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0 Whiskerwood is a settlement management simulation, brought to you by developer Minakata Dynamics and publisher Hooded Horse. It released into Early Access on Steam on November 6th. You are put in charge of a colony of mice on an untouched island, where you will need to manage your resources, set up production chains, and ensure the general welfare of your little Whiskers, all while trying to grow your home.
The cats have taken over!
Today, I am diving back into Whiskerwood to check out the newly released Early Access version! I previously played and reviewed the demo version, so feel free to check out that article before reading this one. While the general gameplay loop has stayed the same, there have been some really major updates that open the game wide up. I’m excited to talk about them, so I’m gonna stop the yapping and get straight into it!
Gameplay
Building a thriving settlement in Whiskerwood takes a lot of strategic planning, starting right as you arrive on the archipelago. Your first task is to pick the best island to set up your initial base. Since traversing between different islands is a massive pain early on in the game, you need to pick a spot that covers all your bases. Your ideal starting spot should have wood for building, berry bushes for easy foraging, and veins of coal and ores, as they are essential early on to pay off your outrageously high taxes to the oppressive “Claw”.
Most islands come with some rather challenging terrain, ’cause I guess having a nice, flat island was too much to ask for. While the demo only gave you stairs to climb, the Early Access version lets you expand on that nicely! You’re still stuck with just stairs at the beginning, but will eventually unlock much more efficient infrastructure, such as elevators, railways, and fun little slides that your Whiskers can use to get down any mountain in no time!
The Basics
With all that planning done, it’s finally time to set up shop! Once you’ve picked the perfect spot for your settlement, your next goal is placing your very first structures: the Trade Dock and the Warehouse. The Dock is your only connection to the outside world. It is where all the tax ships, resource deliveries, and new Whiskers will arrive. The Warehouse…well, is a warehouse. Not much else to say. Except that it will be your largest storage space for quite a while, so place it conveniently! You can still build tiny little sheds, but it will take some time before you can upgrade past them. Thankfully, resource hauling has gotten a lot less painful since the demo version. But more on that later.
Workers
Managing your workforce efficiently is key to your settlement’s success. You can assign them to various tasks, whether it’s gathering fruit, chopping wood, smelting ores, or just moving inventory. What makes things a bit more interesting is that all Whiskers come with unique quirks that will affect both their work performance as well as their daily lives. You might get a loner who will get unhappy if they have to share their house, or Whiskers who are more prone to getting sick. On the upside, some can’t smell, which is ideal if you want them to work in high-pollution areas without constantly complaining, and others have thick fur, making them less likely to freeze during winter. Occasionally, you will even get a Whisker that is already trained in skilled labor! They will be a perfect factory worker, and some advanced buildings even require them to operate!
Day to Day
Your Whiskers will always stick to the same daily schedule. They work all day, grab a meal at a warehouse, café, or dining hall in the evening, and then head home to get some rest. Unlike the demo, they now teleport home at the end of the evening, so they will no longer collapse 4 steps away from their front door, which was incredibly annoying back then. After every day, you will get a summary screen which shows your daily stats, such as resources you have gained, spent, and how much you owe in taxes.
More importantly, your Whiskers will give you their Approval rating, which is another form of currency. You will gain Approval if your Whiskers are happy, if their house is cozy, if they are well-fed, and more. But they will harshly deduct approval for literally any tiny issue. They don’t like their job? Deduction. Roommate snores? Deduction. Stubbed their little toe? Deduction! You get the drift. Try to keep your Whiskers approval as high as possible, you will need it to hire more Whiskers and to enact some newly-added policies!
What’s been added since the demo?
A huge addition since the Whiskerwood demo is the Research system! Simply assign a few smart Whiskers to the Research Lab, and they will start unlocking new blueprints for your colony in exchange for a few of your resources! These range from simple quality-of-life improvements, like better paths or bigger warehouses, all the way up to entirely new factories. Some blueprints have prerequisites, like a tailor needing fabric, or a bakery needing a mill and wheat.
However, my absolute favorite part by far has to be the conveyor belts. It’s so much nicer to simply have your Whiskers ship everything to the same storage and letting the logistics workers handle the rest. It sure is a step up from having them run back and forth between 345776 different storage sheds. Another personal favorite of mine are the new rails. I can’t count how many times my Whiskers complained about their long commute, but now they can just take public transport! Easy Peasy.
Overall, Research really opens up the entire game and enables so much more complex gameplay. You can use it to increase your Whiskers’ comfort and productivity, or you can completely neglect their needs, ignore all their whining about every minor issue, and simply assign them even more work.
Policies
On top of the newly added Research, you can now enact Policies to make your Whiskers more efficient, but it does cost quite a chunk of your Approval to keep them running! For example, your Whiskers can burn trash to make fires last longer in winter, though that will create more pollution, or you can have them tear out tree stumps to boost your yield from wood-chopping. My personal favorite Policy to run, especially when I’m not planning on hiring any new Whiskers anytime soon, is one that forces them to make little trinkets in their downtime, which you can sell to cover some of your taxes (though it burns through all of your Approval really fast)! Many of the more efficient Policies come with some downsides, but that’s nothing that would outweigh the positive effects that they bring.
Another major announcement dropped just a few days ago: Steam Workshop support is now live! Even though it’s a brand-new feature, the community has already created some beautiful visual mods, some to make the game a lot easier, and even a fun mod that boosts the game speed-up from a maximum of 3x all the way up to 20x! Talk about speed, huh?
Graphics & Audio
When it comes to this section, not much has changed since the demo. Not like you could improve it a lot anyway! Whiskerwood has been, and still is, genuinely beautiful to look at and charming to listen to.
The game’s unique art style is a major highlight for me. It captures a rough, slightly medieval vibe that is found in a lot of games in this genre. At the same time, it manages to stay very stylized and fun too! The colors and textures give the game a very natural and overall cohesive feeling, while still seeming bright and vibrant. On top of all that, the UI is very simple to read, and the menus are easy to navigate while still staying true to the game’s design.
The audio is also spot on. The music is quite whimsical and has a very fitting vibe to it. Meanwhile, the sound effects are kept simple and low-key, which I think is great for a game like this. Whenever you interact with a Whisker, they make a cute little squeaky noise, which I think is both adorable and gives a little bit more life to each and every one of your tiny little workers.
Longevity
I’m currently 40 hours deep into my run and I still haven’t unlocked everything, which is quite impressive! I’m sure that you will run out of island resources eventually, but that seems like something that the developers may address down the road.
Right now, there aren’t too many quests in the game, but the core gameplay loop is engaging enough to keep you hooked even without them! Most of them only serve as a way to push you to unlock new upgrades and explore different features. So, basically a mini-tutorial disguised as a quest system. I’d still like to see a few more of them, just to have some set goals that I can accomplish. According to the developers, they do plan on adding more of them down the line, so that’s nice.
I’m not entirely sure how great the replayability would be at this point, as the islands always generate in a similar way, but that might be subject to change down the line, so I remain very hopeful!
Final Thoughts
I genuinely love Whiskerwood so far. The new features in the Early Access version are absolutely amazing and already play out so smoothly. I haven’t personally run into any major bugs or graphical issues, which is great. Everything I wished for during my original demo playthrough has come true, and the game feels incredibly fleshed out already. You could easily jump in right now and not even realize it’s still in Early Access. I know I’m just gushing about it at this point, but it really is deserved.
Even though I couldn’t find a roadmap, the developers have made a few statements about what’s to come on the game’s Steam page. The full version is supposed to feature additional quests, more goods and production chains, more tech tree options and buildings, Whisker rebellion, combat, and the sea. Sounds like quite the laundry list of features, but I am excited to see them all! I will likely jump back in whenever they introduce bigger features. The recent Steam Workshop addition also opens up a lot of opportunities for fun mods down the line that could change your style of playing entirely!
Enough of the praise, I think you get the idea.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
If you enjoyed this review, why not check out my previous article about Twinkleby?
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