Tribe: Primitive Builder may look like a standard survival crafting game but it introduces an interesting mechanic that threatens to break the illusion that is the survival crafting genre. What mechanic is that you ask? Unlike survival crafting games, you don’t have to grind all the way to the platinum axe to find out the answer.
The game incorporates a management sim aspect and the results are very interesting to look at. The game lets you build huts with specific functions, i.e. a fishing hut, and then assign workers from the tribe to said hut. They will carry out their duties as long as they have two things, food and tools. This has a greater impact on the game than one would think, it’s just unfortunate that the survival crafting mechanics of Tribe are too shallow to let the game really shine.
We’ll get to the shortcomings in a bit and focus on how the management sim aspect impacts the game. The result is that you spend way less time carrying out tedious tasks for upkeep and instead only have to do the bare minimum in crafting enough tools for each hut. The fishers in the fishing hut take care of hunting food and the workers take care of transporting the fish to the warehouse and then to the cooking hut where a chef turns the raw fish into rations. The rations are then taken by the workers and distributed to each hut in turn.
There’s really no need to participate in the tedium that is so familiar in the survival crafting genre. Even gathering is taken care of for you. You only need to chop down trees and pick up rocks if you want to and this leaves gamers in uncharted territory. Gone is the constant dopamine drip from meaningless progression from repetitive microtasks that give a false sense of accomplishment. I’m almost certain that the game would have received more positive reviews if the management sim aspect was not in the game or if more tedium based progression systems were in place.
Fans of the survival crafting genre mistakenly view time wasted as skill. For example, a lot of people will discredit any amazing builds in most games if they are done in creative mode and will only respect builds done in survival mode. Creative mode means the player is given unlimited resources and has everything unlocked from the start. Somehow wasting an inordinate amount of time mindlessly gathering resources doesn’t make a build more grand, the skill is in the architecture and design and artistic expression, not hours spent.
Having to not waste time on gathering resources and managing upkeep means one thing, having more time to actually build things, and this is where Tribe: Primitive Builder falls flat. While I think the management sim aspect is fantastic the actual crafting and building is the weakest part of the game.
Building structures in this game has no freedom at all. You simply select a building blueprint, lay it out on the ground, and then click on the parts to finish building it. There’s no room for creative outlet or expression of any kind. The management sim aspect of the game gives you more time to build but the building aspect is too limited to provide any kind of satisfaction.
Having played a lot of sandbox survival crafting games, I learned one important thing. Most people just want a guided experience with clear objectives and they want to see numbers and bars go up. Once most people unlock and level everything up, they lose interest in the game because at that point, the fun comes from their own creativity and ingenuity.
I totally understand because it takes a lot of work to create your own fun in a sandbox environment. I personally put in hundreds of hours into both Astroneer and No Man’s Sky and while these games aren’t the traditional survival crafting games, they offered the freedom of a sandbox and I saw most people lose interest as soon as the “ending” was reached.
It’s the illusion of the survival crafting genre. You think you’re putting in all this effort and time to reach the endgame so that you can finally build things but once you get to the end, all the dopamine generators and instant gratification are gone. Not everyone is like this but only a minority of players are crazy enough to take advantage of everything a sandbox has to offer. For example, one No Man’s Sky player named Bosk001 built a functioning pinball machine in the game. What a mad lad.
As for the game itself, Tribe: Primitive Builder is a mediocre game. It’s casual fun. The management sim aspect is interesting but the building is shallow. It was very interesting from a meta perspective of reflecting on what the survival crafting game play loop really is and why it’s so addictive. I will say though, anecdotally speaking, more people do seem to enjoy just building things in Minecraft but that’s most likely due to its massive popularity.
Will I still play survival crafting games and spend hours punching trees and rocks? You bet I will!
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1059900/Tribe_Primitive_Builder/
Review Score: 84% positive with a total of 369 reviews as of this writing (12/01/23)
Developer: Space Boat Studios, Baked Games S.A.
Publisher: Polyslash
Release Date: Oct 12, 2023
MSRP: $19.99
I received a key from keymailer. Thank you so much for the key!
Time spent: 3.1 hours
Achievement Score: 2/29
Ducky Obrien 