Extended feedback (long post)

[starbird1975]

Hello everyone

I have prepared an extended feedback on the Wandering Village from the perspective of someone who jumped
the Onbu at 1.0 release and so experienced the complete package immediately. I have spent 137 hours
with the game and also spent a part of it with the QOL update. My background is that of an ambitious
gamer who always looks for big challenges but also appreciates story telling, atmosphere and immersion.
Furthermore I am a software developer working for a game company (working less than 10km from where this
game has been developed) and will also inject some ideas related to game design/mechanics below.

First I would like to give praise. I was already intrigued before starting but what I found exceeded my
expectations by far. This is truly a marvellous and well-crafted game where many different pieces fit
together really well. The game achieves a level of polish and balance that I hardly ever find in much larger
games. I also liked very much that the game can be perfectly played without any reloading (with one exception
that I will discuss below). Not having to reload leads to a high degree of immersion and I often found myself
completely forget time while being immersed into the game. What I also liked was that the game gave me the
possibility to play at high difficulty although I had to remove some of the modifiers as I will explain below.

Now to the actual discussion spread over several topics:

1) General comments

The game is good at explaining the basics through the tutorial which is well done and this is definitely good
enough to play the game in a casual way. Ambitious players however want to know details about the game
mechanics to optimize their play and unfortunately it is hard to get the answers to these questions. The
in-game documentation is minimalistic with not a lot of information compared to what is found in the tooltips
in-game. The online wiki has not much additional infos and doesn't seem to be maintained. I had to resort to
checking forums but couldn't get all the answers I wanted, at least initially. Only being exposed to the game
for a longer time allowed me to reverse-engineer all the information I needed.

Examples of things that confused me at first:

- The food indicator with x/y format mislead me first because x/y is typically interpreted as a percentage
  (0/10 is worst, 10/10 is best) but here the meaning is different. I had starving villagers and the numbers
  suggested to me everything was fine.

- The 'reserved' tag in the resource tooltips also lead to confusion and sometimes frustration. Even after
  having understood that buildings can reserve resources it wasn't immediately clear how to deal with it until
  I figured out that disabling buildings releases reserved resources. And this in turns then leads to the
  problem how to actually find the buildings which reserve a particular resource.

- The spore mechanics also gave me riddles especially the fact that some research require spores. I don't
  remember the game explaining to me how to get these, but I *do* remember that the game asked me in the
  tutorial to get rid of sporelings as quickly as possible. Which is exactly the way to *not* get spores.
  I think the mechanics is overcomplicated here, it would have been easier if tier 1 sporelings also gave
  spores with higher tier ones giving much larger amounts, plus the research requirements suitably scaled up.

- Housing quality is also not easy to grasp in the beginning. It's not the quality of all built houses but
  probably a number computed based on the actual assignment of villagers to houses.

2) Game design, Balance

- The story endgame on hard is the single place in the game where a savegame is strictly required the first
  time because it is unfair if the player gets there completely unprepared. Getting knocked out with the nose
  at the finish line was not a pleasant experience and I didn't have a savegame because the game otherwise can
  be played perfectly without ever reloading. There is a 'please save' warning in the game but it is a bit
  misleading because it mentions saving 'in order to continue playing', which I didn't want to.

- It is unfortunate that the ruins biome has been designed to be avoided. The only reason to get in there
  voluntarily is at the extreme late game to get resources for monument building. The water issue is so
  problematic that choosing any other biome is always the better choice. Evaporators don't work that well as
  they often wait for input resources. The upgrade only becomes available in the extreme late game when the
  ruins cease to be a treat anyway. In general I like the idea of a 'high risk/high reward' biome, but at the
  moment there are no high rewards to be had, plus a lot of scavenger resources are gated by survival gear
  which is typically not available in larger quantities until the late midgame.

- There is a problem with farms regarding the priority when 'Plant & Harvest' is selected. Every now and then
  I observe withered crops which result because the workers still do planting even when fully grown crops are
  close to decomposing. This leads to loss of food throughput and loss of water. The simplest fix would be to
  prioritize harvesting over planting although there are probably more efficient ways such as prioritizing
  harvesting whenever any crop is present whose decomposition value exceeds a threshold.

- As a follow-up to the problem just discussed: the aquafarm is currently the worst-functional building in the
  game. I observed this with kelp and can't say if the same applies to fish, too. I had a food stand just nearby
  so food breaks were not an issue. The decomposition speed is very high and kelps disappear regularly. It's
  something not easily noticed unless one is watching the process because in contrast to normal crops nothing is
  left behind after decomposition. The fast decomposition also makes it impossible to maintain kelp through
  heating/freezing zones even when running. So right now aquafarms are a micro nightmare.

- External parasites are effectively removed as threat as soon as the pest control building is operational which
  typically happens pretty early in the game. The removal of parasites is very cheap, too. Once a sufficient
  number of parasites is reached and the automatic harvesting of eggs is enabled, the parasites effectively
  disappear as a game mechanic. Whenever new parasites show up a few clicks are enough to remove them and
  that's all to it.

- The sporemoth food buff in the QOL patch is too strong in my opinion because now with less Onbu poisoning
  cultivating sporemoths is viable and I don't see any reason why a green egg should yield so much more food
  than the white ones. In my final run I had seven elefleas and four sporemoths and the egg output was quite
  comparable.

- I am scratching my head about the purifier, I still don't see the point why I ever would want this. It's
  accessible so late that fighting sporeling invasions is trivial with even a single upgraded decontaminator
  (even with hard + aggressive spread) and at that point collecting spores is also not an issue anymore.

- There is a cap to the population based need level and once that cap is reached and the population is stable
  regarding happiness one can add arbitrary many villagers as long as housing is present. This quickly leads to
  economic explosion and promotes exploit strategies like spamming kitchens, cottages and decorations as soon
  as cottages become available to bump up happiness and then continuously gathering villagers at no cost. This
  is probably fine in casual mode but not when playing for the challenge. Therefore my suggestion would be to
  remove the limit (only the population based limit!) in hard mode.

3) Difficulty modifiers

First I want to comment that the challenge mode looks completely redundant. What's the point of unlocking
modifiers with spending 10-20 hours per run when all of them are already unlocked in the sandbox mode? I can
completely emulate a challenge mode using sandbox mode by stopping to play at 1000km, patting myself onto
the shoulder and say 'well played player 1'. I guess the whole challenge mode has been constructed around
achievements which many people ignore anyway.

After successfully finishing a story mode run on hard I decided to amp up the challenge using the hostility
modifiers. I started with sandbox 30 hard and with every failure either adapted my approach or decided to
remove a modifier. I will explain below which modifiers I consider problematic. In general I like the approach
with the modifiers although I feel like they are focusing too much on punishing the early game and slowing
down game progress. Many games lack good late game difficulty options to counter the inverse difficulty curve.

Now on to the modifier discussion:

- 'Anxious Onbu' is either completely inconsequential or catastrophic and potentially game ending. Facing
  tapeworms early in the ocean will quickly exhaust the Onbu leading to massive health reduction, especially
  on hard where the distance to the next island is so long that even without interference exhaustion kicks
  in before reaching the island. But what's even worse is when I send the Onbu to sleep before entering the
  ocean and then parasites spawn and immediately send the Onbu into the water almost fully exhausted. This
  feels very unfair and ended one of my high-hostility runs and has led me to ban this modifier for good.

- 'Bleak Outlook' doesn't mix with hard mode and 'Fussy Folks'. During my initial attempts at sandbox 30 hard
  I could get at most one or two rounds of nomads before the nomad threshold increased to a level which I
  couldn't reach anymore that early in the game (remember that hard mode has automatic need increase
  independent of population). This modifier also has a really bad interaction with 'Cloud of Despair' which
  I consider a good modifier. I feel there are already enough early game punishing modifiers and if I knew
  a better modifier which targets the later stages of the game I would replace 'Bleak Outlook'. For my
  own sandbox runs I banned it.

- 'Ice Age' has obvious issues with herbs not growing in mountain biome and cacti not growing in desert. That
  often leads to autoloss scenarios in the very early game at higher difficulties. I can see this modifier
  working later on by producing large stocks of those resources. I feel like the idea of temperature as a game
  mechanic feature is promising, but not as a global modifier, more with a weather concept including some kind
  of weather forecast station to predict temperature. To reduce early-game restarts I banned this modifier.

Thus I ended up with removing these three modifiers which for me results into the best possible ultra difficulty
setup (when combined with hard mode) and I can recommend this setup to everyone who is looking for the
ultimate challenge. But beware of the very slow progress.

Then some notes on the difficulty ratings:

- 'The Berry Crisis' is largely inconsequential, even at the highest difficulty levels it wasn't really difficult
  to provide food for the very few people as the farm is available quickly. I would rate it a 1.

- 'Hedgehog' is also not very consequential as it only makes layouting a bit trickier. Bad initial setups can be
  rerolled immediately and once a good setup is found the spikes can be ignored for a while and later on one can
  gradually remove some of them by always pairing one spike removal with one mushroomball to balance the
  trust. I would rate it at most a 2 if not a 1.

- 'Fussy Folks' has a very strong effect throughout the whole game as it strongly reduces the number of villagers
  that the player has to work with. It's maybe the most influential of all the modifiers and will lead to much
  more worker rotation and tight situations plus it also leads to much slower development. Therefore I rate it
  as a 3.

4) Handling, Micro, QOL

This game is quite micro intensive especially later on and nicely enough the QOL update addressed some of the
issues I also encountered. Nevertheless I have some more suggestions:

- I feel like the keyboard shortcuts could be improved, some panels I hardly ever use have shortcuts while
  others that I click all the time don't have them. The happiness panel I need so often that in a parallel
  universe where the game had dockable panels I would probably lock it to some corner to be permanently
  visible. The resource tabs added by the QOL update are a nice and useful improvement but just imagine if
  we could toggle between the tabs with keys! I would immediately swap out the number keys, because I hardly
  ever change game speed and just let the game run at 4x, pausing whenever something needs intervention.

- Some production buildings produce large quantities of output resources while other produce small quantities
  of specialized output resources, such as ombu kitchen, ombu pharmacy, laboratory and others. The problem
  is now that the latter will just keep producing the same item until there is no input, but often this is
  undesirable because there are multiple ways of using the same input resource to produce multiple different
  output products. Because there is so much going on players will typically forget to disable the building in
  time. The easiest fix for this would be to allow toggling between bulk production and single item production,
  the latter being triggered by a dedicated button. A new icon would signify that the building is idle despite
  input resources being available.

- Hornblower micro is a bit tedious, I need to enable, zoom out, execute command, zoom in, disable. In general
  the idea of a building needing to be staffed for instant operations feels wrong to me because one can easily
  bypass the staffing requirement with enable/disable micro. A game should probably not promote this kind of
  micro especially if there is a lot of regular micro going on already.

- The dung collector is implemented in a weird way with this mysterious non-existing input resource. The
  problem with this is that the building needs to be staffed at all times because the input resource is
  immediately lost when an evacuation happens. Plus de-staffing the building in the ocean leads to the problem
  of the player forgetting to staff it again when the ocean is left. Leaving it staffed in the ocean leads to
  a permanent (red) warning.

- The new hauling post is a good idea though I noticed that stuff lying on the ground is sometimes not picked
  up for a very long time, presumably because there are always higher prioritized jobs. I noticed this with
  elefleas eggs which started piling up when no kitchen was requesting them. This can even lead to a situation
  where there is no free space anymore for the parasites to lay eggs, which forces players to select the eggs
  with the priority tool regularly.

5) Bugs and other issues

- I noticed that the steam fps indicator showed me a frame rate of 144fps even if the game itself is configured
  to limit at 60fps. Not sure who is right here. I sometimes see stuttering while scrolling even though the
  steam indicator is still at 144 fps. Just wanted to mention it, the fps limitation feature is in my opinion
  more important than many people realize because of the implications on energy consumption and sometimes
  also on acoustic output of graphics cards.

- One thing that I started to notice after the QOL update is that the biome interfaces are not in sync anymore
  between the world view and the map view. It's best noticeable when going from ocean to some other biome, on
  the map the Onbu is already on solid ground but in the world view still deep in water.

- When the Onbu arrives at a mushroom patch which induces fatigue and it is fully exhausted the eat command is
  not accepted by the game. The Onbu then sleeps, eats and immediately sleeps again.

- In the QOL patch notes there is this comment on the tapeworm nerf which I find a bit cryptic. What exactly does
  this 20% mean? I measured hunger reduction by a mushroomball with five tapeworms present and it was 4-5%.
  That stretch of ocean with five tapeworms and extreme distance between islands is the single most dangerous
  place on that planet.

- Sometimes elefleas spawn on tiles occupied by spikes or bushes and aren't selectable until the object is
  removed.

- When sporemoths are cultivated the 'mild infestation' warning periodically pops up even though the poisoned
  area is relatively small and not growing and therefore under control.

- The Onbu actions to remove parasites should be disabled when none of that parasite type is present. I once
  misclicked and wasted an insecticide this way.

- The currently selected crossing direction should be marked without the hornblower being staffed.

- The game uses the terms 'spore essence' and 'fungal essence' for the same thing which is confusing.
  Examples are the research nodes 'spore distillery'/'extract essence' plus the 'last man standing' quest.

- The 'hedgehog' modifier reduces the stone per spike but apparently not the trust reduction per spike. This
  broke one of my high-hostility runs when I removed three spikes and lost the next crossing and the Onbu
  decided to go for the ruins to commit suicide. Maybe this is intended behavior but if I had 100 spikes I
  would care less about losing one compared to when I had 10 spikes.

- The harvest tool doesn't seem to work on spikes (no balooon indicator). Selecting the spike and clicking on
  the harvest icon works.

- Misclicking with the harvest tool still plays the harvest audio clip.

- Kelp should be in the Onbu resources tab as it's used mostly for health potions and the nutritious mushroom
  balls. Ancient notes apparently are in none of the new tabs and should probably be in the left most
  resources tab.

- Small objects (such as decorations) destroyed by natural disasters are sometimes hard to spot and will
  negatively affect the happiness level when not repaired quickly. The easiest fix would be to display a warning
  icon as long as some objects are not repaired.

- The game doesn't explain to the players which buildings are upgradeable. Maybe you could squeeze in some
  icon into the new Alt overlay.

- It would be nice if there was a way too zoom out without tilting, for example to make screenshots.

- The worker management panel has a too large font size/gui element size.

- Research nodes can't be selected when the mouse is clicked exactly on the small resource icons (probably
  due to the tooltips).

- There should be a 'skip dialogue' option in story mode for people that do story runs multiple times for
  the sake of quests and the endgame.

- Please hide the mouse pointer during fullscreen/cut scenes.

6) Ending on a high note

I want to end like I began with praise. My final run became an absolutely epic and at times tough challenge
which I will remember for a long time. It was a sandbox 23/hard/no_reload run (QOL patch from the start) with
the goal of building all three monuments which I succeeded on day 436 after 3049 kilometers. I still remember
key moments during the journey: The 'ocean of death' with the five tapeworms and the super-long stretch
between islands which brought me down to sub 10% health. The long streak of jungle/ruins at the midgame
where I struggled with too few villagers to deal with all the threats. The exodus of many people after a
thunderstorm destroyed a boarding house and the repair material was not in stock. That's emergent
storytelling of the finest kind. And now, as a Wandering Gamer, equipped with these memories, I will move
to other worlds. But who knows if some well-crafted difficulty modifiers can make a comeback happen?

All the best

starbird1975