The past few weeks have been spent working on getting an Alpha version up and running. It’s easy to gloss over the little things when all you want to do is add new features! The main menu has been cleaned up, UI positioning fixed, hard-coded values moved to XML files and dozens of other uninteresting things.

The main change to gameplay is the removal of woodcutter and gatherer professions, leaving only the hunter profession. A tribe member’s ability to perform a certain task is no longer based on what profession you assign them. Instead it’s based on the tools they have available on their body. For example, let’s say you designate some trees to be cut down. Anyone who is currently carrying an axe can cut down those trees, regardless of their profession. As long as you have allowed that tribe member to carry an axe and he/she can find one, they can do any axe-related activities.

The tribe management screen

The reason I have left hunters as a profession is so the player can control which tribe members to put into harm’s way. A non-hunter will flee from an approaching lion, while a hunter will stand their ground and fight back. You can even use the tool assigning system to choose the weapons the hunter is allowed to carry, and they will decide themselves which is the best to use. This tool-based system makes sense in terms of setting as well, since people tended to be jack-of-all-trades instead of specialists in the Stone Age.

If you’re interested in trying out the first Alpha version, please register at http://pokingwatergames.com