Giveaway of the Day - Aztec Tribe

In Brief:

Aztec Tribe is a basic Time Management (TM) game that focuses mainly on resource management. These are one of the few TM games that I actually enjoy playing as the time constraints aren’t as ‘rushed’ as games like Delivery King, Dance Craze, Amelia’s Cafe or Snowy: Lunch rush (all of which are available free from MPC. Personally I prefer games like Farm Frenzy series Sunshine Acres or Virtual Villages )

Intro

Installation:

Aztec Tribe downloads to a 61.9 MB zip file that unpacks to a read me and a wrapped setup activation file (the orange colored file with the key symbol), plus there’s a setup file with security (setup.gcd) that’s protected from being hacked. This file may case some security software to alert the user to a possible malware attack, but it will be a false positive.

The game giveaway team check all game giveaways for malware using several well known anti -malware suites. There has never been a game giveaway infected with malware since the project started back in Dec 2006. The installed game is 54.3 MB in size.

C:\Games\AztecTribe_Game

No desktop shortcut or start menu/programs shortcut are installed, so make sure you make a note of where the game is being installed to so that you can create one for yourself. Once installed you can delete the giveaway setup files.

:info: I’ve only tested the game on Win 7 this time around, my Vista and XP computers are in need of repair at the moment so am unable to test on those platforms and I’m still not ready to install my copy’s of win 8 (Actually misplaced one of them, lol) Anyone running Win 8, Vista or XP, please confirm whether this game works Thank you.

Main Menu

level map

Introduction:

Eons ago, a peaceful tribe lived in the mountains, with enemies surrounding it on every side. To escape, the people sent out scouts to search for a new home in the valley. When the explorers found a suitable spot, the tribe began the process of creating a glorious new civilization!

Help the budding Aztecs gain a foothold in the ancient world by mining resources and constructing buildings. Then upgrade your structures to attract more citizens, train soldiers and ward off the attacks of a heartless enemy. With stunning animation, colorful visuals and finely-tuned strategic gameplay, Aztec Tribe will keep casual gamers entertained for days on end!

Reference accessed HERE Jan 19th 2013

story board

options menu

The Game:

The main menu gives access to the options menu which allows you to change the music volume, effects volume and to be able to toggle between full screen (which is set to default) and windowed mode as well as toggle comics/storyboard (set as default) and a custom cursor (standard windows cursor is default). You can also access the awards from the main menu, which include a tally of your Gold Silver and Bronze stars for each level you’ve completed (You can return to a previous level if you didn’t atain gold to try again) as well as several other unknown awards, which you’ll discover as you progress through the game. You can set up several profiles, which makes this an ideal family game. Each profile can be seen onmce set up via the high scores table, which is also accesible from the main menu.

tasks

When you first start the game you will have to create a profile. once this has been done starting the game will bring up a short series of storyboard screens (3) in a cartoon like style that give you the back ground story to the game. You can toggle these off either via the options menu, or tick the checkbox in the bottom left of the first screen. Then the level map is show; with you starting at level 1. From here you will be introduced to your first goal which is to build a town with various goals like build a garden, build a wigwam, upgrade the wigwan to level 2, upgrade your garden etc; you also have to collect items such as food.

Anything new in the game is introduced by a small info panel (see the image slideshow below for examples), which can be closed by clicking on the big red OK.

paused

Aztec Tribe from Merry Pen Games is a casual combination of Farm Frenzy and Build-a-lot or Totem Tribe and Townopolis. Between building and upgrading gardens, mines and houses and managing a slew of resources, you’ll help an adventuresome tribe establish a new home in a faraway land. It’s a rewarding and relaxing game that delivers extra challenge only when you want it.

Many years ago, a peaceful tribe of natives lived in the mountains. Enemies surrounded their village on all sides, forcing them to scout out and find a new home. Soon their scouts discovered a fertile valley, a land waiting to be their new home. It’s your job to help the Aztecs settle this foreign land by building settlements one by one. With each plot of land you shape, more buildings and upgrades become available, allowing you to create a thriving civilization that’s both efficient and luxurious!

info panel

Everything in Aztec Tribe is centred around resources, whether they be physical items such as food, gold and wood or allocating workers where they’re needed most. Early stages begin with the same pattern: set-up a wigwam, the central hub where workers stay, then build a garden to produce food, a mine to create gold, a sawmill to chop wood, etc. Resources are created at these buildings but must be manually gathered to go into your queue, giving your cursor something to do while you wait for things to happen. Later you’ll be able to create units that gather resources on their own.

Buildings can be upgraded (provided you have the resources) by clicking on the star icon in the menu screen. Each building must also have a worker present before it can operate, another task accomplished using the menu. It’s ok to leave houses empty, but mills, farms and mines need someone to keep them running.

One of the more interesting aspects of Aztec Tribe is the option to play “just to win” or play to master the game. Each level has a set of goals you must meet in order to progress. Once you finish those, you’re given the option to move on to the next level or to continue and work for a silver medal. Choose the latter and new, more difficult goals will appear. Once those are finished you can even choose to earn a gold ranking!

Aztec Tribe presents a unique mixture of player choices and player boundaries. Each building you construct must be placed in one of the set locations, restricting how many of each you can have on the level. This prevents you from becoming a super resource tycoon, but it also encourages you to branch out and use a variety of buildings. The goals in each level leave little room for creativity, but fortunately there’s also little room for failure.

Aztec Tribe isn’t a difficult game, as there are very few opportunities for failure. Everything goes pretty much as you would like it to with almost no interruption. It also takes an hour or so before the real game kicks in, making this one a slow-starter. Don’t rush into Aztec Tribe expecting a mega management game of challenge. Instead, step in and be ready for a pleasant simulation where you can whack turkeys with sticks and gather resources with your cursor.

With around three dozen levels, Aztec Tribe is a good length for this kind of game. New buildings are doled out slowly, with the bulk of the exciting content coming in the latter half of the game. Even though there’s no time limit, things get hectic later on with nefarious critters roaming onto the scene, buildings needing repairs, and resources begging to be gathered across your village.
Casual to its Mesoamerican core, Aztec Tribe is nothing but pure resource managing entertainment.

Reference accessed HERE Jan 5th 2013

Aztec Tribe has a total of 34 levels, which gradually increase in difficulty throughout the game. There’s only one mode of play

Features:

• Help the Aztecs gain a foothold in the ancient world.

• Good animation and simple strategic gameplay.

• Upgrade your structures to attract more citizens.

• 34 levels and interactive environments.

• Three grades to each level, Gold, silver, bronze.

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8
• CPU: 1.0 GHz
• System RAM: 256 MB
• DirectX: 8.0 or higher
• Browser: Internet Explorer 7 or later
• Hard Drive: 61 MB

Images & Video:

You can see a slideshow of images HERE

You’ll find videos of game play HERE, HERE and HERE

Music:

You can’t change the music in Aztec Tribe without having to go into the games executable which will require a dedicated editing program and experience of coding. however, if you find the music annoying you can open up the volume mixer by right clicking on the speaker symbol that’s usually located nect to the clock (you may need to click on the upward pointing arrow to show hidden icons. Once the volume mixer is open expand it to show all items with sound; you can then turn down the games colume slider to zero and perhaps play your own music via your media player. (Can’t remember whether you can do this in Win XP?)

Marketplace

Conclusion:

Aztec Tribe is a little like a mix between Totem Tribe and Townopolis. While Aztec Tribe focuses on needing to get your tribe to safe new lands on a mostly-uninhabited island, the focus is mainly on building the right structures and collecting goods to meet goals and is not at all about maintaining tribe health or skill advancement.

It’s a fairly easy game with plenty of room to make mistakes. As you progress through the levels the game becomes more intensive and it is possible to run yourself into a corner if you don’t pay attention to your rapiodly decaying buildings and invasion by unwanted animals etc; however, for the most part it’s easy to recover from mistakes.

If you’ve never played games like Starcraft or Age of Empires, Aztec Tribe is a great way to introduce yourself to the world of rts games. Although not an rts game (real time strategy) itself, it does introduce you to one aspect of r.t.s. games, which is resource management without the need for micro management. If you enjoy this game, I’m sure you’d love the more in depth games of Starcraft and Age of Empires. (Age of Empires is now in its third iteration and Starcraft which was created by Blizzard and who are more famous for their blockbuster game World of Warcraft is in its second iteration.(I’ve still got a collectors edition of the original starcraft).

Scoring

Gameplay – 7
Graphics – 7
Audio – 6
Re-playability – 7
Originality – 8

Total = 7.0

Problems:

If you are posting late in the day I would also suggest posting in the main giveaway forums in the game discussion section. If you’ve installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn’t guaranteed. It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them.

——————————————————————————————————————

Games, Games, and yet more Games plus Download, Installation & Game play Problems:

If you have any problems installing or getting to work today’s game please go HERE for help.

If you’re looking for something other than today’s game check the didimatic site via THIS link for some brilliant deals.

There are several other deals available from Steam for example there’s a free weekend for Magika, plus it’s 75% off for the game if you decide to purchase (£1.99 for the game or £7.99 for the game plus 20 dlc’s {divide by two then multiply by 3 to get the dollar price}). Also you can get Anno 2070 plus some of the dlcs for 60% off with one dlc for 50% off (a choice between a deluxe and standard edition plus 10 dlcs). The 24 hr deal is Stealth B*****d: Tactical Espionage A*****e (asterix denotes expletive) for 50% off; as well as many more from Gamersgate, Gamestop, Greenman Gaming and GOG; all of which you can find via the Didimatic site, which I’ve linked to above (apart from Greenman gaming.

The usual monthly free game from Alawars game box is now Sprill. It’s supposed to change every month, but some community members are seeing the same game for months on end. Dido suggested that you reinstall gamebox to fix the problem. Reinstalling gamebox shouldn’t affect any previous freebies. . (You need to install the free Gamebox from Alawar to access the free games, which for newcomers change approximately every month).

If that’s not enough, check out the Game Discussion forums HERE for details of other games either free or on deals such as the Indie Game bundles or the four day sales at IndieGameStand. The latest IndieGameStand game is Leave Home an abstract Shmup. The average price to qualify for bonus content is $1.45, but you can get the game for $1 if you wish.

Check out the Game discussion forums HERE for details of any Indie Game Bundles that are still live. (A new Indie Royale is live plus I think the indie Gala is still running).

You’ll find more Time Management games for free over at MyPlayCity (over 120 of them), Gametop and FreeGamePick but please be aware that these sites may add toolbars and home page hijacks to your web browser, but these can be avoided by un-checking the appropriate boxes during installation. Also when you close any of their games down, your browser is opened and directed to the sites home page. This is innocuous so don’t worry. Closing the page ends any connection and nothing is downloaded.

========================================================

A Request for help:

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of ‘potential’ cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

========================================================

Really nice game. Thanks GGAOTD and Alawar Entertainment.
Sometimes games are worth to buy in the future, and this is one of those.