Whenever possible, I like to sucker-punch everybody’s weekend plans by blogging the release of a huge 4X strategy game, factory sim or other managerial timesink last thing on Friday. In this case, I’m ambushing you with the avid rodent carpentry of Whiskerwood, the new city builder from Railgrade developers Minakata Dynamics and Manor Lords publishers Hooded Horse. It’s got 40 different commodities, an elaborate weather simulation, and a demo out now on Steam. Haha, yes! You are welcome.
In Whiskerwood, you are a mouse mayor setting up island colonies on behalf of some bastard fat cats. Yes, this one’s a straight-shooting allegory, but going by the release date trailer, any transferable learnings about the plight of the mouse proletariat come a distinct second to the joy of plaiting conveyor belts.
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“Though your ship arrives with an initial supply of resources and a starting band of mice, you must quickly establish core structures, essential services, and production capabilities to ensure continued growth and prosperity,” comments the Steam page. “Establish waste management and healthcare facilities, ensure buildings are properly heated and maintained, and send forth your mice to fell trees, mine mountains, and tend to the fields and fish.
“The cats will demand their due,” it goes on, “and your own citizens will abandon the colony if their needs aren’t met on a daily basis – you must strike a perfect balance between the needs of the mouse and the demands of the cat.” Cue opening bars of the Circle of Life.
Other bulletpoints stress the role of verticality. Given that you’re building on fairly titchy islands, you’ll soon need to layer them up by either plunging underground or stretching your production facilities up mountainsides. It doesn’t seem quite as extreme as All Wall Fall, in which your teetering metropoli are subject to actual real-time physics, but those mice factories do look rather cramped and precarious.
Your mice colonists have distinct attributes that fit certain tasks, together with preferences and weaknesses. Some are cool with labouring underground, others are all fine and dandy with air pollution. Up to a point, anyway. In good news for the bleeding hearts who feel bad about forcing virtual animals to breath smog for 100 hours, the Steam page suggests that you can one day overthrow the cats.
“Come rain or shine, the shipments must be fulfilled to feline satisfaction lest they call upon their henchmen to violently remind you of your duties,” it thunders. “Will you forever serve this oppressive paw? Or will you raise your whiskers in defiance?”
The game simulates a whole kaboodle of things. Different growing conditions per crop, for instance: you’ll want damp caves for mushrooms, good soil and sunlight for wheat, and high ground for potatoes. (I grow potatoes. I wasn’t aware they were best planted on hilltops.) If starting terrain conditions are suboptimal, you can lay hot water pipes to create greenhouse environments. All this and: naval combat! You’ll be able to send forth galleons of nautical nibblers to scout new islands and hopefully not get the shit kicked out of them by pirates.
One comparison is the beaver-powered Timberborn, one of our best building games, but I’m also slightly reminded of fellow Hooded Horse production Against The Storm, sans roguelike elements. Whiskerwood launches into early access on 6th November, and you can find that demo on Steam.