Jack of All Tribes on iOS combines prehistorical city-building with resource management

G5 Entertainment has launched their newest offering for iOS: Jack of All Tribes combines elements of city-building and combat with tons of resource management as you find yourself swept back in time to save a land of prehistorical villages from the elements, and from raiders. Playing as Jack, you literally plunge into an adventure after your roller coaster train derails, sending you through a wormhole. From there, you're introduced to Rainbow, a native that can help you understand her people's relationship with nature and the elements.

A shaman has foretold of your arrival - that you will bring peace and prosperity to the land - so (most of) the villagers are eager to follow your direction. Through each level (there are 40 in all), you'll be given a smaller set of tasks, from building cottages and huts to gathering a specific amount of food or wood. As you progress further in the game, you'll even be able to mine for gold, build bridges to reach new areas, and fight off raiders that would steal your supplies for their own use.

Jack of All Tribes places you in the role of an overseer, as you tap on objects thus commanding your villagers to complete tasks associated with them. House plots are clearly marked on the land, and by tapping on a lot, you can send two or more villagers to complete its construction. Each hut or home adds more villagers to your current level, allowing you to multi-task even further by having these same villagers move on to construct more homes, while your new helpers harvest Food from fields or berry bushes.

Gameplay is made even more complex with the addition of both Wood and Food production facilities. While they will automatically add Food and Wood to your totals (Wood is otherwise earned by chopping down trees), you'll need to lose at least one villager per building to keep them open. You can add or take away villagers from each building, adding a huge element of strategy to each level, as you must look at your goals and decide just how quickly you need those resources to move on. Furthermore, each new structure you want in your city costs Wood, so if you don't have enough Wood to build a new home, and yet your town only has two citizens, your progress will be incredibly slow and you may not pass the level in the expert time given.

Speaking of score, at the end of each level, you're given a score based on the number of buildings you constructed, along with other bonuses for how thoroughly you completed each of your required tasks, and how quickly you completed them. If you complete them fast enough, you'll unlock a special flag on the world map, along with receiving trophies and other rewards along the way that make your villagers work faster, become hungry less often, and so on.

Another game element, combat, is included via both dinosaurs and raiders, and even some tower defense. While you can simply tap on a raider's head to scare them off, if you build a Dinosaur Pen they'll chase them off automatically. The same can be said for towers which are located on the outskirts of some villages: these towers toss coconuts at the enemies, thus driving them back.

In order to earn more funds in each level, you'll be able to upgrade your cottages and huts to produce more rent, add entertainment structures like baths or theaters, or even allow your villagers to ride on your pet dinosaur for the fun of it. All of your actions have two purposes: to not only complete each level's overarching goals, but to keep your villagers fed and satisfied. The happier they are, the faster they work and vice versa.

All told, Jack of All Tribes is far more difficult to describe in words than through actual practice. The game is available on both iPhone and iPad in two separate apps, costing $2.99 and $4.99 each, respectively. You can download a free trial of either game to see if the gameplay is to your liking, but I'd be willing to wager that the downright adorable graphics alone will be enough to keep you coming back for more.

Six Gun Galaxy brings a violent, dreary wild west to Facebook

Six Gun Galaxy from KlickNation sees you creating a character in a post-apocalyptic world on Facebook, where you're left to rebuild a town and help other survivors in various towns by completing quests. The storyline is filled with the expected elements from the theme. A war has devastated the planet, leaving military men feeling responsible and outlaws to feel they can ravage what's left. The average citizen needs your help with hunting for food from the wild animals that roam even the cities' streets, and while cash is still a factor, objects like tobacco have been given just as much value in society.

While Six Gun Galaxy contains a theme that's not overly common for Facebook games, the gameplay itself doesn't really revolutionize the city-building or quest-based adventure genres. You'll have your own town to build, starting with nothing but a home and Blacksmith's shop. You can add new items like Laundry Facilities or Gun Shops, and also add decorations and roads to customize the look of your town even more. Buildings payout profits over time, including cash and experience points, along with Iron, which is another form of "currency" used for building additional buildings.

Apart from the game's city-building aspect, an even larger portion of the game is dedicated to traveling from town to town (more locations unlock as you level up) and completing quests for the locals. You'll have to gather and trade supplies at the Market, help chase off wild animals, deliver items to different locations, and so on. Combat comes into play fairly early on, as you'll fight bandits in term-based battles by simply clicking on their avatars on the map. Unfortunately, there doesn't look to be a way to tell exactly how strong an enemy is before entering combat, so you very well may end up on the losing end before you can even pull out your weapon. Luckily, you can turn the tides of battle by having teammates join you along the way (teammates can be purchased with cash), or by upgrading your character with new equipment and weapons.

As you might expect, most every action in the game requires energy, which therefore runs out far more quickly than you might like. You can collect food from wild animals and then spend that food on energy refills, or spend Platinum, the game's premium currency.

Gallery: Six Gun Galaxy Facebook


While each location in the game has a specific amount of quests available to complete, you can play the game with relative freedom, only undertaking quests when you really feel like it. The rest of the time can be spent tracking down wild animals, goods to trade, building up your own city, and so on, completely outside of pushing the story forward. Of course, that can only last you for so long, so we hope that more quests will continually be added to Six Gun Galaxy in the future to keep us coming back for more.

Play Six Gun Galaxy on Facebook -->

Have you tried Six Gun Galaxy on Facebook? What do you think of frontier-based games on Facebook? Does the fact that this game is actually post-apocalyptic, rather than simply "old" influence your likelihood to play it?