Game: Cavemen Tales
Genre: Strategy, Adventure
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam)
Developer | Publisher: Cateia Games | Ocean Media
Age Rating: US E | EU 3+
Price: US $9.99 | UK £8.99 | EU €9,99
Release Date: September 17th, 2020
Review code used with many thanks to Ocean Media
Cavemen Tales is a time-management game giving you levels that you have to overcome by finishing assignments before time runs out. All of this to the background of the tale of Sam and Crystal who have to find their family and find a new place for the Tribe to live.
40 Levels Following Crystal and Sam
Now, I love a good management game. Still have such good memories of a couple of games I played for many months on my iPad. Many, many hours spent on managing resources, making the habitat larger and taking care of my inhabitants. One game I played a lot was The Tribez and I must say that was what I had in mind when seeing Cavemen Tales.
The cinematic sequence when the game opened had the same vibe, transporting me back to a prehistoric age. Cavemen Tales tells the tale of how disaster (of the natural kind) struck a tribe of humans living happily in a forest. Sadly for them, the village is gone and the real Chief is pretty useless in organizing a new living situation for his people. Lucky for them, a woman saves the day: Crystal can manage pretty well on her own…well, she does need her Sam’s strength by her side.
The storyline is standard and serves to get you from level to level. After the level is done, you are challenged with new tasks and you go building again from the ground on up.
It’s All About Choices
Cavemen Tales takes you by the hand and helps you along for the first levels. It’s pretty standard if you have ever played a time management game on mobile before. Build huts to house workers, build a farm for food, build a factory for materials and so on. Now I do like that, but the combination with challenges that you have to finish in a level wasn’t so much to my liking.
As soon as you are on your own, you get requests. Like build 3 huts with 2 stars, build two bridges and sea the wyvern. Being able to do that, you need coins (coming from taxes on your huts) and materials coming from your workshop. But you also have to invest in a farm for food, otherwise, your builders won’t work. See where this is going? It’s all down to choices. Invest in the huts first? But not too many, otherwise you won’t have material to build the workshop. And so on.
There are three levels of difficulty you can choose from. You can choose “relaxed”, which has no time limits and allows you to play at your own pace. There is also a “normal” level, which is timed; you have to finish all of the tasks before time runs out or you cannot receive a medal. Finally, there is an “extreme” mode which can give you a diamond, instead of a medal, if you manage to finish it before a reduced time limit runs out. I went for “normal”, not wanting to seem a scaredy-cat. But I’m pretty sure I would have enjoyed going for relaxed more because I do like this kind of management game but the timer made me rushed.
At starting the game I was surprised that Cavemen Tales can only be handled by touch screen in handheld mode. The buttons just don’t work, which is why I needed to put the Switch on a table before me to play. Can’t play it sitting in a lazy chair! The game is clearly made with the PC in mind, noticeable in the small characters and print.
Conclusion
Cavemen Tales is a game that can keep you entertained for a while if you like time-management games. Looking back at Emily’s review of Country Tales (find it here) I couldn’t help but notice how similar the games are. It’s just a new theme, but the rest of the gameplay seems the same.
I can only confirm what she concludes: if you like these kinds of games, and want to have another fix of making the right choices to get it all done, this is a nice new one. It doesn’t however add anything new to the genre. For myself, I can conclude I like management games of the city builder type better. Because of that, I am going for a neutral verdict.
Final Verdict: I’m not sure
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