While city builders and colony sims focus on one period, the recent Indie release Sapiens is about scale. You’ll lead your tribe through “thousands upon years of technological breakthroughs”, starting with just two people.
Sapiens was only released to Early Access last week. Don’t expect anything more. It’s mainly the beginning of the stone age—some Neolithic dabbling.
The game is still promising, showcasing a snap-based building system that allows you to make and reproduce many buildings. It’s also possible to see how Sapiens draws inspiration from god games, which allows you to issue straightforward commands.
The developer has many plans for the next several years of Early Access. You can expect to see boats, fishing, horseback riding, and the transportation of goods. You will have more interactions with other tribes, including the ability to steal, trade, recruit, fight, and steal. The store blurb states that we can expect to go further into medieval times and beyond by crafting metal tools and advanced farming and refining methods.
Interestingly, Sapiens’ Steam page states it was designed with multiplayer. This makes it one of few colony sims that support it. Moddable features will also be available.
Majic Jungle (also known as Dave Frampton), a 20-year-old game developer who has previously worked in mobile gaming, is developing Sapiens. Sapiens is his debut release on PC.
