The Wandering Village News

Dear Onbu Riders

The Research & Economy update is here! We’ve worked together with the community to add more depth to the city-building gameplay of The Wandering Village. This update features many changes, all focused on making the game’s economy richer and more interesting.



The research system has received a major overhaul. Unlocking new technologies now costs resources, and everything has been unified in a single tree. The tree's design has also been overhauled to show all important information at a glance.



Onbu's back is now full of dense forests, large rocks and more. Your villagers will have to plan around these natural obstacles at first, and gradually free up more space to expand their village.



This update also features:

• Build Woodcutting and Mining Camps to automatically let your workers harvest nearby resources
  
• Nomads join your village if you keep your villagers' happiness high enough.
  
• Completely rebalanced difficulty modes, "Relaxed" and "Survival".
  
• Complete rework for the tutorial
  
• Two new building materials: clay and brick
  
• Five new Onbu food spot types
  
• Overhaul of the scavenging system
  

And much more! Check out the full patch notes:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1121640/view/4478359995220492849

A lot has changed, and we have completely reworked the tutorial to reflect these changes. If you return to The Wandering Village, we recommend playing the tutorial again to get a chance to learn about everything new!

Please note that, due to the extent of changes to how the game works, how Onbu's back is generated and more, we are not able to keep old save files compatible with this new version. If you want to continue on your existing save files, please opt into the "0.7.10" branch on Steam to continue playing the previous version of the game.

Check out the recently updated road map to see what’s up next:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1121640/view/6468946777874339669

We hope you enjoy this new update and we can't wait to hear what you think.
Once again a huge thank you to everybody who helped with testing and translating!
Don’t forget that you can vote on your favorite suggestions for new features/future updates and/or just hang out and chat with the devs over on our Discord.


Thanks for your continued support,
Stray Fawn Studio


PS:
To celebrate the occasion, the game is now 25%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121640/The_Wandering_Village/

And! We have a cool new bundle with Diplomacy is not an Option which recently launches its 1.0 version. Followers of the great Onbu get a 10% discount 🙏
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/45230/Diplomacy_is_Not_an_Option__The_Wandering_Village/

The Research & Economy update is here! We’ve worked together with the community to add more depth to the city-building gameplay of The Wandering Village. This update features many changes, all focused on making the game’s economy richer and more interesting. You can find a summary of the biggest changes under “What’s New”, or dive into the detailed patch notes further below!

Please note that, due to the extent of changes to how the game works, how Onbu's back is generated and more, we are not able to keep old save files compatible with this new version. If you want to continue on your existing save files, please opt into the "0.7.10" branch on Steam to continue playing the previous version of the game. Be aware that this branch will not receive any future updates, however.

[h3]What's New[/h3]

• The research system has received a major overhaul. Unlocking new technologies now costs resources, and everything has been unified in a single tree. The tree's design has also been overhauled to show all important information at a glance.
  
• Onbu's back is now full of dense forests, large rocks and more. Your villagers will have to plan around these natural obstacles at first, and gradually free up more space to expand their village.
  
• Build Woodcutting Camps and Mining Camps to automatically let your workers harvest nearby resources. And when the resources are exhausted, simply move the camps to a new location!
  
• Nomads will want to join your village regularly as long as you manage to keep your villagers' happiness high enough.
  
• The game now features two completely rebalanced difficulty modes, "Relaxed" and "Survival". In contrast to the old "Novice" mode, "Relaxed" will never get too difficult.
  
• The tutorial has been completely reworked and adapted to all new and updated game mechanics.
  
• Two new building materials, clay and brick, have been added to add more depth to building construction.
  
• Five new Onbu food spots have been added! Each one comes with its unique up- and downsides.
  
• Scavenging has received an overhaul. You can see the expected resources beforehand to make an informed decision, but be wary - something unexpected may always happen!
  

Features and Content

• The research tree has been completely redesigned. Some buildings that were available from the start now need to be researched first. All categories have been reduced to a single, larger tree. Research now costs resources in addition to time, making it much more important to scale up the production of your village over time. Most dependencies that were invisible before are now explicit - if a building needs planks, for example, it will be gated behind the Carpenter
  
• High villager happiness does not increase productivity anymore, but instead attracts new settlers over time
  
• Worker management got an overhaul. The new camps mean that free workers are much more frequently available for non-harvesting work. The top bar now shows how many free and idle workers you have at a glance. If a construction site is open but there's no free workers, a warning flag will be shown. The Worker Post is gone, to simplify worker management and display.
  
• Resources that are harvested now automatically stack with other nearby resources of the same type. This reduces clutter on the floor and drastically increases efficiency of woodcutters and miners. This does not affect crops.
  
• New building: The Onbuologist observes Onbu to learn more about it, producing notes that can be used for Onbu-related research
  
• New building: The Clay Gathering Camp can gather clay from deposits. Rainfall can create puddles that turn into new deposits over time
  
• New buildings: The Woodcutting Camp and Mining Camp can automatically gather wood and stone around them. These camps can be moved around free of cost
  
• New building: The Brick Furnace burns clay into bricks. It needs a lot of fuel for this, so be ready to either burn through your wood supplies or ensure a steady supply of biogas or bile
  
• New building: The Stabilizer Spike can be used to protect regions against storms and Onbu shaking its back - at a cost
  
• New building: The Blacksmith is a late-game building that can produce valuable tools
  
• New liquid foods: Brew up some liquid insecticide or weed killer in case of an emergency. These substances pack a punch, but will hurt Onbu when using them
  
• New resource: Tools are a valuable resource especially early on. You start with a stockpile of them, and can use them to build various resource gathering camps or building upgrades. You will slowly get more through events on the path, but will need to scavenge or trade for them later on. The new Blacksmith can also produce them, if you have the iron to spare
  
• Multiple new biome-specific events have been added that interact with the happiness of your villagers
  
• Your villagers can now uproot berry bushes to get seeds. Berry Gatherers can replant them nearby
  
• Crops, herbs and mushrooms now turn into a decayed state instead of disappearing. The decayed plant can still be harvested to get fertilizer
  
• Feeding Trebuchet can directly feed Onbu with a bundle of raw mushrooms, but with reduced efficiency
  
• Onbu Doctor can directly heal Onbu with a bundle of herbs, but with reduced efficiency
  
• New path event "Jungle Lily": A feeding spot for Onbu. Eating these will increase Onbu's poison level, but the scent will make your villagers happy for a while
  
• New path event "Nightshade": Tasty food, but Onbu will fall asleep instantly after eating these
  
• New path event "Infested Mushrooms": Tasty food that poisons Onbu
  
• New path event "Dunecaps": Hardy Onbu food that grows in the desert, but is infested with Sandworms
  
• New path event "Stinkhorn Fungi": Tasty food, but the smell will make your villagers unhappy
  
• New path event "Hailstorm": Lowers temperature and makes villagers unhappy
  
• New path event "Torrential Rain": Increases humidity and makes villagers unhappy
  
• Mycologist: can now unlock a technology that allows workers to plant poisonous fungi
  
• Storms and Onbu-shakes now create some new stones on Onbu's back
  

Improvements

• Any mission (e.g. feeding Onbu with the Trebuchet, organizing a festival at the Town Square) can now be cancelled as long as the resources are still being gathered
  
• The tutorial has been completely reworked to explain all new gameplay features
  
• A lot of work went into how the game communicates any problems with your village. Two new widgets near the top bar now show if any buildings or villagers have pressing issues, and we improved which buildings show which kind of flag in what situation
  
• The Hostility Modifier window now shows the text in bold yellow while some conditions are not fulfilled (e.g. while you selected too few modifiers to unlock the next limit). You can see the remaining distance to unlock the next limit in-game, either in the "Challenge" section of the top bar, or on the bottom right in World view
  
• Deleting multiple save files is now much quicker and more convenient
  
• You can set the desired worker count on a building while it's still being constructed. Default worker count has been set to 0 to give full control over workers
  
• Restricted building areas (e.g. for the Injector) are now much more visible during placement
  
• Construction sites can now even be paused if there's still obstacles on them
  
• Starting a new game generates a day-0 savefile
  
• The building menu now shows how many of each building you've already built, and hovering over a button highlights all buildings of that type
  
• Building categories with 0 unlocked buildings are now greyed out initially
  
• When a building's construction is complete and it needs workers, a sound now plays
  
• The Research widget shows the number of available researches
  
• An outline is now shown on things that would get destroyed when placing a construction site
  
• When hovering over any building that has a flag raised, a tooltip now shows what's wrong
  
• Scavenging widget on top bar now shows remaining scavenging duration and targeted location
  
• Research tree: tooltip now shows housing capacity and decoration limit for all housing research
  
• Build menu: tooltip for decorations now shows their radius
  
• We introduce a limit of 100 savegames for Console. With it we also overworked how saving and deleting works to reduce friction.
  
• The radial menu in the info tab now has a shortcut that brings you directly to the building errors widget.
  
• When using a controller, all UIs now show a more intense highlighter to make it clear you are navigating in a menu.
  
• Pause menu button ‘Back to Main Menu’ is now called ‘Save and Exit’ to make it clear the game is automatically saved.
  
• All animal missions are visible in onbu view as long as the building exists
  
• Changed Onbu Commands cooldown to ingame time
  
• Changed Crossroad cooldown to ingame time
  
• Improvement to wording and layout of happiness panel in top bar
  
• When food is sparse and villagers start rationing (only eating when they’re starving, to give their friends a better chance at survival), the UI now shows a yellow food-bowl icon, and the hover-tooltip and panel explain that rationing is currently active. This mechanic was already in the game for a long time, but was not explained
  
• Warning flags on buildings now get sorted by severity, meaning that a building with a yellow and red flag should always visibly show the red flag
  
• Research tooltip now gets vertically flipped depending on cursor position
  
• Research tooltip has been made more compact
  
• Research tooltip shows decoration/pollution value of buildings that have them
  
• Gamepad: radial menu glyph is displayed to show that players can use the radial menu
  
• Added a lot of new tips to the loading screen, covering all new or updated game mechanics
  
• Reworded title of a top-bar panel from “Employment” to “Population Details”, to reflect the fact that it contains information about employment as well as housing
  
• On the first start of the new game version, the welcome panel will now show additional infos about the update and recommend giving the tutorial another shot
  

Bugfixes

• Fixed passive effect of Town Square and Community Plaza getting removed when building a second instance of the same building and then disabling one of them
  
• Fixed construction poles visible on Community Center after construction
  
• Fixed tooltips fading out and in again when their text changes
  
• Fixed some off-by-1 display issues with the happiness bar
  
• Fixed Dung Collector building working without any employee present
  
• Fixed a bug where the tutorial tracker was not set to 100% and therefore never disappeared
  
• Fixed spore cloud click-hitbox shrinking the further away from the path it was, making it hard to click at times
  
• Fixed housing quality bar and tooltip not showing fractional progress
  
• Fixed issues with gamepad in bug reporting window
  
• Fixed gamepad showing tooltip of trade window in acceptance dialog
  
• Fixed several issues with Pest Control. Workers should now always prioritize the right things, should always harvest eggs (if auto-collect is enabled or they are marked) even if they have no fuel, and generally do what you expect them to do
  
• Fixed villagers sometimes still being able to eat food before starving while supplies were very low
  
• Fixed hostility modifiers that affect Onbu’s heart rate not getting taken into account in the heart rate panel in the top bar
  
• Fixed villagers never idling on roads, only on dirt and grass
  
• Fixed some Onbu interactions sometimes being visible despite not being researched
  

Balancing

• Research:
  - All research categories have been unified in a single tree. Dependencies that were previously invisible are now explicit (e.g.: if a building costs glass to build, it now depends on the Glassblower)
  - Unlocking new technologies now costs resources
  - Research time has been heavily reduced across the board
  
• Relaxed Mode:
  - Needs will only increase with the amount of villagers, allowing you to scale the village up at your own pace
  - New dangers, such as poisonous forests or parasites, will appear a lot later than in Survival.
  - Biomes in Relaxed will never reach the same intensity as in Survival, giving you room to build mostly in peace - forever!
  - Onbu's health drops much slower from starving, exhaustion or poisoning, giving you ample time to react
  
• Survival Mode:
  - Needs will increase both with the amount of villagers and number of days passed, putting some pressure on you to scale up the village
  
• Scavenging takes considerably longer, but rewards substantially more resources. You can now see the expected resources when starting a mission. Careful, though, as random unexpected events may lead to different opportunities!
  - All scavenging rewards have been reworked. Many new resources can now be found while scavenging.
  
• Villagers now only eat once instead of twice a day, giving them much more time to focus on productive tasks. All food production has been tweaked to adjust for this
  
• Villagers now start with a belly full of berries, making food needs more consistent during the first 2 days
  
• Revolts can't happen while needs are at 0
  
• The generation of Onbu's back has been heavily reworked. It is now full of dense forests, sprawling rock formations, clay pits and more. Space is at a premium initially, and needs to be gradually freed up
  
• Rebalanced all construction costs
  
• Replaced "Wood Scarcity" hostility modifier with "Hedgehog" - a modifier that lets Onbu start covered in hundreds of spikes!
  
• School of Fish: hunger restoration 30% -> 35%
  
• Mushroomball: hunger restoration 20% -> 25%
  
• Onbu Health Potion: health restoration 20% -> 25%
  
• All scavenging rewards have been redesigned, and many rare resources can now also occasionally be found through scavenging
  
• You can now see much farther in the world from the beginning, but the scavenging radius only covers part of the visible area. This allows players to make decisions (e.g. at crossroads) based on what they see, even if they're not in range yet. Up to 5 Scout Towers can be built to gradually increase this radius
  
• Production speed and recipes of many buildings have been adjusted
  
• Deconstructing a building now refunds all resources, unless it was damaged
  
• Considerably increased storage capacity of Material Storage, Warehouse, Water Tank and Large Water Tank
  
• Wild herbs will start growing on Onbu's back after a while
  
• Hostility "Fast Metabolism": reduced heartrate increase 1.75 -> 1.25
  
• Hostility "Morning Appetite": only becomes active after day 25
  
• Instead of Knowledge, other valuable resources - Tools and Ancient Notes - can now be found on scavenging missions.
  
• Most building upgrades and some advanced other technologies require Ancient Notes to research
  
• Reduced initial worker count from 16 -> 10
  
• Kitchen, Gourmet Kitchen and Bakery don't increase the total amount of food anymore, are instead focused on only increasing food quality
  
• Rebalanced everything around Happiness to fit the new pacing
  
• Tweaked the "walk cost" of many entities (how hard it is to walk through them). This results in villagers generally trying to find a way around big obstacles
  
• Elefleas only remove surface poison, don't affect Onbu's internal poison anymore
  
• Onbu will not regenerate health on its own anymore, relies on health potions
  
• Onbu has much more health, giving you more time to react to bad situations
  
• Onbu will only eat when at 60% hunger or above (was 25%). This makes the Eat command much more relevant, and allows more gameplay depth when encountering food spots
  
• While humidity is damp, new water puddles appear on Onbu. These can be harvested for a big stockpile of water, or be left to dry out until they turn into clay deposits
  
• Heavily increased production time for high-value products (Onbu food, health potions etc), to give more of an incentive to scale the number of these buildings up
  
• Rebalanced decoration value and radius of all decorations
  
• Giant trunks and rocks now contain considerably more resources
  
• reduce Fishery production interval by ~20%, reduce storage space to 20 to bring in line with other buildings
  
• Stepping on a poison-infested island will now create a few spores on Onbu’s back
  
• remove glass cost from Ambulance research cost to make it more viable
  
• Gave Town Square and Community Plaza a decent wide-range decoration boost
  
• Onbu will no longer stand still while at low health
  
• Onbu will only regenerate health while sleeping while at low health
  
• Onbu starts the journey with 5% hunger
  

Visuals

• Growing mushrooms now look visibly different from grown ones, making it easier to tell them apart
  
• The scavenger glider has got a new look, for reasons yet to be revealed...
  
• A subtle animation plays whenever a resource is produced or harvested anywhere
  
• Animation for Water Evaporator
  
• New particle effect for Dung Collector and Compost Heap
  
• Animated decorative flags for some buildings
  
• Some workers now have a better-suited outfit for their job
  
• Visuals for all new buildings and resources
  
• Updated Gamepad info graphic in Settings menu
  

Dear Onbu Riders

The Wandering Village is turning 2 years old today which means Onbu is celebrating its 1002nd birthday. Happy b-day, big boy!!


We thought this would be a good time to share our updated roadmap leading up to 1.0 with you:



For over 2 months now we’ve been chiseling away at the upcoming ‘Research & Economy Update’ which has been accessible on the Testing branch for a while already. We just pushed a big new update again a few days ago and it’s coming to the main branch in the next few weeks!

We’re currently hard at work implementing the story mode and ruins biome which will be the next update after the Research & Economy one. We also feel like the game needs a bit more depth and variety related to your interactions with Onbu before the 1.0 release of the game which is currently planned for the first half of 2025.

And lastly, to celebrate the occasion we’re running a special 50% off birthday discount for our Strategy Bundle on Steam for a limited time:

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/41779/Stray_Fawn_Strategy_Bundle/


Thanks for checking in and we wish you a nice weekend!
Stray Fawn Studio

Dear Onbu Riders,


We hope you are doing well!
While a part of our team is working on the new Ruins Biome and expanding the lore and story of the game, others have been working on some experimental changes for the game in the past 2 months. These include a reworked research system, a variety of new food sources for Onbu, clay and brick as new construction materials, and a new way to get additional villagers - just to name a few!


This version is now live on the Testing Branch. Some of the changes have a big impact on how the game plays and feels, so we would love to hear your opinion, ideally over on Discord!

Before you jump into the new update, here's some info:
🐛 Please report bugs using the in-game feedback tool in the top right corner of the screen.
✅ You can make videos for Youtube/stream the testing branch content if you like.
📝 Please fill out the feedback form after playing (can also be found in game)

In other news:
As some of you might remember, we recently started a publishing branch additionally to developing our own games. Last week, we announced a new partnership for the game TerraScape and helped with the launch of the 1.0 update of the game.

Build gorgeous kingdoms on floating islands by strategically placing buildings in this cozy City-Puzzler. Discover secret combinations, take on weekly challenges and explore randomly generated maps in various single- and multiplayer game modes.
Would be awesome if you check it out :D

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2290000/TerraScape/

We also set up a bundle, so if you own The Wandering Village on Steam, you get an extra 15% off TerraScape.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/43094/Wandering_Terra/

And lastly, we’re once again co-organising SimFest on Steam!
So if you’re on the lookout for awesome simulation games on a discount, give it a look 👀



Cheers & Thanks for your support,
Stray Fawn Studio


----

How to access the update:


This preview is not yet fully compatible with controllers and lacks localisation.
Please note that builds on the testing branch are incompatible with your normal savefiles! In any case, it’s always a good idea to make a backup first. Here's how.

And Full Patch Notes:

A few notes before you get started:

• Previous save files are incompatible with this experimental version, and saves made in this version won't be compatible with the upcoming official releases. Saves may break in between versions of this prototype.
  
• Quite a few things are not yet translated - setting the game to English is recommended.
  
• Gamepad support is not fully done yet, please play with keyboard and mouse.
  
• This prototype contains many placeholder visuals and sounds.
  
• Only the "Relaxed" mode is available in this version. As soon as we move forward with the changes, we will re-enable the harder "Survival" mode and Hostility Modifiers.
  

Villagers and Happiness

• villagers only start having Needs when you have 15 or more villagers
  
• Needs scale with the number of villagers instead of the number of days passed
  
• new villagers want to join the village automatically every few days, as long as Happiness is high enough. This system replaces the productivity boosts from Happiness
  
• all values related to Happiness and Needs have been rebalanced
  
• revolts can't happen as long as Needs are below 1
  
• drastically reduced amount of leaving villagers when a revolt happens
  

Research

• research is now unlocked immediately upon selecting it
  
• research now costs Research Notes, a new category of resources that can be produced by the Researcher and other science-centric buildings (Academy, Onbu Observation Post)
  
• knowledge has been removed, since Notes fulfil the same purpose. 
  
• all places where knowledge could be earned (scavenging, trading) have been modified to reward notes instead
  
• new building “Academy”. Allows to produce Engineering Notes, and offers advanced and more resource-efficient recipes for other notes
  
• new building “Onbu Observation Post”. Allows to produce Onbu Notes
  
• new building “Library”. Storage for notes
  
• research button and all tabs in the research window now show the number of research items that you can currently unlock
  
• hide research MissionWidget, since it doesn’t serve a purpose in the new system
  
• trader will always offer some notes at random
  

Economy

• production of wood and stone can now be automated very early on by building Gathering Camps. Camps are very quick to build and tear down, but cost Tools. You start with a limited supply and can gain more through scavenging and trading
  
• Building upgrades also cost Tools (and no other resources)
  
• a lot more trees spawn on Onbu. Large trees and rocks take multiple cycles to harvest, yielding a lot more wood but taking longer to clear
  
• a lot more giant trunks and boulders spawn
  
• herbs will spawn periodically after a while
  
• you will start with a couple of free areas surrounded by lush forest, and will gradually need to free space to build your village
  
• clay deposits spawn on Onbu. The new Clay Gathering Camp is used to harvest these for clay
  
• the new Brick Furnace can produce bricks from clay, but needs fuel
  
• damp humidity regularly spawns puddles on dirt. Puddles can be harvested for water, or will eventually turn into clay deposits if left alone
  
• made most building costs quite a bit higher, and added clay/brick to the costs where it made sense
  
• diversified building costs; different paths now focus on different ingredients (wood/stone/clay)
  
• Iron Furnace and Glassblower now need fuel (wood, bile, biogas)
  
• balanced production times of all buildings, with a focus on encouraging vertical scaling
  
• beet does not survive freezing temperature anymore
  
• Mycologist can plant poisonous fungi
  
• refund 100% of resources on deconstruction (unless building is damaged)
  
• most crops turn into a decayed version when decomposing. It can be collected for some fertilizer, or will disappear after a while. This gives a little catch-up opportunity and a visual clue that something was mismanaged
  
• lock Stonecutter and Carpenter initially, as an entry-level research
  
• rebalance radius and deco-value of decorations
  
• rock trumpet gives 2 stone instead of 1
  

Dear Onbu Riders

Steam Summer Sale is in full swing and The Wandering Village is 25% off :D

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121640/The_Wandering_Village/



We also have a couple limited time bundles that you should totally check out.
Such as this one with the super cute Fabledom:

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/42635/Laidback_city_builder/



Or this mega bundle with Pioneers of Pagonia, Endzone, New Cycle and Islanders:

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/42767/City_Builder_Masters/


We wish you happy shopping and hope you find some nice deals!

Cheers & Thanks,
Stray Fawn Studio