The Tribe Demo

It’s difficult to innovate in some genres, especially in those that require an established set of gameplay mechanics. However, there are some niches that can always be molded according to your own ideas, and it’s a blast to see what kind of experiments developers come up with. However, some of these experiments can sometimes result in incredibly successful video games, at least of the concepts are polished enough.

The Tribe is a fast-paced roguelike game unlike anything else out there, although that doesn’t necessarily make it brilliant. It comes with too many bugs and issues at the moment to be worthy of praise, but the concept itself is definitely worthy of pursuit. Hence, as long as the developers manage to iron out a few rough edges and make everything a bit more fun, this could certainly become a fan favorite.

In short, the main idea is that you are in charge of a tribe that's constantly on the move. The road ahead is filled with obstacles, and you have to avoid them by either splitting the tribe or by bringing it closer together. You also have to gather food, hunt animals, avoid predators and even accept quests along the way, but most of these components are not as engaging as they could be, unfortunately.

Rivers are by far the most dangerous obstacle you can run into, because the whole tribe can perish if you are not careful. In order to survive, you have to split the tribe in such a way as to direct every group toward a bridge. Unfortunately, it would seem like some bridges are just badly positioned, which makes it impossible to split or group your tribesmen in such a way as to survive.

The controls are pretty intuitive, they could use a tune-up as well. Both mouse buttons come in handy, since one is used to split the tribe and the other to bring it together, but you must also make use of the keyboard. Hence, the longer you manage to survive and remain well-fed, the more skills your shaman learns. These skills include spear hunting, torches, and even cannibalism, for when you are really low on food.

The Tribe is certainly unique, but it needs to function properly as well in order to be fun. However, the game is still in development, so things could certainly change for the better in the future.