The Tribe Must Survive - Eldritch Apocalypse Caveman Colony Survival

[@PandemoniumGameDev]

I really like the setting and the vibe they're going for, but right now the game seems difficult for all the wrong reasons: short days, the need to do everything manually, clunky AI etc. They can make the game much better by making it more accessible but ramping up the difficulty in other ways that seem more fair.

[@Caigul]

same am for a hard game but pointlessly hard just to mess with you turns me off most games like that

[@ohnoitisnt666]

100% man. The day / night cycle is WAY too short

[@igorthelight]

@@ohnoitisnt666 Agree! I would suggest to make it 5 times longer! It's like a minute right now :-)

[@TJ-sj6yy]

Agreed, seems like 30% of you actual time is spent turning the fire on and off and sounding the horn. Also need to be able to make smaller campfires to extend the range of the tribe

[@thelitmango6333]

@@Caigul I think people call things pointlessly hard when they don't wanna try much. People only call things fair when it's slightly stacked in their favor. It's never truly fair.

[@kamatong]

At first I was like, well an auto horn would make it too easy, and then I saw how short each day was. My goodness this game is basically like a light switch simulator.

[@hanzcraftcz]

xD If 1 hour was as long as a day in this game -> 12 "days" for a day and 12 "days" for night. Longer time to gather and prepare, but longer to survive the night

[@chaoswraith]

20 literal seconds, annoyingly short. They walk so slowly and sleep for so long, this game is all style over substance

[@Silverstiletto]

To keep night being oppressive I think that it should be as long or slightly longer than day. BUT the full day should be much longer. It seems that the cycle is very short. Also as a caveman who knows that they are dead when night comes you can bet everything you have that I, and everyone I know, would know when sunset is. The horn seems like cookie clicker mechanic to waste even more of your time. They should just run back automatically.

[@lordravenlocke5301]

Bit of a strange one here. Maybe an option to assign a permanent fire keeper, this would mean you can choose to sacrifice a useful pawn but not have to manually blow the horn / start the fire. Also the day night cycle seems to be really quick, I would suggest a much longer cycle, so you have more time to do stuff in the day, but have to survive longer without being able to gather. Be a bit more micro making sure you have the right stuff. I like the concept, but this one seems to be another very rushed out demo. Just ma thoughts.

[@TheRawrnstuff]

Personally, based on the demo, I don't think this game aims to be a city-builder. It looks like one, but the mechanics in place suggest very much the opposite. It's impossible to create a sustainable setup, and the Eclipse mechanic essentially wipes out your entire progress. To me, it actually feels more like a rogue-lite; you do a run, gain some sort of meta-progression, and go on another run. Only that the Demo doesn't have that meta-progression implemented.

[@TheGodsrighthandman]

Common sense says you build more than one fire . . .

[@ambidexter2017]

Yeah, I just wanted to write about the permanent firekeeper position. Other than that, I think this demo is very rudimentary right now, it can go any way from here: it can become a full-blown city builder with various buildings, tech tree, citizen specialization and whatnot, or it can become a roguelite with meta progression, or it can become something like group Don't Starve with forced migrations and overarching plot, or it can just go nowhere at all and be abandoned altogether. I kinda dig the game's setting and visuals, so I want it to do well, but how it will be remains to be seen.

[@AnotherJRB]

I quite like the basic idea of the game. It has a few rough edges, but I think the main problem with the demo is that it doesn't last long enough to see more than the very basics. (The eclipse lasts a few days and the demo ends when it's over.) A couple of tips: Put storage near the fire so people can safely access food/wood at night. Wood and meat need to be processed at the worker's workplace before being added to storage, so put woodcutter and hunter buildings inside the radius of the fire (use the buttons on the left edge of the screen to see it), so they can still process their stuff at night. You only get half of the resources back when destroying a building, so place your initial few woodcutter huts at different places around the edge of the fire radius so they can access different tree areas. A farm and a bunch of crop plots is your best bet for food during the eclipse, and is more efficient than hunting in general.

[@DoomedPaladin]

Did you all know Frostpunk 2 was a thing? Go check out the Steam page for it. I feel like Splatt misplayed a bit in this one. He leaned too hard into city builder, clumping his gathering posts together, when the buildings are more like flags for exploration. This game seems very much like an exploration game done in an hands-off approach. Its a super fiddly game with way too much manual management, high costs for everything, and not nearly enough time to do it all in. In that "light defeats the darkness" I feel like light-based effects and jobs should have more of a push. The braziers are a good start, but there should be torchbearers too. Then The Darkness can have special events where it eats those too, rapidly cranking up the fear, unless you have the influence or an advanced spiritual building to combat it. Later, the ability to establish ~another~ bonfire, or move your current one would be very good. An animal lure would be a nice solution to having herds constantly wander farther and farther away, but the Devs might include (terrifying to tribesmen) predators that follow after them too. Just have one or two prey animals show up to the lure in the night, along with the occasional predator that can only be driven away by eating all the prey animals, torchbearers, or daytime. The lure could cost grain (deer corn) and stone (salt-lick).

[@RhetoricalI]

Been watching your videos since your old war and days and I’m glad I can say that you still bring enjoyable content. I appreciate the good times🙏

[@RhetoricalI]

Warband**

[@mystrunner5166]

Same, found this channel when he did Craft the World when I was in my early years of college. 8 years later I'm still looking forward to hear his' random ramblings and repeated survival tidbits and of course in a look out for Indie games he feature that would catch my interest. Ahh the "Haidu" days.

[@gamingzergling9325]

@@mystrunner5166 the good old days

[@d4s0n282]

@@mystrunner5166 I remember I watched him play a random minor game like 6-8 years ago too lol

[@cataegisira1663]

I've been regularly watching his videos since the first Gnomoria series. I am old.

[@vindex7309]

Honestly, the days zip by without much opportunity for things to get done. I’d appreciate if things went slower and there was a bit more room for error since an important resource is mobile on the map with varying transit times. Actually, if the resource was a node in a wide area and hunters did their thing by being inside it that might even be better. Either way, nights come far too fast to feel like anything gets done.

[@izzes]

"I've been a part of my life since I was born, and frankly I feel like that was a massively mistake"... Splatty, are you ok? Do you wanna talk? Do you need help with something?

[@pelyphin0]

You gave solid advice, Splat. There's definitely potential here. Clearing the "fog of war" is an issue. Current range of vision is fine, if there is some ability to direct a hunter/party to an unexplored area. Or, increase that range. We did not get to see the shaman's hut (I forget what the building was called). That building may have addressed some of the salient issues (or, if not, might be useful in addressing them). I like the sense of desperation, but there has to be a way to ameliorate it before you lose the colony. ...then, a few days down the line, something else happens.

[@dickyboi4956]

When I was a kid at my granny's house and got bored and had no toys to play with I would imagine little villagers like these running around fighting eachother

[@ronaldtrang5040]

The tutorial is actually fine. It only tells you to build exactly the essentials. The only problem is it doesn't explain the turn off fire to conserve wood. And making sure you have enough wood before spending it all. Exactly 80 and if you use that to build stone pit you have nothing at night if you built the pit at night.

[@AnotherJRB]

One of the buttons on the left edge of the screen shows the light radius. I think the tutorial is fine, you just have to suppress the standard colony-builder instinct to build the next building as soon as you can, and make sure to always keep a buffer of about 20-25 wood to get through the night.

[@stevenastillero9599]

As convenient and perhaps sensible as what Splat suggested, particularly with the Horn and Campfire getting automated, I do think it kinda defeats the purpose of the game if done. Like, making sure the dark not let to you is pretty much the main thing of the game and survival. Making them automated I feel like defeats that or make it too easy or so. That said, I do think and agree with stuff like extending the daytime cause it really is too short as is which I think also gives the horn and campfire a negative impressiom especially for casuals most likely since it gets tedious and boring fast cause of that. The game does seem to also need more serious rebalancinga and more improvements, but well, it is the demo so understandable, just hope to see more actual progress to the right direction or so. Anyways, other from those, pretty neat and cool game. I like the artstyle and the idea behind it, both reminds me of Don't Starve which I like if not love.

[@lazydroidproductions1087]

I think that maybe to keep the herds, you have to push them back towards the camp, adventure around and in circle them so that when they try to run away from the hunters, they are running into the camp

[@CrowMercury]

“ Don’t follow the tutorial “ says it all for this one. It’s a game that goes way too much on making inconvenience for the player rather than difficulty, and the result is a game that I don’t think will have success if they don’t tweak the cycles and give some QoL upgrades. You can have survival tribe hardcore without having the player stressed out over things he should not be.

[@jooxxyy]

The intro scene at 1:16 is really good The atmosphere, voice, art, incredible

[@kyneticist]

Seems like the individuals should have roles/jobs. Perhaps a UI element that's just a row of boxes, each for a role/job and have the player move the names of NPC's freely among those boxes to assign them. You could add little random events to encourage the player to consider risking putting 'too many' NPC's in one role in hopes of a payoff, or chasing after something special toward the edge of the light or as the sun sets. If the devs are feeling ambitious, they might then give the NPC's traits, afflictions or job preferences.

[@UristMcFarmer]

My greatest criticism of this game is that the pawns aren't selfish enough. It should be difficult for you to get them to leave the fire, not difficult for you to get them to come back to it.

[@JustanOlGuy]

You are not afraid of the Dark you are afraid of what is in the Dark.

[@theisgood0]

Nice :)

[@junova7503]

I would suggest making more use of the beacons. You waste so much time just walking to and from the lumber and deer that you'd be better off keeping those area's lit during the night rather than run out, get a single deer, run back. Basically, beacons everywhere your tribe works for constant gathering.

[@junova7503]

The extra wood use won't matter when you're gathering wood both day, night, and not wasting time running back and forth.

[@cernos7230]

"Stuff about me since I was born, been a massive mistake." Relatable

[@БорисПопов-я3г]

I like the manual horn blowing. It adds a survival horror element to the game. Yet, it is still a clumsy mechanic. Perhaps it needs to be combined with the fireplace management, like if the fire would start burning only after the horn was blown, so fuel consumption at all fireplaces could be managed at once.

[@claiminglight]

Campfires ought to self-regulate without player input. And working and maintaining the fire seems like a job a caveman should be doing as a firekeeper. Extending distances, reducing value per resource unit and increasing daytime hours seem like a good collection of choices. You can keep the same relative balance you have now while keeping the player from having to constantly pause and sound the horn every minute. As it exists now, the amount of clicking for non-strategic choices is too high. Once a minute you're having to pause the game, turn on the fire and call people back-- and none of those clicks are optional, nor are they skill based. So they're just extra burdens that serve no gameplay purpose. Having said that, I think including the Night Horn as a button you have to click is a good idea, as it essentially acts as a push-your-luck mechanic and an attention-checker. Its just being called for too often.

[@oliver_twistor]

I agree. If something is mandatory, why have it as a button to click?

[@369claude]

Great constructive criticism splat! Hopefully the devs take it on board and they make a kick ass game!

[@pelyphin0]

You gave solid advice, Splat. There's definitely potential here.

[@Phontoz]

Classic splat: OH i really need to build this thing... and i only have 99 out of the 100 i need, get it 1 second later and just "never" build the superimportant thingie

[@TheGrandexeno]

Let's build a field! (has meat for months)

[@zappedguy1327]

Another different Indy game.Thanks Splatt

[@benjaminandrews956]

For the food problem they should make the animals have a circular migration pattern and also have the ability to make like fenced off area late game you can keep animals for breeding for a constant source of meat

[@williambristol8811]

I'm liking the idea here, but yeah Splat is right, it needs some balance tweaks

[@georgeelliott6877]

I wonder how many people even know what salad fingers is!

[@devlian]

I'm absolutely terrible at management, survival games. The demo ends on Day 19. All I did was build tents, loggers, stone miners, and torches. First play through, no issues, even gave that big dude the 50 stone. Game has promise, though It's too easy in the current state as it doesn't seem possible for your cavemen to starve.

[@Meladonessable]

It's cool they add the big five personality traits into a video game

[@kenthemaster]

Any idea what each of the traits affect?

[@Meladonessable]

@@kenthemaster I have no idea how it affects the game mechanics, but agreeableness is what it says on the tin, Openness is the desire for novelty, conscientiousness is how sensitive you are to order, extraversion is sociability and the desire for it, neuroticism is how affected some one is by negative emotion. However I am way oversimplify of course, but you can Google it and find more info and a free test if your curious. :)

[@americanpride5540]

hmmm, you know that sounds like "the city must survive", I think I know who and want inspired this game.

[@markopodoreski6840]

Splatt is really great at analyzing the games and offering ideas for improvement in a short amount of time he plays them.

[@VIP-ry6vv]

Don't starve is such a brutal game to start but becomes manageable with experience. If this game is similar it would be worth checking out. Impending doom is a fun mechanic.

[@TheYashakami]

This has an absolutely beautiful art style. Thanks splat!

[@svetochmira9994]

Where? Art style is inconsistent. People look somewhat cartoonish, low detailed, with their glowing eyes, but the building look look sharp and detailed, like they are from Age of Empires game. Also the different orinentation👈👆👉 of these building gives me OCD attack, like i want to rotate them "properly"☝ and have a tidy base, not this mess.

[@blatvis5710]

Explore order. A marker is placed for a unit to head towards.

[@Setorrs]

I always like watching your videos because i'm getting a chance to look at the gameplay and then buy the game if i like it. Thank you for the work you are doing.

[@BlareWolfgang]

The short day night cycle is awful, and there’s no reason to really explore your surroundings until you start running out of supplies. But that’s ok, because you can’t do that anyway lol.

[@LordRunolfrUlfsson]

Drop food on the way home. Sleep at night. There definitely seem to be tweaks to do.

[@Donolohe]

I'm not a fan of, imo, unnecessarily removing QoL stuff to have artificial difficulty and put some 'active' gameplay into a genre that is a lot about sitting back and looking at your colony/city/castle grow. Though I can imagine there's not a lot of game left when you take the frantically calling everyone back and micromanaging your campfire away. I don't know, seems like the game's trapped between trying to be and not to be simple.

[@JohnSmith-bs9ym]

Pretty much sums up Stellaris' "creative direction". No auto explore for the sake of "immersion"...

[@Muenni]

This is not supposed to be a game where you can relax and watch your colony grow. And it's certainly not the only one that takes a more stressful than relaxing approach - it's clearly about survival and horror, not building a pretty little place of happiness. So that seems like a very weird criticism to have. On the other hand, I absolutely agree that things that are very much repetitive shouldn't have to be performed manually just to give the player something to do. Ideally, a mechanic like the the night horn and campfire can stay manual, but only if there's much longer days/nights, and maybe of fluctuating length, probably increasing in length as you get further into the game. Otherwise, it's better automated, but then, as you said, there's not much left to do after figuring out the optimal time.

[@JayJayM57]

@@Muenni frost punk did it just fine. there can be events thought out the gameplay to keep the player active.

[@Muenni]

@@JayJayM57 yeah, I loved that game, but it's been a while and I forgot how exactly they did it. I kinda thought I was turning the coal heater on and off myself, but there were also schedules... I should play that game again. It was awesome.

[@FishySpiderGuy]

@@JohnSmith-bs9ym What? Stellaris has a research option to literally let your science ships auto explore, idk what you're on about.

[@odinsubs3368]

Adding this to my list RIGHT NOW

[@gothicfly]

It really does seem like the day and night cycle are too fast. Seems like pretty much all you are doing is blow the night horn and put out or put on the fire. Its kinda a cool idea but it seems so alpha compared to some other this type of games. Hope they can flesh it out a bit more.

[@ndowroccus4168]

This game seems like it’s more frustration over enjoyment

[@BaronNate]

YES! The SplatCat!!!! Lets gooooo!!!!!

[@lesliestandifer]

Days need to be much longer

[@Max_Griswald]

There is a light overlay if you click the layers button on the left.

[@briscoelcamino7850]

You were running at 2 times speed. Is that why the days seemed too short? Just curious.

[@erl7466]

good thing it’s you playing splat cuz this game looks like trizzash. oh wel, they can’t all be good.

[@ShaqThaDon]

Really been watching since 2016 damn I feel old

[@toysoldier8947]

when it takes a toon an in-game hour to walk from the campfire to the tent.... mmyea nope ...

[@JellyJenkins500]

Looked away for like 2 seconds and it was night again

[@RHodges]

This game has a great concept, but it currently just feels like an unpolished poor man's Frostpunk.

[@enderoctanus]

Strong Klei vibes from this.

[@korinogaro]

Honestly the campfire mechanic (that you need to switch it on/off constantly) is so stupid... It should per default be automatic and in case you want to waste less wood (so start it/extinguish it sooner/later) you could do it on your own. But default should be automatic.

[@rogierdikkes]

Yeah or have a fire keeper, someone that watches the fire. Sacrifice 1 person or do it manually.

[@Muenni]

@@rogierdikkes Then you'd be better off doing it manually and as long as the game is challenging, you can't afford to lose that guy. And if you adapt the difficulty to account for that one guy, you might as well add an option for the player to chose whether they want the QoL automatic function or the extra stress of doing it yourself. Although it's so repetitive in its current form that I doubt even the more masochistic players would really enjoy doing it manually.

[@JayJayM57]

@@Muenni I tried the demo and outside from the random person not dropping resources or they working at night and getting lost. you can afford to lose one worker to the fire keeping. the night and day are hard to tell apart so you end up wasting a lot of wood.

[@TheGrandexeno]

Fire helps curing fear, that's why they leave it to the player to decide how much fire is enough

[@Muenni]

@@TheGrandexeno Sure, but an automatic day-night-function doesn't mean you can't turn it off and on manually; or better, set your own schedule like splatty suggested.

[@DalionHeartTTV]

This game looks like someone tried to mod Frostpunk into Don't Starve.

[@FeeleySkarin]

I feel like placing four woodcutters at the start, one in each cornor of of your base wud be a good idea and the drop of place in the middle of the base. Then 4 hunters one in each cornor then a shaman.

[@DGD-p6d]

MUST SURVIVE...MUST GO ON!!! NO DIE !! NOO NONONONO

[@MrSandman1986]

When I was watching you play I seen after you clicked on the campfire, under radius there was a + and - does this make the light from the fire bigger?

[@oliver_twistor]

I would assume yes, but it would consume more wood. Just like the steam core mechanic in Frostpunk, from which this game clearly takes inspiration.

[@TinyTank4Live]

Oh damn I was actually thinking about asking if you're gonna play it cuz I was shit and wanted to learn lmao

[@Kjorn90]

I don't know, why there isn't a new Don't Starve game, but about a whole tribe...

[@enterrapture1365]

Cool concept, needs a lot of revision to be enjoyable

[@z.s.7992]

that day night cycle is kinda ruff

[@jamesperkins2552]

There isn’t enough time to do anything! Can you move the fire?

[@sunkid2465]

Though the days are short and I believe they could be longer. But you also have x2 speed on

[@sslelgamal5206]

I pray they discover oil well soon 😁🤣👌👍

[@ConnorSinclairCavin]

It feels like you are really supposed to pick the fire up and take all your locations with you while chasing the animals each day, never staying in one place longer than you have to… maybe.

[@msolomonii9825]

The day very-much seems just too quick. Seems like it has potential. Is clearly rough.

[@SoulWhite]

Interesting idea, game looks like a chore though...

[@DamsdelDrennon]

Great idea but questionable balance. My curiosity is sparked so I'll keep an eye on the game for sure, the atmosphere is spooky but super intriguing.

[@elevown]

Wow- besides the nice art that looks terrible from a gameplay loop perspective! You get to do something for 20 seconds then have to run back? Nearly half the game is litterally just running back to the fire and going back out again. The day night cycle needs to be at LEAST 5 to 10 times longer to not be super annoying.

[@saoirse5308]

Yeah, maybe there are people who like this tight a loop, I am not a fan. It seems like a cheep gimmick to add tension where your game lacks substance. At least to me. Like I said, maybe others like it.

[@kennethdarron4852]

Same. This is why I appreciate Splat. My gaming time is restricted. As much as I would like to try everything, that’s just not in the cards for my lifestyle. His reviews (usually listened to while driving) give me enough info that some games can be bought without further research, some can just be ignored because they are way outside my wheelhouse, and the ones I need to actually demo myself I go into with a good idea of what aspect I need to feel out further.

[@brucebaker810]

Da herds and da herders Go furder and furder.

[@jonathanpatry]

yeah the day and night goes wayyyy too quickly. half of the day is getting to and back from their job

[@jasonscott5231]

hey idk if youll see this buts there a game called the first men that u should try its kinda like this game and seems fun so u ushould check it out and i like u videos so keep it up

[@TTerribleK]

I like this game

[@DanyF02]

The day/night cycle is about a million times too fast for me to take this game seriously.

[@theguru143]

Uh, yeah... hard pass for me unless they make some serious changes. Especially changes to the length of day/night cycles. You only get a couple of click in before you call them back for the night

[@pbsixgun6]

That is a way too quick day/night cycle...lol

[@TheKumaDen]

It’ll be nice if you could build multiple fires

[@Brandon34098]

they should take inspiration from dont starves fire stealing hand and have something reach out for the tribes people from the darkness when they stay out to long, it could be a death animation type thing or a stress causing warning system showing how close the darkness was to taking them

[@ThePalatineHill]

with how short the days are it would almost be better for them to exist in perpetual darkness and have to expand with bonfires to find resources instead, kinda like a the ground is lava with but with protoss pylons

[@TheEarlofBronze1]

Honestly, games like these, while cool in concept, genuinely feel less well put together than some Flash Games I played back in the day. Which is sad.

[@sinephase]

autoblow is the dream

[@SusCalvin]

It looks like a game where you spend too much time on small, tedious things like clicking the horn and fire on and off, without control of important things like when and how your meeples work. The information overlay could be better.

[@Mtaalas]

The game looks great, but has very obvious balance issues and bugs with the AI and how things behave that make it "unfairly" difficult as it is. Unfair game is one where you fail, but not because of your mistakes, but because of how game is coded or because of bugs and balance issues.

[@SirFace4]

Can you make other fires farther out?

[@Scotts-Thoughts]

Need that whoomp.

[@UtopssAKAPJ]

all I can say is interesting

[@LadyThoopie]

Needs more rusty spoons ehhhhehh *looks at finger*

[@White_Tiger93]

you should continue playing core keeper next

[@xotube2206]

Perhaps, you assume you are supposed to survive and thrive.. Perhaps you are to struggle and be snuffed out?

[@TheRealXartaX]

Just completed the game and the tutorial is fine tbh besides the campfire thing. You should be building all the things it tells you to. If anything you should be making more lumber camps than the 3 it tells you to (5-6 at least).

[@g2timmywonka]

I hope collect every spoon in homage to salad fingers

[@lost4evergirl1]

Everything looks good except the length of day, needs to at least double, if not triple, for me to even consider playing.

[@arcticcirclepit2008]

Okay, that day is WAY too short. I think you're being generous with the 40%. Balance it with a longer night, but give you stuff to do at night. I dunno. Aesthetically I like the game, but mechanically? I needs a lot of work.

[@TheGrandexeno]

You can do stuff at night, that's what the braziers are there for.

[@chilljelloton2089]

My first impression was that the narrator sounded like markiplier.

[@chilljelloton2089]

My other impression is that this is a fun looking game that only has a hardcore mode

[@hanzcraftcz]

This game would be good as a rimworld mod.

[@AgentMazgunn]

My graphics card is dead. Watching this on my phone... sad times. Interesting game tho.

[@meisterodenwald]

Is the intro read by Liam Neeson ? :-O