Welcome to the first dev diary for Whiskerwood.
We’ll be posting these every second Friday, each one focused on a different part of the game: mechanics, design choices, production systems, and colony survival. We want to cover everything we’ve been working on and explain why it’s built the way it is.
After each post, we’ll be available on Discord, /r/Whiskerwood on Reddit, and the Steam forums to answer questions and hear what you think.
What is Whiskerwood?
Whiskerwood is a city builder set in a low fantasy world ruled by the Claws. You play as a community of Whiskers, industrious mice who are sent to settle dangerous new islands and ship resources back to their feline overlords.
Each colony is built on an island where space is scarce. You can build upward into towering wooden structures or dig into cliffs and mountainsides to carve out new layers. Verticality presents both opportunities and challenges, influencing how you plan your settlement.
Your settlers arrive by ship with a limited stock of supplies. From there, you must construct docks, set up farms, fell forests, mine ore, and begin weaving the production chains that will sustain your colony. The cats will always demand more. Your mice will always need food, shelter, water, and morale. Survival depends on keeping both sides satisfied.
There are forty commodities to gather and craft, ranging from raw resources like timber and ore to processed goods such as candles, fabrics, and prepared meals, and finally to luxuries like tea and furniture. Conveyor belts, ramps, elevators, and pipelines connect it all into a network of automation and supply.
When to Expect Whiskerwood
Whiskerwood is planned for release before the end of 2025. That’s the window we’re confident in.
Currently, our focus is on internal playtesting, iteration, and fine-tuning. These final stages take time because balance only makes sense once all systems are working together. We’ve reached that point, so we’re now running repeated tests, working through edge cases, and smoothing interactions.
When will playtests begin?
When we're ready, we’ll begin closed playtests with external players. To participate, join the Discord. That’s where we’ll post updates about applications.
Opening the Gates: Early Access
Yes, Whiskerwood will launch in Early Access.
With our first game, Railgrade, we released a complete game and continued to add new systems, structures, and missions. Many players assumed it was still in Early Access due to the steady stream of updates. That created confusion, and we understand why.
This time, we want to avoid that.
We’ll share a public roadmap at launch that outlines the major features we plan to add during Early Access. These are the current goals, not hard limits. Once players begin engaging with the game, feedback will help shape the next steps.
Now, for a little about the setting in which Whiskerwood takes place.
Whiskerwood's World: Life Under the Claws
Whiskerwood takes place during a period of industrial expansion in a low-fantasy world ruled by the Claws. You play as one of the Whiskers, a caste of mice living under the control of a dominant cat empire.
There is no tradition of independence. No memory of rebellion. Whiskers serve. The Claws take.
That has always been the arrangement.
In this era of factories and seafaring trade, the Claws send Whiskers to uncharted islands to build colonies and extract resources. Timber, ore, and farmland are all there for the taking. Your job is to collect it and send it back.
If you fall behind, someone else will be sent in your place.
You begin in a favorable position. How long that lasts depends on how well you manage what comes next.
Why We’re Making Whiskerwood
Each person on the team came to this genre in their own way. Some care about logistics. Others are drawn to deep simulations. For me, it started with Banished in 2014. I was running it through Wine on an old Linux laptop. I still remember the first winter.
The food was gone. I didn’t understand the systems yet. I wasn’t sure anyone would survive. That feeling stuck with me.
Whiskerwood is built around that experience. The challenge of managing something fragile, where the rules are clear but the results are uncertain. When a system fails, you should be able to trace the cause and circumstances of the failure.
You’re not here to build a comfortable village. You’re here to keep the colony alive long enough to create something that lasts. Heat, hunger, morale, pollution, labor. Each system presses in from a different direction. You aren’t solving one problem. You’re trying to stop twenty small ones from spiraling out of control.
That’s the game we want to make.
That’s it for now. We’ll see you in the next dev diary. Thanks for reading.
Daniel Dressler,
Lead Programmer on Whiskerwood
What’s Next
The next diary will look at the Embark Phase, where you decide where to place your first dock and how to survive the earliest days of the colony. After that, we will turn to vertical construction, production chains, climate and survival, and the pressures of pirates and the demands of the Claws.
Of course, if you have any questions, please be sure to ask them, and we can answer them in future dev diaries as well.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/2489330/announcements/detail/515221043692962198
Join, Discuss, and Keep Informed About Whiskerwood
You can find us on Discord, BlueSky, Twitter, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback. You can also visit our website for more information.