
Lead nomadic families through the Stone Age in this turn-based 4X strategy game with in-depth characters, cultures, and ecosystems. Explore the wilderness, hunt megafauna, outsmart competitors in trade & autobattler combat. Discover fire, agriculture, politics... and survive to tell the tale.
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About

Lead nomadic families through the Stone Age in this turn-based 4X strategy game with deeply simulated characters, cultures, and ecosystems. Explore the vast wilderness, gather and trade scarce resources, and stand your ground in risky autobattler combat. Discover fire, domestication, politics—and survive to tell the tale.
Experience what prehistoric life was like by diving into this exploration of ecology, paleolithic societies, and the origins of culture.

Before agriculture and settlements, we spent hundreds of thousands of years as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Guide your people as you migrate through harsh climates, each posing unique challenges.

Manage the relationships between individuals, families, and tribes. Watch your collective adapt over countless generations. Beware the unintended consequences current choices can have on your great-great-great-grandchildren.

Optimize your strategy before each autobattler skirmish, because a warrior is not just a warrior. When one falls in combat, the tribe loses not only a fighter but also a skilled hunter, family member, and carrier of hard-won wisdom passed down through the ages.

Hunt, gather, and extract resources from the ecosystems around you, but tread carefully: nature is ruthless and you are at its mercy. Maintain the natural equilibrium or face sudden and unexpected challenges.

Technology: a tech tree spanning the Pleistocene up to the start of the Bronze Age, covering skills from controlled fire and cooking, through domestication and agriculture, all the way to megalithic construction and the first cities.
Culture: shape your tribe’s unique culture, with evolving cultural norms that differentiate you from your neighbors, affecting trade and war.
Economy: resources are finite and their extraction affects the environment.
Ecology: 9 unique climates, each with a complex and dynamic food web.
Procedurally generated Earth-like maps based on realistic climate simulations.
Many generations of deeply simulated individuals with heritable traits, all affecting various game systems.
Narrative events that can alter the trajectory of your entire tribe.
Social Networks: Dynamic social network visualization, enabling a new way to understand and manage family trees and relationships between members of your band.
Diplomacy: trade, fight, or collaborate with other tribes.
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Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 75 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
Honestly it hits that Civ vib while being pre civ, also HUNT THE MAMMOTH
Good fun, an interesting twist on the 4x with some cool new mechanics
I liked the game overall, it is a very nice small civ-like with its' own unique mechanics. But I think there are still many things left to improve. First, I think something really needs to be done about the combat since right now it's mostly just a numbers autobattler with next to zero way for the player to affect the outcome or to employ some kind of strategy. Unit XP is king and unless you rush it to the point where you can confidently pop enemy tribes you will just get pecked to death. All in all, combat is just not very engaging and not very fun. And with how limited diplomacy is, combat is basically the best solution if you don't want other tribes constantly messing with you. Second, and this is more of a personal preference, but I think the game would be best divorced from real-life cultures. I feel like removing the real-life proto-civilizations and replacing them with fantasy variants would allow more freedom and variety, maybe even the ability to actualy customize them more in-depth. Also I feel like the game should be less agressive with natural disasters like wildfires during stabilised climate and contrarywise, apply them more often during periods of heat waves and ice ages.
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Languages: English
Hours played at review time, across 75 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
A wonderful game that brings something fresh to the 4x genre. Progressing towards victory is very dynamic being that you do not settle towns (not that you can't set up shop after getting certain technologies and play a more sedentary playstyle with farms and such). Also there are no set in stone victory conditions. You accumulate victory points and first tribe to a certain threshold wins the game. Given that you get victory points from many different aspects of the game you can really lean into your own playstyle and not feel like you need to win a certain way, or even adapting later into a game to go for victory points you didn't originally plan for. Combat has a lot more nuance than is first apparent (I seen another negative review concerning the combat). Battles are automatically fought between units but there are different unit types, leveling units by training multiple of the same units, unit gear, and different unit types have different "abilities" outside of their base stat differences. I don't want to forget to mention that the music is wonderful and I find the visuals really appealing. More importantly than my personal love for the aesthetic, information is very clear. I feel like all of the information I need to make decisions is very easy to locate on the screen, but the interface does not feel "cluttered". An amazing job considering the amount of systems at play, of which there are many I won't get into here. First day with the game was a blast and this will be the strategy game I will be playing for the foreseeable future. The game is certainly fun even when you're first starting but I know there is a lot of depth and I am really excited to continue exploring all of the wonderful things this game has to offer. Plenty of tribes, win conditions and a good difficulty to keep me engaged for a long time! Highly recommend!
First time playing a 4X game, pretty fun
I always wanted Ancient Era in Civ games to be deeper and last longer. This is it! Indie gaming at its finest.
poorly balanced
Having a blast with Folk Emerging! Give this one a try if you like 4X!
What feels very clear after several hours is that this is one of the best new indie games on the platform. Not only that it seems very hard to actually stop playing, it also feels like it is deeply loved by its developers. The little details man...
A really awesome game, rich in detail and with interesting mechanics, a game focused on this particular phase of human history was definitely needed. Thanks to the developers for this little gem!
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