My 2025 obsession with city-builders is running straight through into 2026 with Whiskerwood, which recently came out in Early Access and which, even unfinished, is legitimately one of the best and most interesting examples of the genre.
Luke Plunkett
Set in the 1700s (though, not our 1700s), you play as the leader of some little mice (Redwall fans, ahoy) who have been sent by their cat overlords to settle a distant (and importantly, unoccupied) land. Upon landing and picking out your settlement spot you begin a survival city-builder that appears to be quite conventional: you need to harvest timber and stone so you can build houses and farms, which you’ll need to support a growing population, while also keeping everyone fed and warm so they don't die during the depths of winter.
Were that all there was to this game, just a city-builder starring cute little mice, it would still be great. There's a staggering amount of tech and buildings to unlock, and a ton of resources to work with. What begins with picking berries and chopping down logs gets very quickly into pipe systems and mass transportation, and while early on you’re only building houses and docks, later you’ll need multiple buildings specialising in the inputs required for everything from tailored winter clothing to scissors.
Whiskerwood does a fantastic job of tracking the myriad of resources required to support this burgeoning commercial network. Click on a building and you’re instantly shown everything you need to know, like where the workers are right now on the map, what they’re doing, what the status of its current production is and what, if anything, is holding that up. Need to find a specific building, or a count of how much tea everyone has drunk today? It’s all 1-2 clicks away. I know this sounds like something all city-builders do and should do, but they don’t! Failing to tell the player all the information they need is where so many of them fall down!
The production chains, while appearing daunting at first glance, are also pretty fun to get going. Whiskerwood is packed with workshops that will turn something raw into something processed, then turn that processed thing into something else. Sometimes it’ll need more raw ingredients, sometimes it’ll need fresh water (requiring a piped water network) and often combinations of all of those. It’s very clear how to get these all up and running and to keep track of how they’re going, so from humble beginnings you can get some cool stuff going late-game, to the point it feels like Factorio in parts as you strive for the most economical way possible to move your resources from building to building (the developers’ last game went very hard on production).
It’s clear the team have put a lot of thought into what makes these games sing beyond the basics. You know everything you need to know at all times, thanks to the on-screen indicators and menus. The Interface is wonderful, and designed in a way that keeps you busy constantly; there’s always something broken or short on supply, which requires you to personally attend to it and generally make very precise orders, but rather than being an annoyance or something you wish could be automated, here it’s just an invitation to get creative. Mistakes in Whiskerwood are fun, a rarity in city-builders, but especially in survival ones.
The emphasis on logistics is also astounding in how thorough and robust it is, even at this Early Access stage. Whiskerwood runs on a day/night cycle, limiting the amount of work every mouse can do each day, so it's imperative to make sure your workers’ commutes are as short as possible, while also optimising the delivery of goods through first direct paths, then later on conveyer belts, elevators and even railways. Commutes even factor into a mouse’s happiness, so Whiskerwood is in effect asking you to build several 15-minute settlements across the map, then endlessly refine them in a way that’s so taxing, and rewarding, that it could have just been its own video game.
But that’s not all there is to it. Remarkably, Whiskerwood also has a whole Sid Meier’s Colonization thing going on as well, set in a politically tumultuous time, and laced with secessionist possibilities. Just like in Colonization your overlords are assholes, and just like in Colonization they’re also necessary because they’re supplying you, so you pay your taxes (colonial ships arrive at your towns periodically and demand huge portions of your goods), you buy fancy gear from home and you will like it. And just like in Colonization, a big part of your workforce planning is defined by the skills and experience your colonists have when they land, making some much better suited to certain jobs than others.
Luke Plunkett
The bigger your colony gets, and the more self-sufficient it becomes, the more you can start to question that power balance, and maybe do something about it. Annoy the motherland enough and they’ll snap, cutting you off from vital supplies and sending warships to your harbour which bombard you, causing huge amounts of destruction which you need to repair.
There’s also…well actually that’s about it for the rebellion stuff, which is very much in an either unfinished or not-even-there-yet stage. You can see where the game’s going to try to go with it, but it’s clearly prioritising city-building at this stage of development over its political play.
I know I spent a lot of time in 2025 talking about city-building and resource management, so I'm sorry to begin 2026 doing exactly the same thing. But hey, it's not my fault the folks making cool games in this genre are getting so smart and making such interesting stuff. And Whiskerwood is one of the smartest I’ve played in a long time.
