Preview – Whiskerwood

Going into 2025, there were two games I was most excited about. The first was Hollywood Animal, which is shaping up nicely. The second was Whiskerwood which is finally hitting early access.

The reason for my excitement is its adjacency to Timberborn, which I’ve stated before, with no ambiguity, is the best game in the survival city-builder genre. It’s clear that Whiskerwood takes a great deal of inspiration from Timberborn, and this shows largely in its mechanics. The terraforming and vertical construction aspects are practically identical.

But Whiskerwood is more than just Timberborn with mice. The two games are very distinct. When you drill down into it, Timberborn is mainly focused on survival through bending nature to your will. Whiskerwood, on the other hand, is about production beneath an iron claw.

CUTEST LITTLE SWEATSHOP

In Whiskerwood, you establish and manage a colony of mice. They live under a monarchy of aristocratic cats. Aristocats, if you insist. The cats tax your colony in raw resources; copper, gold, logs, cotton, and so on.

The cats are vexing overlords. Their ships arrive every few days, demanding that you pay up. They’re brutal, unyielding, and relentless. Throughout my time playing, I never felt comfortable seeing that ship. It was always a fight to ensure I had the resources to pay them; it was never a certainty.

This is because, in order to build up your industry, you inevitably need to use some of the resources they ask for. You can’t pay with logs if you turn them into planks. You can’t pay with copper if you smelt it into ingots. But both of those things are required to improve your industry and expand your colony. The cats don’t want you to have industry, they just want their loot, so it’s a constant battle to both please your overlords and improve the lives of your citizens.

Worse, eventually the copper is mined out, and the trees are cut down. Cotton saps the nutrients from the ground, meaning you need to leave the fields fallow and inert for periods of time for them to regenerate. You have to keep growing your colony, but the constant pressure from the cats pushes you down.

Those cats can suck my ass.

NEVER WAS A CAT PERSON

Unfortunately, I think that is what’s going to push some players away from the game. Although, this is at the default normal difficulty. I feel if you remove the jerkass cats, then Whiskerwood has less to offer. In Timberborn, you’re driven to undertake massive engineering projects to improve automation and efficiency. It has the environment to work as your antagonist. Whiskerwood seems to have less opportunity for major feats of engineering, which would leave things a bit flat without the constant balancing act you play with the cats.

However, a planned feature for Whiskerwood is rebellion. It seems that, eventually, you’ll be able to lather your mice up into a thick, foamy revolution and get out from beneath the fuzzy paws of your rulers. I don’t think that’s possible right. I’m also under the impression that naval battles and trading with other colonies will be added somewhere down the line. You may also be able to eventually gain favour with the pirates, who currently are just another vexing layer of jerks to deal with.

Some of these things would be nice to have right now, because it’s a little frustrating to have problems with no solutions. The pirates keep jacking up their demands each time they visit, so eventually that’s just going to weigh too heavy.

PESKY CATS

There’s still a lot to like about Whiskerwood’s current Early Access state. Most of the colony building parts are there, allowing you to go from procuring a few resources to turning them into luxury commodities to keep your mice happy. The ever-important economy is functional. I’ve already put more than 15 hours into it. And unlike what I experienced in the early builds of Timberborn, I haven’t hit what feels like a soft endpoint.

However, and I hate to keep complaining, part of this might be due to the fact that the tech tree is so difficult to advance in. To get access to new buildings, you first need a research building, and you need to recruit a mouse with the educated trait. The mouse then has to be devoted to research. They fuel their research with boards, for some reason, and then later, ingots. It takes a lot of resources, and even if you have them all provided, the speed at which research gets done is really slow.

So, in those 15 hours, I’ve only advanced to the second level of the tech tree. That’s… maybe a bit too slow.

You can also get free blueprints from the cats as a reward for paying taxes, but whether you get something, and what is given to you, is random.

While I’m complaining, I drives me up the wall that you can’t assign farmhouses to specific fields. You can’t set priorities to fields, either. So, the mice will tend to any field within their radius, and there’s no way to tell them that they need to focus on the cotton so that taxes can be paid, and that the flax can wait. Or to prioritize the berries because, you know, the colony is starving.

DAMNED FAT CATS

So, despite the complaints that I have, what’s on display for Whiskerwood is really solid. There are some really important mechanics that are completely missing, such as rebellion and trading, but the actual colony building is mostly there and enjoyable.

If the remaining facets of the game are implemented well and balanced against the existing structure, then Whiskerwood will be a very sprawling and dynamic survival city-builder. But that’s no easy feat, because the remaining features are very ambitious. In adding combat and politics, Minakata Dynamics will be stirring in a great deal more complexity. What does a post-cat future look like? Is there going to be any benefit to staying under their watch?

I’ve enjoyed my time with the Early Access build. The extremely oppressive tax system is very stressful, but also adds a feeling of longevity and accomplishment. It also helps Whiskerwood feel distinct in a crowded corner of the sub-genre. You might want to hold off on establishing a colony right away, but eventually, I’m confident it will be worth visiting.

This preview opportunity was provided by the publisher.