When I first laid eyes on Tribe: Primitive Builder, it looked incredibly ambitious. Something the building game genre has needed for a long time is some innovation to set it apart from the countless other builders. Unfortunately, the systems at play just bog the experience down to the point of boredom.
The story of Tribe: Primitive Builder follows our player character as he discovers he is this master builder sent from the gods. But the gods, wanting to test him, have destroyed everything he has built in a ferocious storm, and when he awakens on a new island, he sets out to set things right by showing this new tribe that he is worth his weight as a builder. While our player finds himself with the local elder, he gives an offering to the gods and has a vision that he must build up this tribe and get them to set sail before the nearby volcano erupts.
But, the story in Tribe: Primitive Builder feels tacked on at best. I do appreciate that they attempted to add a story to an open-world builder game, but the ebbs and flow of it just don’t land very well. There is little to no emotional drive propelling us further, so the overall story becomes mostly a moot point. Sure, there are some interesting ideas, but the way the story really holds back the flow of the building elements makes them not overly compelling.
The building itself in Tribe: Primitive Builder is something that feels a little under-thought. When you are going around the island, you can harvest things like wood, bamboo, yellow-dried grass vines, etc., but this is a prolonged process, and the fact that you need so many materials to build makes the collection drawn out. Not to mention, when you find something you want to build, it lists the materials you need. But not all the materials you need, just the base amount to put the blueprints up.
“The building itself in Tribe: Primitive Builder is something that feels a little under-thought.”
You will still have to figure out what you need and go around scavenging them before you can actually complete your build. It is incredibly frustrating as there is currently no way to see exactly how many materials you will need. The fact that as you are building, you could be putting it together and multiple times during the build have to stop and go gather materials shows a real lack of respect for the player’s time.
Otherwise, Tribe: Primitive Builder is just your everyday run-of-the-mill builder. There are hunger, exhaustion, and thirst meters to contest with. You will have to hunt, find water sources, and build huts and sleeping locations to continue your exploration through the land. The one big thing it has going for it is the fact that you are able to control the tribe itself and set them to some more menial tasks like the aforementioned hunting.
This is all done through menus, and once set in place, you will need to make sure they have the tools and food to be able to complete the tasks. It feels very base-level, but it does mitigate some of the later gathering. It never feels like it reaches its true potential of having a fully automated tribe capable of running itself.
Tribe: Primitive Builder is environmentally okay. Mostly, everything looked pretty similar. There is this weird coat of shine on it that makes everything look a little washed out. This is unfortunate because in building games, the one thing I love is seeing actual tree damage displayed as I chop them down, but even here, it doesn’t look great.
Tribe: Primitive Builder also attempts to call upon its origins by changing the dialect to a more tribal one. This makes the game more confusing and dull. You aren’t able to change languages to suit yourself better. I do understand the decisions, but between that and the strange font they used, every single piece of dialogue was more frustrating than anything as I struggled to grasp what was going on. It somehow makes the game so much less approachable.
Overall, Tribe: Primitive Builder is a massive letdown. I am usually a fan of building games, no matter how basic they are, but here, there are some odd design choices that do nothing more than bog down the experience. This game is easily a game I will gladly never pick up again.
