Wanderhome, Travelling, to where? Who knows!
"You should play an obligate sexual cannibal in Wanderhome I think it'd be funny" - Jay Dragon, developer of Wanderhome
Touchstones: Ghibli films
Genre: Cozy game, Adventure
What is this game?: Wanderhome is a game about playing small critters travelling, to where? who knows, its the journey that counts, not the destination
How's the gameplay?: Wanderhome functions on the Belong outside Belonging framework, which functions in a push/pull of Tokens, Tokens allow you to take negative plot beats in return for later having positive plot beats! there's also playbooks that specify what you can spend tokens on and how you gain them. Wanderhome is a very simple game, this is because it lacks a GM! storytelling is done entirely collaboratively, it works shockingly well, especially with such a simple setting and premise!
What's the setting (If any) like?: Wanderhome's setting places the players in a pastoral landscape ravaged by a prior war. The world is healing, the people are hurt, and things are getting weird. The setting has some extra lore, like the Little Gods, in effect "God" is a very strange concept in the world of Wanderhome, being a collection of tiny deities that make up the world, rather than one or 10 centralizing figures. The setting of wanderhome is a large draw of the game, and I'll leave the rest for you to find out. Oh also, the players are all small furry critters, and the usual roles of cattle and other things are replaced by very large bugs, this is the big aesthetic draw of the game.
What's the tone?: Wanderhome's is a world where things got very dire a while back, but things are getting better, people are healing, gradually, and the horrors of the past are being reconciled with. It's a setting largely about healing and improving
Session length: Wanderhome lends itself to shorter, 1-2 hour long games
Number of Players: 2-6 are all fully possible, however, in my opinion, 3-5 is preferable
Malleability: Wanderhome's mechanics are faaaairly generic and can be modded into many other things, even if the setting is a large draw and part of the game. This is a game I'd honestly recommend mostly sticking to the default setting, though, just because it's so interesting
Resources: Wanderhome has a ton of extra fan playbooks, some extra official playbooks, though its lacking on group sheets (That I could find) and other useful things, its a very simple game, though, its not like you require a lot
Wanderhome asks the question, "What if Ghibli-inspired games took more than surface level aesthetic inspirations?" and runs with it to create one of the tightest and most interesting experiences currently in the space, it's a wonderful game made all the better by one of the most beautiful books i've ever seen. It's also one of the few games i've seen multiple Op-eds, essays, and academic analyses about, its setting is just THAT good