For my ragged little Stone Age tribe things are going great. The population is growing and there is plenty of food from hunting and I am slowly but surely expanding the camp to new areas to find more resources

Above all, I am taking care of the spiritual needs of the villagers and using their resources to alleviate their fears and replenish their souls in this dark and uncertain world. Watching them dance around the shaman's hut is a truly uplifting moment to witness.

Then, one night, a large campfire in the center of the village suddenly disappears. I built too quickly, too much, depleted my timber reserves and now it looks like there's nothing left to burn. No big deal, I can wait a few seconds for someone to cut down another tree. That's right

I stare at the screen knowing what's going to happen, because it's already happening to my last four tribes. From the darkened forest, inky black tentacles pop out, yink my primitive little darling, one by one, away from the screen and into oblivion. Within seconds, the last of all of them — and there were 25 of them - are gone. Game over.

The goal is stated fairly clearly in the title of Survival Settlement Builder Tribes must survive, but so far my tribe is at least my current record is just 17 days ago I goof something, my campfire goes out, and everyone is dragged off into the woods, but I'm not sure what to do. Those things are hell whatever lurks in the dark.

It's brutal, but I kinda like it. I've never seen a Lovecraftian take to the Stone Age, and I've never played a settlement builder where the end can come so quickly and surely. In Frostpunk, the generator in the center of your city can fail, but not everyone will immediately turn to ice. Games like Farthest Frontier and Manor Lords can run out of firewood, but the cold won't instakill the entire population before you tell someone to cut down another tree. 

But in the tribes must survive, the complete destruction of your people can come in the blink of an eye. By the time you discover the problem, it's usually too late to do anything about it. And you can't just take your time and move on slowly because the opening area isn't exactly rich with resources. As soon as you start, you need to start expanding outward to hunt more trees, more rocks, and more games. And that means pushing you further into the dark by using your meager resources to expand.

Fortunately, it's not that troublesome to try again after everyone dies. There are some timber camps, stone pits, hunter's halls, some tents Plop down, and your new tribe will back up and run pretty quickly on top of that, with its advantages to failure. Each time your tribe dies from an invisible slithering fear, your progress will be calculated: How many villagers you had, which you collected

That score will be converted to XP, and when you reach a new level, you will be able to earn points such as starting with qualifiers to rock abundance and stone collection time. For example, a number of your previous huge failures mean it's a little easier to go your next.

At least in theory. There are all sorts of other dangers in the world, like another session when an eclipse occurs. That meant less sunlight and a shadow monster was more likely to eat someone, but that was just one problem. The eclipse also scared my villagers badly because they wanted to start throwing each other into the dark forest to be voluntarily sacrificed. Then things went downhill pretty quickly.

Another time, a strange vampire tribe of plant monsters appeared and asked very politely if they could drink our blood. I agreed to their terms, at least because they asked first, but it could have been a mistake because more than half of my tribe got extra sleepy and slowed them down, yes, I ran out of trees again, the fire went out, and everyone died. Attention to self: Do not let vampires drink from you.

Maybe I'll finally get better at this' At least it's an unusual game where repeated failures make me not want to play anything easy. The combination of my belief that I can do better next time and my curiosity about what lies deep in the world makes me return for another try The Tribe Must Survive is 6% off on Steam until 6/20 if you think you can keep the stone age crew alive longer than me.