Prehistoric Tribes Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

Prehistoric Tribes or should I say Townsmen...er Tribesman?

Well, it's no secret that there's one major player when it comes to the 'turn based sim population development god game start off back in caveman territory' category on mobiles. That game is Townsmen and it was made by those crazy Germans over at Handy-Games. THQ have now thrown their hat in the ring with Prehistoric tribes, but the problem is, the hat seems to have missed the ring by a little and ended up in the mud.

Essentially, and you all know what the game's about, this is a similar God clone. Create buildings, collect resources and fend off your village from the mysterious attackers as man finally takes his first steps outside the caves now that the ice has melted.

All the ingredients are there, you can upgrade buildings, assign specific tasks and select groups of people. In an really innovative twist, villagers will improve their skills the more they use them and aslo grow old and pass away, leading to generations of villagers at your disposal.

In fact, THQ have added quite the Sims element as when not working your tribesmen wander around either lazing about or falling in love and pursuing the neanderthal of their dreams. The problem for me is in the execution.

Townsmen was a simple game which is easy to pick up and understand. Prehistoric Tribes seems to have too much chaos. The ageing element of villagers is great and the more they work, the more they get better at that skill, so you come to rely on one or two tribesman with regards to building, cooking and even hunting. But when they pass away, you need to assign these tasks to new tribesmen so it can be very hard to keep track of what's going on and who's doing what.

Sure, you can access each member individually from the menu, but on the screen, as your village grows a bit, there are a mass of bodies ambling about everywhere and you can't really tell what's going on. If you add to that the fact that you need 3 natural resources (wood, rock and meat) but again have to constantly assign people to collect these, then it can get a bit annoying. While your main stalwarts are alive and kicking, things move at a nice pace with more building options available. There's even a gym and hunting range to hone your skills with weapons. But there are far too many skills and very quickly there are far too many people as well.

You see, back then, it seems humankind (don't want to be acccused of sexism) was a randy bunch and people seem to be constantly getting it on. All it takes is a bunch of flowers and I must admit that there were times that got me thinking how much better my life would be if that were still the case today. Still, once your people have had their fun and your brood increases, people get older and more decrepit and again you have to make sure everyone is happy and doing the tasks they excel at. Not an easy job when you can have more than 20 people in your tribe all wanting to do different things.

This is where the control system is also a bit of a letdown at times. With so many people and also so much reproduction going on, it can be hard to see specific people on the screen, even with the find function. Also, once selected and tasks have been assigned, you can't go back to the 'find' screen, you have to go through the menu again, maybe up to 10 times to get the right numbers you need doing the right things you want.

Add to this mix a group of hostile cavemen that you have to fight off before they destroy your buildings and you will realise that you ignore weapons manufacture and training at your peril. But you try juggling that with ensuring there's enough meat, stone, cooking and houses for everyone and I'll be impressed.

If you thought that my somewhat harsh criticism ended there, you'd be wrong. In these sorts of games one really important element is to be able to get your people to do what you want. Ok, the idea of having a chief is good, and you have to promote a new one every time the old one kicks the bucket, but when your builders don't build, things can get frustrating. I know there are enough resources, and I know the builders aren't doing anything, but there were several times I instructed them to build and they seemed to wander off!! And this was with a decent happiness level!!

There are a lot of stats for each villager in the game and this is admirable. Health, items, skills, happiness, age, it's all there. Also the graphics are a little comical at times, as even though the sprites are small the Tribesmen will wander around and sit about snoozing or hold up signs telling you what they want. But there can be far too many of these at times so you have no idea what a lot of them are up to.

Overall there were some really good ideas hidden away in this game. The ageing element, the fact that people got better at their skills over time and also the ability to select a group of people (e.g. your builders) and assign a hotkey to them. But these got lost in the swamp of the amount of people on screen and the rest of the confusing gameplay. I never finished the tutorial.