At the tender age of 75 and in poor health this game was just what he doctor ordered.
I have little use of my right hand (so a controller is a must)
and my reactions left me many years ago so games without combat are ideal for me.
39 hours of absolute pleasure.
Highly recommended.

The game is about placing a building blueprint and clicking on it multiple times to spend previously farmed resources.
There are about 20-30 types of buildings. There is no variability. There is no possibility of customization.

Just grind resources and click.

The game is actually a first person clicker, not a colony simulator, not a base building simulator, not a factory simulator, not a survival game, not about world exploration.

For a clicker, the game is well made. Nice graphics, simple, relaxing gameplay.

Almost no bugs.

I’d like to make a special mention of the music - it was done perfectly.

Overall the game is good, but I expected something completely different.

Fun and relaxing. Graphics are good, and this feeling of being part of a tribe is well achieved. If you love the Aztec civilisation, this is a must, since it is clearly inspired by them.
Besides the common thing you do in this genre of games, it's nice to see the addition of management mechanics, where you would typically find in a City Builder, colony simulator, not a First person survival game.

Tribe: Primitive Builder gets a very very slight thumbs down from me, but if 'thumb sideways' were an option, it'd get that instead.

Pros:

- Looks pretty enough. Not ground-breaking, but has a nice feel to it. Buildings and people feel appropriately low-tech.
- Building is... fun... insasmuch as there's a bit of our monkey brains that gets satisfaction from watching components slot into place.
- Gathering resources is appropriately meaty. Axes go "Thunk" and Pickaxes go "Clang" and the resource deposits break up/trees fall in a satisfying way.
- Good standard survival-genre progression of buildings.
- The survival aspects are very forgiving. This isn't Planet Crafter or Subnautica where if you run out of air you die, and you're not tethered to your base until you tech up enough to overcome it. For some, that'll be a turn-off because it removes part of the "Survive" from survival, but will be appreciated by players who want a more relaxed experience.
- Price. It's £15, which is... fine... for what you get. I don't feel cheated. But I don't feel like I got great value either in terms of £-per-hour.
- Good for kids. No violence apart from hunting birds and small mammals. Simple concepts. No 'bad stuff'.

Cons

This is where it gets a bit misleading, because it's going to look like a massive laundry-list of faults. But really none of them are egregious, they just kinda stack up to mean I can't completely recommend the game.

- Length. Completed in 23 hours, probably an hour or two paused in menus while making dinner or whatever. This is scraping the absolute minimum of what I'd call acceptable in a modern game release that isn't Early Access. Further, there's really no reason to keep playing once you complete the story. There's nothing to make me care about my people, nothing to strive for after you launch the boat, no feeling of "I'm sorry that ended, I want to keep going."

- Lacklustre variety and absence of choices. There are about a dozen types of building: Your personal workshop, storage, sleeping huts, gathering huts (including wood, stone, grass, herbs etc), hunting huts (fishing and animals), and toolmakers. That's it. And in each biome, you're basically forced into constructing one of each thing. End of story. There's no ability to specialise settlements in one thing or another. There's no reason to make more than one of anything, and missing out on any building causes the whole biome settlement to grind to a halt because the toolmaker can't make tools because the woodchopper can't eat, because the fisherman can't fish because the toolmaker can't make tools. So you build one of everything, so everyone has what they need to do their job. But nothing else. Buildings can have more than 1 person assigned to them, but apart from storage there was never any reason to.

- Lack of player upgrades. Your 'skill' at mining, hunting, gathering and building improve, which decreases your food consumption/tiredness etc during those tasks, and makes your tools wear out slower but that's it. There's no way to build better tools, move faster, jump higher, or do anything that you can't do at the start of the game. You make a dagger in your first 5 minutes and you're using the same type of dagger when the game ends.

- No cosmetics. The buildings you build are blueprints, so you can't customise their looks. There are no decorative blueprints to build. You can't change how your tribe looks. Nothing. Compared to Valheim equivalents (which is extremely creative when it comes to building) or even the Planet Crafter/Subnautica approach of building modules, Tribe really suffers. It's also very limiting of where you can place your buildings, so you can't really lay your village out in a way that looks pretty.

- Lack of depth. All of the above, plus the lack of any real meaningful story, means I never felt like I'd accomplished anything. I built some buildings, put people in them to do jobs, moved to the next biome, did the same, then the game ended. It felt a bit like working in a warehouse, where you do a thing because someone tells you to do a thing, then you spend 8 hours doing the same thing, and you go home at the end of the week with absolutely no sense that anything you did mattered in any way at all. It feels like a 'filler' game.

- Just about the worst ending to a game I've ever seen. You finish the boat. The leader of every biome pats you on the back (optional). You all get in the boat. The boat leaves on a calm sea. The end. You don't see the island erupt or sink or anything. You don't see yourselves arriving elsewhere. It just... stops. Awful ending to a game.

Final thoughts

In fairness, some people just want a game to chill out. No pressure, no complex thinking, just chop some bamboo and hit some rocks. Fine. This will do that for you. But unless you have a REAL urge to play a survival game on a DESERT ISLAND as opposed to any other setting, then there are better options out there at the same price point (or cheaper, on sale). This feels like an early access game, but isn't. A couple of comments from the Devs seem to indicate they have no plans or roadmap to significantly improve the game. I'll come back to Planet Crafter, Valheim and Subnautica in the future. I won't come back to this. At least not for a long, long time. And that means I have to give it a thumbs down.

April 4th 20204 Review: 6 months since the game came out and nothing has been added. The game took only 20 hours to complete. They are way behind on this game. It had such promise. Still keeping my review at negative.




I dont like to review a game until its finished. So here are my take aways

Graphics - No issues, smooth.

Sound - Wasnt overpowering, nice balance.

Gameplay mechanics - Pretty easy to understand, didnt have any issues. Wish we could have pinned the constructions that were tied to the quests to get to the other islands. Also the storages in the workshops should be linked to one another.

Gameplay - Pretty basic game play. Your skills mean very little, not a huge difference on the game play or character. The totems should affect the marketplace speed as well but they dont. There was nothing hard about the gaming. Nothing challenging. Never had to worry about food or water. The people you recruited were the same and you recruited them the same way. I would have liked to have seen the people you recruit be unique and have traits and talents that either help or hurt the tribe. I didnt feel like I was rushing ant took me 20ish hours to complete the game. Weather never played a factor, the Gods never played a factor even though every tribe was scared of them. There could have been so much more put into the game but as I said about it was pretty basic game play using the same tools for everything.

Curious to see what updates they add in the future or if they do. Depending on what they do I might change my review to positive.

Beats the pants off of Occupy Mars for fun, casual play with a good story. Worth the $20 I paid. I lived in the South Pacific in a primitive hut in the 70's. Gotta say I'm enjoying this.

I am sad I can't give a positive review because the first 2 hours are fun. But after it's always the same and it becomes boring very fast.
You are doing the same few things over and over again. Rince and repeat the same in each new biome.
You have to walk A LOT through an empty map over and over again to get new people for your tribe. It's OK the first few times but ater the 30th time you have to go to a far distant point just to get new people it's just awfull.
The map is big and nice but it's EMPTY.
I am currently in the last biome but I am too bored to finish the game (I think i need 2 hours to finish but I cant stand to keep going anymore)

No.

-Entirely breadcrumb story driven.
-You DO NOT get to create your own tribe, only rebuild predetermined tribes.
-Walking simulator mainly.
-Entire game dialogue is spoken in child like tribal Gibberish.
-Random crashes and bugs (Bridge specific).
-When you finish the story that is the end. No continue playing.

Since I've invested a little over 6 hours in Tribe: Primitive Builder, it's time for me to write a review. The introductory sequence particularly caught my eye; Being thrown overboard, tied up and branded an outcast from my tribe provided a unique narrative hook. Stranded on an island, I find refuge with another tribe who ask me for help rebuilding their village.

The game's tutorial effectively familiarized me with the basics and I immediately immersed myself in the tasks assigned by the village elder. One feature I found commendable is the visual clues that guide me to characters or objectives. This eliminates the need for lengthy searches, allowing me to navigate the map efficiently. Over the course of my play, I learned the importance of gathering every resource available, from cutting down trees and harvesting bamboo to gathering grass, wood, and herbs, including the large leaves.

Tribe: Primitive Builder introduced a fun spearfishing mini-game that requires keen eyesight. This mechanic was activated with the Alt key, although I found the prompt disappeared too quickly, it added a delightful dimension to the gameplay. Another highlight for me was the ritual experience of lighting the altar with incense and a talisman to acquire new building skills. I enjoyed the captivating cutscene that accompanied this process and longed for more moments like this as the game progressed. Unfortunately, despite numerous efforts, no new cutscenes were created. While I acquired the ability to construct new structures, the altar merely witnessed the ritual burning of incense and talismans. My sincere desire remains: the longing to witness the creation of more complex and longer cutscenes that improve the overall experience.

A little further into the journey in Tribe: Primitive Builder you inevitably come across the mammoth project of building a bridge. If you haven't cut down enough trees and collected bamboo, I'm talking about over 300 trees that desperately need yours. This reminds me of the quote “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look at my works, you mighty ones, and despair!” Yes, it is a mighty building, whoever perseveres and completes the bridge is blessed with patience.

As I continue my journey in Tribe: Primitive Builder and gather insights and materials for more beautiful moments, I expect possible surprises and improvements from the developers. I would like to thank the teams at Space Boat Studios, Polyslash, Baked Games S.A. and the publisher PlayWay S.A. would like to express my thanks for their efforts so far. I'm excited to see what awaits us in the world of Tribe: Primitive Builder.


https://youtu.be/b4C9Rx6_h6Y

Wonderful little city management survival lite game. No enemies to fend off, food and water is easy to come by. Good for your blood pressure.

There's a lot of hand holding at the beginning and at first, I thought it was a story on rails.
However, by the second area, there was thankfully less direct direction so there was a little more of using your own skull to set up a basic camp for the area.

I have to say, I appreciate the primitive aspect. You start out with crude tools and you end with the same crude tools, just acquiring other things for progress. No climbing up the technology ladder to metal tools and so fourth.

Movement and inventory management are quite comfortable which is not typical. (I sometimes use a trainer to get 10% more movement speed so it feels better but didn't have to with this game)


Dynamic weather keeps day to day interesting.

I love the mechanic where you have 3 free hits before the game starts demolition.
This is my #1 complaint with many many modern survival games. Click mouse, oops there's a hole in your floor -_- (Thanks, Enshrouded, Ark, and a half dozen others)

Very solid, enjoyable game. I didn't even get stuck between a rock in forever falling animation. I guess the only complaint I do have is that the NPCs use tools too quickly and the game does not let me put extra in so they last longer. (The game eats all of them at once)