Woodland Rebels is a survival game with town management elements. Choose your animal species and influence the fate of the woodland. Assign roles to villagers, recruit a gang of rebels to fight at your side, and face many dangers, such as humans, bugs, ghosts, hunger, and natural disasters.

Deep in the woods, a mysterious energy is turning some wild animals into villager form. This gives them the ability to use tools, wield weapons, build structures and grow crops. Meet with villagers, help them improve their town, and rally the animals to your side to face a common threat: human invaders.

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.

There are many animal towns scattered around the map that you can encounter. Once you become friendly with a town, it is possible to assign roles and tasks to villagers. They will help you forage, farm cook, and fight. 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.

Stealing from the town, or killing villagers, will cause the town to become enemy. Villagers will start attacking you on sight.

Your character can attack in 8 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. 

Wild animals are still in their true animal form. Those can be hunted or tamed, and raised for products such as eggs 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.

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 various amenities to increase your town appeal, and much more. 

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.

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).

The game world goes through 4 different seasons, completely changing the look and available resources. Your character will face many types of harsh weather such as strong winds, droughts, storms and forest fires. There is also a day/night cycle.

• 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.

No Generative AI

We did NOT use any generative AI to create this game. All our art and code is made by real people.

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.

Playtest

Playtest signup is open! Join our Discord to follow the game's development and access the playtest when available.

Demo Version

A demo for the game will release on August 20. It lets you play the first scenario on a small map size. The demo is singleplayer only.