by Christina Ramey

Created on: November 30, 2008   Last Updated: December 02, 2008

Many "god games" can overwhelm the player with required micromanagement, making the game feel more like work and less like recreation. My Tribe, by Grubby Games, allows a more casual player to enjoy watching their culture expand and explore while minimizing the need to monitor every little detail.

My Tribe eases you into gameplay with an informative and step-by-step tutorial. Very few questions are left unanswered by the game until you reach the end of the tutorial, when you are given license to explore and learn on your own. The controls are intuitive; drag and drop your villagers over objects in order to set them to certain tasks, such as rocks for rock collecting or the ocean for fishing. They'll get to work on this new priority and become more skilled in the job as time passes. The villagers require little to no supervision, so you can set them to work and move on to other tasks.

The game will appeal most to a casual gamer looking for something to play on their lunch break at work; your villagers keep working and living even when the game isn't active, so you can turn it off and come back hours later to see how they've progressed. Also, players in a hurry can skip the wait by using stardust and moondust to accelerate construction and improve villager's skills. A gamer looking for hours of intense and concentrated gameplay may be disappointed with My Tribe, however, due to its laid back pace.

The game includes some small, fun miscellaneous features, as well, such as limited customization of villager clothing, the ability to mix potions to achieve different results, and "mystery objects" that your villagers can examine and eventually use.

The graphics are nothing fancy, but they're cute and extremely fitting to the style of the game. The sound effects, music, and friendly narration voice are similarly well-suited. Both the visuals and the audio match reasonable expectations of a downloadable game.

Some of the downsides of My Tribe include your need to interact with everything through the use of your villagers, being incapable of picking up objects yourself, and the slow loading times of the game when you have any other program running in the background. It can be frustrating to be unable to hurry your villagers along in their tasks and also be unable to switch over to another program while you play due to its memory consumption. However, the speed can be increased in both cases by changing the settings in the game.

Overall, My Tribe is a game worth investing in if you're looking for a casual play game and a stress-free alternative to other simulation games. It may not hold long-lasting appeal for all gamers however, so make sure to try it out before buying it! My Tribe earns a rating of 4 out of 5, thanks to its fun interface and appeal to the casual gamer.

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