Tribe: Primitive Builder

Review

After having visions of doom and a failed attempt at reaching the gods, you are banned from your village and sent to live amongst the other exiles on a nearby island. You crawl your way out of the sea and are greeted by a fellow exile who says that you must talk to the Elder who will see if you are useful enough for the tribe to accept you. All tribe members must pull their weight and work together if they are to survive on the island. So, you head off in search of the Elder to see if you can help and become part of the tribe.

Your character, who I called Bob, will have objectives to complete, some of which are required to move forward in the story, while others are optional. The objectives are displayed in the top left of the screen.  To begin with, after arriving at the island, your first objective is to talk to the Elder.  Additionally, you have a couple of optional objectives; to cook and to eat some food.

Your objectives are indicated on screen as an icon in the direction of the objective. They are also indicated on the compass at the top of the screen.  Lining up the icon and heading in the same direction will take you towards your objective. You can also check your map to see if you are going in the right direction.

The Elder will have you build different types of huts - fishing, workshop, storage and sleeping huts etcetera - and other missions. You will need to unlock new buildings and items by making an offering at the Ritual Altar. Each building will need to have workers and you must provide those workers with the necessary tools to perform their duties. Workers at the fishing hut require spears to hunt for fish. Once the fish are caught then another worker can cook the fish at a cook hut, allowing the tribe to be fed. You will have to make sure that the workers always have the tools they need otherwise they’ll be unable to work, and production will halt, so keep an eye on them.

To create a building, you must have the right resources, which you will find scattered around the world. Stone can be used to make knives, axes, hammers and other tools. You can use these tools to collect new resources; for example, the axe allows you to chop down trees for wood, vines can be cut down using a knife, and spears can be used to hunt for food. Some resources don’t need any tools and can just be collected such as herbs, sticks and grass. Resources will be replenished after a short time.

You will have to take care of your character, who will need food, water and rest.  However, the game is for casual players, so it’s not too harsh and keeping fed and watered isn’t a big problem. You can get some rest at your hut, and you can change how many hours sleep you need depending on how tired you are. You can also build away from your village (I built a sleeping hut near to where I was building a bridge, so I didn’t have to keep running back to my village just to rest. I always have plenty of food and water on me but running back home each night to rest was a bit of a pain, especially as the bridge took quite a few resources and time in building).

As you build huts your village will start to grow, and you will require more people in your tribe to perform the actions required to keep the tribe ticking over nicely. You can ask the scout when available and they will point you in the direction of some recruits. Going to the recruits and chatting with them will then send them to your village, after which you can give them jobs around the village to help it grow and prosper.

The workers of your tribe will need help in what they do, and you can manage them by telling them to fish, hunt, collect resources and where to store such resources. This will help you out so that you don’t have to do everything yourself, although I don’t mind this. I was confused a couple times when managing the workers and their tasks, but that was just me getting used to how the management worked.

There are multiple areas on the island that you are banished to. These new areas will require unlocking before you can enter. You will find new tribes there and will need their help if you want to complete your overall objective of the game. Each area has its own ritual altar, and you will be able to fast travel between these altars once you have unlocked them.

The game's graphics look fantastic and so far, I haven’t had any problems in running the game.

Tribe: Primitive Builder is a casual game where you’ll follow the orders of the tribal Elder.  At times it can be a bit slow, but I don’t mind; I like to play games like this slowly because I enjoy searching everywhere and collecting resources, making sure that I always have plenty so that I can build just about anything when it is needed. Not every game needs to be a hardcore survival game and I think this could be a great game for some of the younger players out there wanting a bit more of a casual survival experience.

There is no support for Gamepads, which might be a no-no for some of you. I’m not sure if there will be support for gamepads in the future but playing the game using keyboard and mouse is not a problem and runs sweet.

In the settings you will find options for General - Keyboard Layout, Language (English, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Czech, German, Danish and Chinese), Invert Mouse Look Up, Mouse Sensitivity, Always Run, Head-Bobbing, Field of View, Dialogue Speed and Auto Save.

Grpahics - Window Mode, Resolution, Frame Rate Limit, Motion Blur, Temporal Super Resolution, V-Sync, View Distance, Post Process Quality, Anti-Aliasing, Visual Effect Quality, Texture Quality, Foliage Quality, Shadow Quality, Reflection Quality and Shading Quality.

Audio - Master, Music, Dialogue, Sound Effects, Weather and Ambient Volume Sliders. Input - Key Binds (rebindable).

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com

Tribe: Primitive Builder Steam Store Page