The Wandering Village will have you building a settlement and trying to live harmoniously with your big turtle pal (who’s name is Onbu). You’ll need to grow crops to keep your villagers happy and healthy, and make sure Onbu is always moving away from those icky spores to keep it safe too. Developers Stray Fawn Studio (who previously made Nimbatus) talked through some of The Wandering Village’s inspirations during the Media Indie Exchange Game Dev Direct over the weekend. They mentioned that the game is influenced by Ghibli films like Nausicaä Of The Valley of The Wind (though I reckon it seems a little like Howl’s Moving Castle as well). You can kind of see a bit of that Ghibli-ness in the art-style too. “The idea for the game first sparked into our heads when me and my business partner were walking to an exhibition and saw a gorgeous concpet art of a city built on the back of a huge animal,” said developer Philomeda Schwab. On a completely separate and slightly weird note: the concept of The Wandering Village very specifically reminds me of some of the lore in the Avatar: The Last Airbender series. If you’ve seen The Legend Of Korra, you might know what I’m talking about. Essentially, the series has flashbacks to ancient times and how people originally got their elemental powers. They were gifts from these big beasties called lion turtles, which all the people lived on top of in cities and villages. I would’ve liked to learn more about those lion turtle towns, but it’s a relatively small bit of lore in a big TV show. I just love the concept! More building homes on large wandering creatures, please. If you’re interested, you can check out The Wandering Village on Steam. It doesn’t have a release date just yet, but when it does come out it’ll be in early access for about a year.
