Primitive Society Simulator Review – Stone Age village building sim in the test

Use sticks and stones to fight against evil neighbors, wild animals, diseases, and plagues – building strategy in the ancient world

In this game, you lead a tribe in the Stone Age, and over time the primitives become experienced settlers, fighters, and explorers, but also families with children, problems, worries, and lots of pets. I will show you the gameplay (German / English CC) and give you all the information about the game. So you will know if you like it or not.

In this simulator, we build a village for early humans, and similar to RimWorld or Going Medieval we can control, plan, and build everything as we like. Construction strategy game PSS mixes city-building elements with The Sims-like characters. The indie game had a Release Date on Steam for PC on 2/27/2024, it came in Early Access and costs $18.49 or €.

Primitive Society Simulator Review Video

German Voice-Over, many subtitles

Primitive Society Simulator Review – Intro

Hi there, Zap here. In this Primitive Society Simulator Review, you will get a little insight into the new Stone Age village-building strategy game with building survival, settler management, pets, tribe development, research, neighborhoods, and much more. But above all, I want to give you all the information so that you can decide for yourself whether you might enjoy the game.

Primitive Society Simulator is developed and published by YSH BigDove. This is the studio’s first game. I received a free trial key, thanks for that. However, this shouldn’t affect my rating as I always test all games with the thought in mind of how I would feel if I had paid full price.

Primitive Society Simulator – Background

The game was released in Early Access on Steam on February the 27th, 2024. It costs a pleasantly low 18.49 € or $.

The current state of the game is stable, but far from feature complete. The developers have extensive plans. There are already a lot of game features available, but sometimes there are uneven gaps in the game. Especially at the beginning, it takes a while for everything to get going.

A detailed review can be found further down, but I can say in advance that it is far more entertaining than you might imagine from the name.

Game Type – Stoneage Tribe Simulator

In Primitive Society Simulator, which I will often abbreviate as PSS in the following, each member of the tribe is simulated exactly, almost like in The Sims. There are values for hunger, mood, relationships, and much more, as well as equipment such as tools, weapons, and armor.

There are also eight professions in which the Stone Age settlers improve as they carry out these tasks. They can build relationships, marry, have children, and learn from each other.

In the village, you can gradually construct more and more buildings, workbenches, camps, animal enclosures, and so on. This is dependent on the research that results when we get more experienced workers in the 8 professions. There are a total of 71 researches to unlock, and almost every one of these brings with it new buildable items or equipment.

A world map is also available, where we can find lots of other tribes with whom we can trade, exchange knowledge and wage war. We can also send herbalists and hunters there.

Trades, crafting, and gathering

The professions start with fishing and hunting, there is plant hunting, herbalism, cooking, resource extraction such as chopping wood and collecting stones, and a crafting profession that actually covers all work on workbenches.

Herbs, berry bushes, and trees grow in the direct surroundings and can be gathered. The settlers can also catch fish from the river or hunt free-roaming wild animals. Provided they have an enclosure for the respective species, they can also catch and tame them.

However, this is only possible for beginner animal species such as chickens and sheep. Later, we can also hunt and tame wolves, herons, oxen, crocodiles, saber-toothed tigers, mammoths, and rhinos on the world map.

Depending on the species, tamed animals can also help with work. Wild boars can track down herbs or trained herons can help with fishing. On top of that, animals such as wolves or wild boars are also animal companions and will assist their friends in battle.

In addition to the hunting teams, we also have herbalists who we send out into the world and who return with known and sometimes unknown plants. We need these herbs as medicine to heal injuries and illnesses.

But sometimes the unknown herbs can also provide seeds for agriculture. Because in the course of time, there are also fields and crops. Thus, our Stone Age settlers also learn the cultivation of millet and berry bushes, and later also the cultivation of higher quality grains.

To work and fight, the wandering prehistoric people also need tools, which they gradually discover, as well as weapons. At first, everything is made of flint or bone, but later they learn to recognize and mine copper and other metals.

In battle, there are spears for melee, slingshots, bows, and javelins for ranged combat. As the game progresses, we will eventually have warriors on trained mammoths that can be used in attacks on other villages. And since our settlement will be attacked again and again, we also have to arm ourselves with palisades for defense.

And that’s not all, the game has a lot of depth, especially in this area.

Gameplay – World and Diplomacy

The world of PSS is surprisingly lively. There are plenty of neighbors around our settlement and herds of animals appear here time and again. Each tribe has its own attitude towards us, from hostile to neutral to friendly. Later on, you may be able to form alliances with some of them.

There are various ways to build relationships with neighboring tribes. There are small quests that require the exchange of knowledge and there is also trade in goods, both in the form of caravans from other tribes visiting us and in the form of caravans that we can send out ourselves.

However, you also have to defend yourself against attacks. I don’t know at the moment whether it will be possible to plunder, wipe out or conquer other settlements later on, but I think it’s very possible.

Gameplay – Simulation

PSS is called a simulator, so let’s see how deep the simulation goes. And there is already a lot here that is simulated and calculated. Almost everything a member of our tribe does provides experience in the respective area. Professions increase with each use, as do the basic values of vitality and intelligence through conversations around the campfire or particularly good food.

There are further character values for life, mood, stamina, and age. You can set for each inhabitant whether the person prefers intelligence-enhancing food, vitality-enhancing food, or a good mix. There are six equipment slots that influence the effectiveness in combat and at work and also the resistance to weather influences.

A very important goal of the Primitive Society is to become less primitive. Acquiring knowledge is one of the most important aspects of a tribe member’s life. Writing down or chiseling into stone tablets and carving into bones to exchange knowledge and passing it on orally to the children is also simulated and is part of the daily routine of every Stone Age settler.

People get married, children are born, and relationships with neighboring tribes are simulated and improved, or wars are planned.

Then there are random events: Traveling merchants, attacks by aggressive tribes, or wild animals against which we must defend ourselves. The dangers for our tribe also include plagues such as locusts, epidemics with colds in bad weather, or outbreaks of the plague if we do not dispose of and burn the corpses of the enemies we have killed in time.

And it is not just the physical aspects of our tribe members that need to be considered. Every inhabitant has a mood. Deaths, attacks, and illnesses can lower that mood. This can range from slight restrictions due to low morale to complete breakdowns. Low moods can be alleviated by calming conversations with others or greatly improved by ceremonies at the ritual site.

Primitive Society Simulator – Image Gallery (Part I) – Gameplay Screenshots

Klicke oder Tippe auf eines der Bilder für eine größere Ansicht.
In der vergrößerten Ansicht kannst Du links und rechts am Rand umblättern

Technology, Graphics, Sound, Engine, Translation

PSS is based on the Unity engine, it runs stable. In 30 hours of testing, it never crashed. And the performance is also usable on older PCs. The option menus allow you to change a few settings to adapt the game to less powerful hardware.

The graphics are mediocre but very functional. Anything happening is clearly visible and shows many small details. With the children and the cute animals, it does look quite nice in some parts of the game.

To make the 3D view through buildings and other visual obstacles easier, there are switches to hide walls, roofs, or trees. The camera can be freely rotated and panned, and offers plenty of zoom levels, from a complete overview to right in front of your Stone Age nose.

Visually, the game often looks a little washed out. Everything is pale, and often a fog filter is applied on top, which intensifies this effect. I would like to see a bit more color and stronger contrasts. I don’t think everything was gray and light brown in the Stone Age either.

Regarding the gameplay, PSS offers several controls to adjust the difficulty to your liking. This can also be changed at any time during the game.

The sound is still rather sparse. However, most of the events are noticeable by sounds. There are a couple of nice pieces of music that go very well with the theme of the game.

There is no voice acting at all, and the on-screen text and menus have been translated into 9 languages so far. The German and English versions are upper middle class, there are still a few mistakes, but you can almost always understand what it’s about. And in some places, the texts are really well-written and entertaining.

How well does it run on Steamdeck?

As usual with this type of game, the onscreen text is small. If you need to, you can use the on-screen magnifier to get a closer look using the Steam button and the left trigger.

The performance is okay, but I had to create my own control profile. Some important functions, such as panning and zooming, were missing with the default mouse and keyboard settings.

With a few adjustments to the controls and performance, however, you can play PSS on the handheld in a very comfortable way, and I was able to get more than 5 hours of battery life with a few throttling settings in the hardware menu. This means that even longer games are possible without a power connection.

All in all, the answer is that it’s not optimized, but with a little effort, it’s absolutely playable.

Primitive Society Simulator Test – Opinion and Conclusion

I don’t really have much to complain about the game. With a few minor exceptions, it had very few bugs and ran smoothly. PSS had increasingly interesting gameplay and I really enjoyed it.

Runs stable, active development team in place

I reported the few small bugs that I noticed on the developer’s discord, and some of them were fixed after only a few days, and even suggestions that I made were implemented. This speaks for a motivated and competent team behind the game and should ensure some interesting updates and more content for the Stone Age human simulation in the course of Early Access.

One thing that annoyed me was that the map was always the same. I am missing a random map generator or at least a couple of different maps to choose from. This would be a great addition to the replay value of the game. And a more practical and nicer user interface would be one of my biggest wishes for the game.

There is not much to do at the beginning, it is good that you can fast-forward

PSS is usually a very calm game, with speed adjustable from 1x to 8x, you can step on the gas in quieter moments and switch to slow or pause when there’s more action.

Sometimes it is a little too tranquil. Since science is very limited at the beginning of the game, building options and gameplay features are limited at first.

And so there is a lack of things to do in the early part of the game, other than just observe. Things get better as you go along, but overall the start is kind of lame.

After a few simulated years, however, it becomes more complex and extensive.

After a few simulated years, however, this absolutely changes. With more Stone Age people and more researched knowledge, there is more and more to do. As the game progresses, the coordination of food supplies and needs, the search for herbs, the hunting of animals, the trade with neighboring tribes, and the completion of missions will also require more and more coordination. It can end tragically if an attack suddenly occurs and all fighters are traveling somewhere in world history.

Some of the features are clearly copied from Rimworld and Going Medieval. But I think it’s a smart idea to take inspiration from two games that are so good at what they do. And some of the game mechanics, such as the hunting and gathering of herbs, or especially the knowledge system, I have never seen in this form before. So they took proven systems and mixed in their own innovative ideas.

Very fair price

The price of 18.49 € or $ is very reasonable in my eyes. The game already offers an interesting variety of gameplay at the Early Access launch and the prospect of further updates with more content and improvements makes this offer even better.

Primitive Society Simulator Review – Rating

For the fair price of 18.49€ or $, you get a fully playable and stable game with varied and sometimes unique gameplay ideas.

For this well-rounded offer, Primitive Society Simulator gets a rating of 82% from me. A better rating would require more maps or a map generator and fewer gaps at the beginning.

Primitive Society Simulator – Image Gallery (Part II) – Gameplay Screenshots

Klicke oder Tippe auf eines der Bilder für eine größere Ansicht.
In der vergrößerten Ansicht kannst Du links und rechts am Rand umblättern

Outro

Do you like complex tribal simulations and The Sims-like depth of detail? Or is a slow start and Stone Age settlers not your thing? Let me know what you think in the comments section below or on the Community Discord.

For more game news, reviews and guides, check out the ZZ YouTube channel or read further articles here on https://zapzockt.de – click thumbs up under the video, subscribe and share with friends and have a great day, ciao ciao, your Zap

Links and Sources

Primitive Society Simulator Steampage

Dev Discord