Age of Tribes

Throughout the course of history, mankind’s progress has been guided by some truly astonishing and visionary individuals: born leaders who have had the forethought and intelligence to steer their dim-witted minions on the right course.

In the case of Age of Tribes, that someone is you. Placed in charge of four different clans from four different eras of history, you have to ensure your dutiful but mentally-challenged subjects make it safely to the exit whilst avoiding various dangers along the way.

Each level boasts its own unique perils and traps, which spell certain doom for your people unless you intervene. For example, a pit of spikes is naturally going to be harmful to the health of your citizens so you need to bridge the gap to ensure they can progress unscathed.

Creating such a structure is merely a case of drawing a line with your finger. You can create up to eight lines on the screen at any given time, but they don’t last forever. From the moment they’re put in place, they start to decay.

Should any of your people happen to be in transit when a line vanishes, they plummet earthwards - possibly to their death.

Thankfully, you can freeze time in Age of Tribes to give yourself ample opportunity to survey the landscape and ensure you’ve bridged any gaps. You can also use lines to create walls through which to funnel your subjects in a particular direction or climb over tall barriers.

If all of this sounds a tad familiar then it’s probably because Age of Tribes bears more than a passing resemblance to the 16-bit classic Lemmings.

While the core gameplay is incredibly similar, the execution is somewhat different and there are fewer options available here. Age of Tribes has also been coded with touch controls in mind, which feels more intuitive yet also makes things more difficult when it comes to drawing lines with a degree of accuracy.

The opening levels give a tantalising glimpse of the potential offered by this title, but sadly you only have to get a few stages in to realise that it’s not quite as complete a package as it should be.

Firstly, controlling the action is needlessly awkward. You have to constantly switch between your line-drawing tool and the movement button, and it’s all too easy to accidentally draw a line when what you really intended to do is simply move your viewpoint.

Making matters worse, the game feels broken at times. It’s not uncommon to see your followers fall off what appear to be perfectly linked lines or for them to become hopelessly trapped in the scenery.

To top it all off, the fact that your lines are constantly decaying makes Age of Tribes frustrating rather than challenging. Instead of concentrating on the progression of your underlings to their goal, you're constantly having to check that none of your lines vanishes at an inopportune moment.