the wind.

I'm really offended by how inconsistent the art is: - the worker models are Ghibli style, - the buildings are 2d watercolor style, - the portraits in dialogues are a bit like ChatGPT comics, - the Onbu and landscape are low-poly 3d, - the interfaces are minimalist art deco, - the resource icons look like the first result when you search for "realistic 2d assets royalty-free", - and the ground feels almost untextured with aggressively oversaturated colors. The worker models are amazingly high quality; however, apparently only a few actions were hand-animated, and the rest is filled in in an unnervingly cheap manner. Using 2d billboards for the buildings is a sensible choice to limit development costs; however, this has been poorly implemented in this game. For example, the buildings have very different scales, sometimes looking way too big for the workers and sometimes way too small. Also, while the "tribal" music from the title screen is a very catchy composition, it does not match the rest of the game and feels very out of place. The soundeffects feel like a random selection of free online assets. While there are some very nice ideas in this game, the overall execution is messy and incomplete. It feels a lot like someone with no eye for design commissioned some very nice art and then made a game from it with no overarching artistic concept whatsoever.

The mechanics are punishing not because they're interesting, but purely because the game makes it a pain in the ass to manage things. There are no alerts for if your basic resource collectors (wood cutters, miners etc) have no resources in their vicinity. There are very few indicators at all of things needing to be managed despite the game also being incredibly annoying to navigate visually, so that you cannot see half of your town at any one time and zooming out for a wider look takes away your ability to click and manage things. The early game is just a race to try and get the Onbu infrastructure needed for it not to suddenly die e.g. from an early spawning poison event on the map, or as I just found out, random events that sap your Onbus health (the game never alerted me that Onbu's health was decreasing either! By the time I noticed, its health was irreversibly low and my run was ended). Again for the difficulty of navigation- resource and consumption tracking are very basic. Villager "need" is a nebulas stat and the game makes it quite unclear how you gain additional specifics on potential happiness increases from your many choices. The idea that my villagers would just get up and leave the Onbu is infuriating in itself- I'm in the ocean, where the hell are you gonna go? Mass plank walking because the game didn't ping me that all my farms on one side of the map stopped producing food because every tile is covered in compost for god knows what reason??? I love town building strategy games, but this game manages to do every aspect of it poorly compared to any other one I've played. Maybe it's because I play on hard mode? Maybe the game just needs major rebalancing/ increased management tools for hard mode, if it's been designed mostly for cozy play? I also find the game very unmotivating if the only aim is to complete the exact same town set-up and plan for the exact same mid-late game eventualities with very little variation. Even just adding the most basic of pings- if Onbu's health reaches 50%, if a resource collection point stops production, if villagers are homeless- would make this game far more enjoyable. In my opinion micro managing is not a problem- it's half of this genre and we enjoy it- it's making that micro managing involve an excruciating and tiring amount of vigilance and guess work paired with low visibility and low reward. TLDR: play if you like spending all your energy constantly checking things most other games in the genre give you pings for, and watch as your growing colony becomes a growing pain in the ass! And then your Onbu dies because by the time you've noticed the major problem for-which-there-is-no-ping there isn't enough time to research and build the solution. Sucks all the fun out of the challenge of the genre by being incredibly poorly built for the challenges of the genre.

街作りシム。と言ってもご覧のとおり舞台は巨大生物の上。 　世界が毒により崩壊して数百年経過し、文明の平均値を近未来から中世へと大きく下げられた世界。平和に暮らせていた谷間の村を毒により追われた村人達は、伝説の巨大生物であるオンブを発見し、新生活をスタートさせる・・という訳で、かなり強くジ◯リ（と言うかナ◯シカ）の影響を受けている。アニメーションシーンが特にそうなのだが、絵のスタイルはそのまんま。村人のデザインや装備、建物のデザインも強く意識されている。なお、先述のアニメーションは日本人スタジオ制作の模様。 　ゲームプレイはかなり硬派な部類。基礎素材・レア資材・人材、そのどれもがずっとカツカツの綱渡りをする事になる。基礎素材である木や石はオンブの上に採集場が用意されているが、採取速度は控え目なので、建築用に狙ったマスが開くまで結構時間がかかる。そして掘り尽くす頃にキチンと無限採集手段の研究が終わってないと、途端に苦しくなるはず（と言っても詰みにくい程度には甘めに設定されている）。食料は畑による栽培がメインだが、栽培に必須となる水は現在のバイオームに依存して入手速度や手段が変化し、作物の生育速度もバイオーム依存なので、バイオームの切れ目が実質的に季節の切れ目となり、変わり目が見えた時点での早めの準備をすることは重要になる。バイオームに居る時間を多少延長する事は可能でも、無限に居座ることは出来ないデザインなので、がんばって対応していこう。レアな素材は中盤の研究を利用した探索で入手するのが主な手段となるが、これまたバイオームに強く影響を受けるランダム性があるので、狙ったものを入手するのが難しい。人材は生活基盤を整えれば定期的に来てくれるが、こちらもペースがゆっくりだし、数が増えただけ高度な要求（より住みやすい住居、より良い、かつバラエティに富んだ食料）を満たす必要があり、最終盤でも無ければやることは常に山積なので楽しめるはず。住民は指示さえ出せば素早く職業を変更可能なため、適切な人数を割り当てることが大事。ゲーム内でも資源不足は話題に上がる分、建物破壊時の資源回収率は基本100%で、その時々に応じた使いまわしも有効。 　そして、オンブの存在を忘れてはならない。貴方が生活しているのは生物の上なのだから。オンブ自身にも食事や睡眠が必要で、バイオームに応じて毒を受けたり、寄生生物に取り付かれたりして体力を奪われる。オンブ単体で克服出来る程にそれらの影響は甘くないので、村が適切に介入する必要がある。具体的には角笛を使った意思表示の伝達や給餌、治療薬の適用など。但し、只の手間のかかる巨大ペットという訳では無い。かなりの数の建物が、「オンブの上である」ことを利用した建物であるのが高評価ポイント。前面には給餌機や角笛、側面には水汲み機や飛行台、後方には肥料となるウンコ回収機、そして薬品の原料となる胆汁や血液を回収する設備は、適切な位置にしか置けない。当然建物が分散するので、それも街作りの一環に組み込んで設計する必要がある。障害物の撤去には時間がかかり、建物のサイズはバラバラで、全体の広さも限りがある中での街作りはなかなか苦戦すると思う。先述の血液回収機を稼働させたり、背中に生えているトゲを取り去ったりすれば、当然オンブを傷つけて機嫌を損ねる。この信頼度は他の健康状態と違ってマスクデータになっており、「村の為に奪う」事と「オンブの為に与える」事の適切なバランスを取る事が必要。オンブから何一つ奪わずに村とオンブを維持するのは極端に難しいので。信頼度は、主に角笛による指示に従ってくれる確率に関係する。マップ上に点在する危険は、適切な位置で回避行動を取ることで避けられ、バイオームも定期的にある分岐点である程度選べるのだが、こちらの指示に従ってくれるかはオンブ任せなので、そういった意味でも「自然（バイオーム）との調和」「オンブという個との調和」を求められるのは楽しいと感じた。 　ゲームモードが３つあり、どれも楽しめるはず。ストーリーはチュートリアルから綺麗にスライドするように作られている。新任の長老として、前任の二人からのヒントを受けつつ、村の生活の為に調査を進めていくと、謎の人物からの連絡を受け・・。最後まで完遂しているが、この手の街作りシムでこういう手の込んだストーリーを読めるというのは意外だった。時間制限は設けられていないが、様々な資材を要求されるので無理に進めない方が楽ではある（ちゃんと相応の報酬アイテムは貰えるので放置はしないほうが良い）。最後のミッションはなかなかに骨太なので、しっかり準備すること。チャレンジモードは一度ゲームを一通り遊んだ人向けで、制約を課した状態で冒険をする必要がある。全制約を取って遊ぶためには、３回ほど段階を踏む必要があるが、そのくらいキツい制約があると思って貰って良い。個人的に似たシステムで目にした事があるのはHadesのものか。サンドボックスは名前の通り自由に設定を弄り回して遊べるので、チャレンジの息抜きにでも。 　不満点は幾つかある。バイオームごとに作物の植え替えをする必要があるのだが、何枚も畑を回せるようになってくると植え替え指示を出すのがかなり辛くなってくる。何らかのプリセットや、複数選択機能が欲しかった。人間のほうもそうで、バイオームで機能しない建物が出来た時にいちいち指示するのは煩雑に感じた。また、倉庫の上限を目視可能な機能が無いのも謎である。水・食料・資材・オンブ用物資と、倉庫はそれぞれ個別に建設する必要がある都合上、ここは不便だと思う。 　総評としては、なんか埋もれてしまっている現状が非常に悲しくなる程には良く作られた作品だとは思う。ちゃんとゲームプレイと世界観が調和してるので、ここが出来ていないゲーム（Fallout4とかのAAAでありがち）を多くプレイしてきた身としては非常に楽しませて貰った。これからもチャレンジで遊ばせて貰うつもり（執筆時点でストーリークリア、チャレンジ15制約でプレイ中）

This is a great game for those who find most city builder / sims a bit overwhelming sometimes! Bought the game and then immediately played 11+ hours in my first sitting. Just finished the story on Normal with 264 villagers - it took me 18 hours which is great value for money. I love how the mechanics are simpler than other sim/city builders (e.g. Rimworld) - it's detailed enough to keep you on your toes and forces you to plan things ahead of time, but it's not overwhelming. The ability to deconstruct any building without a cost reduces stress. The story is interesting and adds a nice reason to keep going, the ending was cool. Performance is great - 110fps at 4K max settings, no crashes or bugs. This game is awesome!

I had so much fun playing this game. I dumped nearly 30 hrs into it over the span of 6 days, which is remarkable considering I also work 40hr/week. Lots of things I could say, but I want to mention how wonderful the gamepad controls were. Somehow the devs were able to simplify a super complex mouse and keyboard interface to work seamlessly on a controller. Just a really fun concept for a management game that was executed extremely well. The detail and art are just so charming. I became quite attached to my Ombu and village by the end, that I was kind of sad to start another save! It does lean on the cozy/casual side of management games, which is personally what I was hoping for. It is definitely not a 4X game, but it would be a great entry point for someone looking to get into the genre. It is a much friendlier and accessible version. There is an ok amount of replayability with additional challenges and environment restrictions, but I don't foresee myself playing more after finishing the story. Most of the difficulty comes from learning what everything does and what to unlock to combat each challenge or environment, so once that is achieved there isn't much else. Though I could see this as a game I pick up and play through every few years just to re-experience the vibes and setting. The story took me about 25hrs to play through on mostly 2x speed. If you are more accustomed to civ games, I could see the story taking as few as 10hrs. I thought it was well worth the money and I had an absolute blast playing. I mean, who doesn't want to have a pet kaiju???