While consoles aren’t typically the platform I think of when contemplating a new city-building sim of some kind, there have been some titles that have proven that they can work with a little love thrown into making them controller-friendly for navigation and menus. One challenge is that the more depth the sim will tend to have, the more drilldown menus they’ll usually have as well, so either finding novel ways to help people navigate menus more efficiently with a controller or keeping the overall complexity in check is usually important to finding success. In the case of The Wandering Village, I’d say that the developers found a solid middle ground on both of these fronts, releasing a sim that has enough complexity to be satisfying without becoming overwhelming or making the controls a confusing nightmare.

In the game you’ll be charged with a two-fold challenge. Helping your people grow, flourish, and prosper, while being mindful of the fact that your home is on the back of a giant beast who’ll also need tending to in order to collectively survive. Early on, the focus tends to be much more traditional, working to establish your typical core buildings for people to live in, collect resources, and explore a technology tree. Before long though, you’ll begin to get the opportunity to begin interacting with the mighty Onbu you’ve collectively hitched a ride on, at first with simpler means of aid or commands, but eventually opening the door to some more disturbing and even exploitative activities as well. Depending on the circumstances, you find yourself in situations where you may well need to decide whether the fate of your people, or the creature that represents the ground you’ve built everything up on is more important, and there aren’t necessarily any right or wrong answers.

While certainly the fact that everything is built on the back of a hulking beast helps it to stand apart, there are some other aspects that make it distinctive as well. The first is that while most games in this genre can be dense and hard for newcomers to dig into, by comparison this is outright friendly on a general level. It has a pretty extensive tutorial, that will walk you through most of the screens and major concerns you’re likely to run into, and while veterans will likely want to jump into the proper game after getting the basics of the controls and concepts understood, newcomers may well enjoy simply playing through it with the training wheels fully engaged. What also helps it be more approachable than some others in the space, is the fact that its controls and interfaces are generally compact, well-conceived, and sensible. Using most of the available buttons, the majority of what you’ll need to review or do is only a few moves away, making it far easier to follow initially and retain as you play on. While perhaps genre veterans may consider it too slight to be of much interest, this is absolutely a game I can see being ideal for newcomers who may have always wanted to dabble in a city-building sim, but have always worried that they were too complicated to enjoy more quickly.