A mysterious energy of the woodland has started to transform some of the wild animals into humanoid form. This gave them the ability to use tools, wield weapons, build structures and grow crops. Animal villagers started gathering into small scattered towns, and are more concerned about their own village problems. It's your job as a player to rally the animals to your side to face a common threat: human invaders.
Woodland Rebels is a survival game with town management elements. Play as one of the available animal species and influence the fate of the woodland:
Explore forests, wetlands, prairies, caves, temples, and more.
Make friends and enemies with other animal villagers.
Assign roles to villagers to let them help you complete tasks.
Fight human invaders, either in direct combat, by recruiting rebels to fight at your side, or by laying traps.
Craft structures, weapons, traps, meals, potions, and other objects.
Trade with villagers, or steal from them.
Go through cold seasons, harsh weather, forest fires, and other disasters.
Face various foes such as wild animals, ghosts, bugs, and humans.
Dig treasures, discover underground secrets, and use the mystical energy of the forest.
Harvest and sow crops, hunt or tame wild animals.
Select a character and scenario when creating a new game, or play in endless mode.
Generate a new world each time you play.
Animal Villagers
Villagers that you befriend can be assigned roles, which will determine what automatic tasks they perform. For example, a forager will cut wood, mine rocks and collect items, a guard will patrol the town and attack intruders, a cook will prepare meals, while a farmer will sow seeds, harvest crops and water plants.
Your main character can also trade with villagers, and ask them useful questions. They will reward you with gifts when you help them. Some villagers can be recruited in the rebellion to fight at your side.
Animal Towns
There are many animal towns scattered around the map that you can encounter. Each town has a community box in the middle that holds all the items owned by the town villagers. Villagers will automatically drop items they collect in the box, and pick the items they need. Town villagers also have a mood, which is affected by housing, food, the appeal of objects built in the town, wanted items and many other factors.
You can increase your relation with a town by completing tasks requested by the villagers. When your relation with a town is high, villagers will start giving gifts, let you assign villager roles, increase the amount of rebels that can be recruited, or even let you pick items from the community box. As your relation with a town increases, villagers will be more demanding and have a bigger list of wanted items.
Stealing from the town community box (without establishing the proper town relation level) or killing villagers, will cause the town to become enemy. Villagers will start attacking you on sight.
Wild animals
Wild animals are still in their true animal form. Those can be hunted or tamed, and raised for products such as egg or milk. Some animals like the moose can be mounted for faster travel.
You can use a rope to catch animals in the wild, and bring them to other locations. Wild animals can then be placed inside cages, or within fences, to give you time to tame them. You can craft a collar and equip it on a tamed animal to designate it as your pet. Pets will follow you wherever you go.
Crafting
You have access to a variety of crafting recipes, which allow you to customize your world by building all kinds of useful tools and objects. Crafting stations can be built to gain access to more recipes. Even more crafting recipes can be learnt from books or from villagers.
You can build platforms in the trees, ladders, hang ropes to build suspended traps, or just to hang flower pots. You can build bug traps to catch bugs, craft a bow to hunt animals, make a saddle to mount your moose, craft a potion at the cauldron to increase your attack damage, make fertilizer to speed up the growth of your plants, build a bookshelf to increase the town appeal, and many more.
Combat
Your character can attack in 4 directions. Using your weapon or blocking attacks requires energy, which regenerates when you stop attacking or blocking. Enemy attacks can be avoided by moving away from the enemy just before they strike, or using a shield. You can craft different types of weapons and armors to increase damage to the enemies and protect your health.
Books
Books are the main way you can learn new crafting recipes and skills. They are one-time use items, and when used, offer 3 choices of skills or recipes. You can also trade books with villagers for other items.
Randomized open world
-When starting a new game, an island is generated consisting of randomized biomes and natural environments. The island also contains multiple animal towns and human camps at random locations.
-Some areas such as caves or temples are handcrafted for more interesting exploration and dungeon-style puzzles. The world randomization will pick one of the available pre-built areas for each cave and temple generated in the random world. Some scenarios will also force specific areas to be added to the world.
Scenarios
When creating a new world, you must select a scenario, select the difficulty, and then create your character. The scenario will affect how the world is generated and the events that can be triggered. It will also affect dialogues, objectives, and set the goal of the game.
It is also possible to play without a scenario for a more randomized world and without a specific goal (Endless mode).
Seasons and Weather
The game world goes through 4 different seasons, completely changing the look and available resources. Your character will face many type of harsh weathers such as strong winds, droughts, storms and forest fires.
Mod Support
One of our primary goals is to ensure easy mod support for players to be able to create their own items, scenarios, enemies, underground areas, and more. While mods won't be supported in the demo version, they are a planned feature for full release.
Our Plan
We plan to release a free demo in 2026. Once the demo is out, we will collect feedback and prepare for the game release. It will have free periodic updates to add more content and fix issues based on players’ feedback.
Join our Discord to follow the game's development and access the playtest when available.
