Dawn of Man

It's an enjoyable game at first, but after 10 hours I'm getting pretty bored with it. With Banished, I had a ton of info about where my colonists were going and what they were doing. All completely ridiculous in the end, of course, when someone dies of stravation where they stand, while carrying fish or berries. But this isn't banished, it is potentially a little more interesting. That said, it is very slow, not very user-friendly at all, and doesn't make much sense. Frustrating at times, but only because it could be so much better thought out. I will give it another go, but might wait for the devs to fulfill the potential of this game, and make it unputdownable.

Dawn of Man offers a nice insight into the part of human history where food and survival were everything, and accordingly, has an excellent sense of progression. For the most part, the game moves at a slow, relaxing pace... with the occasional moment of terror from extreme weather, 'raiders', or animal attacks! Navigating the game map can be difficult, and some aspects of the game seem unfinished. The 'raider' AI, for example, is usually good about approaching defenses, but shows a strange fixation on destroying buildings. For example (at least when playing 'Ancient Warriors') the 'raiders' will bash down your gate, even if the wall around it hasn't been built yet. If they defeat your defenders, they move on destroy everything you've ever built, then wait for you to build more so they can kick it down. They don't seem interested in capturing your children or in claiming resources, which seems to make the term 'raiders' a misnomer, and removes the the sense you're up against human enemies with their own needs and goals. Most of the game is about managing resources and your population's workload, the city-building portion takes more of a backseat... except when things get violent, at which time your layout becomes a matter of life or death! After a few days of play, I still have a lot to learn about how to build defensively (which is why I can tell you the raider AI seems to lack an endgame). If you're better at this aspect of design than I am, you might only see the raiders try in vain to get past your walls. The environment and creature models are beautiful, though the lighting and terrain textures can seem sterile, like some other games feel when they haven't quite finished loading. There's a lot of diversity in the character models, though this can seem strange when each individual has random skin and hair colours. Overall, I like this game, and even after three partial playthroughs and more than fifteen hours, I'm looking forward to playing more of it.

I would give Dawn of Man 5 stars, but there are a few things I think could be better. First, the positive - A lot of games seem to be constantly racing and don't give you time to think. I like the pace and the fact that you can speed it up if it seems a bit slow. Also, I like the graphics - they're pretty realistic and it's easy to follow. The basic game play is straightforward and anyone who likes building civilizations shouldn't have any trouble with this game. Now the downside - it's a bit hard to manage the people and projects. They pick what they want to do for the most part and will do less important tasks before more important ones. Also, they are pretty stupid about going out hungry or thirsty and dying of starvation or dehydration in the wild. And I can't find any way to get any help to them - you can't send a rescue party or anything of the kind. They just die in the wilderness. When viewing the tasks that are being performed, many times the person shown doing something is doing something entirely different - or even just idle or resting. It would really help to have the task list accurately show what the people are actually working on at the time. Otherwise, I have enjoyed over 90 hours of building a stone age to iron age settlement and will probably keep coming back for a long time to come!

Simple game with just enough tech tree goals to keep it interesting. Speed could be a bit better. Overall it is a relaxing fun survival game.

It is interesting to play as neolithic tribe and develop a small settlement into a larger and more technically advanced stone/bronze/iron-age village. Unfortunately, the info on production rates, usage, morale, hunger, animal location, etc. is not fully available which turns this sim/strategy into a fun break between other games which allow a proper resource management and long-term planning.