It was round 1:45 within the morning, as I used to be laying down wood walkways to assist little rodents get to work quicker, that I spotted I used to be totally hooked by Whiskerwood, a newly launched city-builder and useful resource supervisor that blends collectively Timberborn, Factorio, and Sid Meier’s Colonization.
Out now on Steam by way of early entry, Whiskerwood is a top-down real-time city builder that has you main Whiskers, lowly mouse peasants and staff, as they journey to new lands within the 1700s by order of the wealthy, highly effective Claws, a bunch of royal cats. After choosing a spot to construct a dock for incoming ships and a warehouse to retailer items, you begin harvesting provides to start build up a tiny mouse settlement. Your objective isn’t merely to outlive, but additionally to reap sufficient assets, together with fish, berries, logs, and rock, to repay your taxes, that are claimed on occasion in-game by a royal fleet. As you do, the quantity of taxes it’s a must to pay goes up, and wait a minute…I don’t assume these Claws are good folks!
Early on, certainly one of your mice rightfully factors out that, hey, the Claws supplied the mice provides to construct buildings that may enrich the cats, however failed to offer way more than that, leaving the Whiskers mainly on their very own to determine the best way to construct a city and never all perish in just a few days. As soon as once more, undecided these cats might be trusted.
This a part of Whiskerwood is at present the least developed, with what feels like plans to permit a self-sufficient colony to chop itself off from the Claws and even revolt. For now, that stuff principally sits within the background and gives an excellent purpose to reap increasingly provides.
Whereas the sport’s recreation of 1700s colonization hooked me at first, what stored me round till means too late the primary evening I performed was the easy-to-understand city-building mechanics and neatly designed UI. Doing something in Whiskerwood hardly ever takes greater than two clicks. Every menu is straightforward to learn, navigate, and shut, which isn’t all the time the case in video games like this. Whiskerwood additionally does a implausible job, even in early entry, of offering gamers with all the knowledge they should learn about the place mice are going, what they want, what’s lacking, which assets are low, and so forth.
I particularly love the alert banners that seem for vital issues, like an injured mouse. Or to let {that a} mouse might need an extended trek to the mines from his tiny hovel. You simply click on on it, and it zips you to the issue, and from there, you’re normally a click on away from shifting a mouse or tweaking some a part of a constructing.
Making that journey shorter or extra environment friendly is a breeze with Whiskerwood’s snappy constructing and administration menus, which really feel like they had been constructed by individuals who perceive how important these items is to creating a metropolis builder enjoyable. However all of this good design doesn’t come at the price of simplification! That is nonetheless a posh recreation that may demand that you just create increasingly elaborate networks of buildings, conveyors, stairs, transportation, housing, and storage to have the ability to not solely pay your taxes but additionally survive harsher seasons and climate.
I’ve solely put about 5 hours into Whiskerwood to date, however based mostly on what I’ve performed and the gushing I’ve seen from city builder experts like Luke Plunkett over at Aftermath, I’m excited to maintain taking part in. Hopefully someday my tiny mice will stand up, seize the technique of manufacturing from the Claws, and achieve independence. For now, they’ll have to maintain breaking rocks and chopping down timber for these fats cats.
