Aztec Tribe 1.0

Overview

If you ever played Farmville on Facebook you’ll probably be a little familiar with Aztec Tribe. Except instead of building your farm you’ll manage your own society of an ancient Aztec tribe. The game plays like a lot of the java-based flash games you find on social networking sites like Facebook today. Except that Aztec Tribe is a fully installed game. You’ll spend the first part of the game learning the interface and building your tribes village. You’ll start with a small portion of land with designated building spots to create orchards, wigwams, gold mines, and other structures. As you progress through the game you will gain access to more land to build your tribes resources and population.

Aztec Tribe plays a like a RTS game, having to manage what buildings to build and where to place your resources. Gaining resources is done by double clicking on gold, turkeys, apples, as well as other resources to collect. There are structures that will add resources to the map over time and you’ll also have resources like animals that wonder onto the map without any structure needed. The goal of the game is to build up enough resources for your tribe to expand to new areas. Gaining resources, building, and upgrading buildings will increase your score which you can compare to other players in an online community.

Aztec Tribe’s free download allows 60 minutes of game time. Which is plenty of time to decide if the game is worth purchasing or not. With so many games like this out there that are free to play it’s hard to understand why Alawar Entertainment decided to go with a more traditional payment model. Though there are still a lot of people that prefer to pay and unlock their games rather than deal with in-app purchases or ads. Aztec Tribe currently costs $6.99 for the full version and is compatibile with Windows XP, 7, and 8.

Installation

During installation by default Aztec Tribe will set Bing as your default search engine and make the Alawar website your homepage. If you don’t wish to have this added to your machine make sure to un-check the options during installation.

Interface

The games interface is well laid out with objectives placed on the left side of the screen, score and resources at the top of the screen, and building options at the bottom. The graphics are clean and look good, though it’s nothing new or innovating. Interface and Graphics are larger and easier to understand making this a good game for all ages.

Pros

• Easy to use interface for people of all ages.
• Good clean graphics.
• Fun for those who enjoy popular web app games like Farmville.

Cons

• Constructing Buildings is limited to set lots.
• Freedom to build is restricted by set objectives.

Alternatives

There are many games that derive on the build your own society idea; it really comes down to what kind of society you want to build. Most games like this are focus on a certain geographic or category. As I mentioned earlier in the review games like Farmville run on the similar idea but focuses on running a farm rather than a Aztec tribe. If you’re interested in these kinds of games I would recommend looking at social networking sites in their game section. You’re bound to find something that sparks your interest.

Conclusion

Aztec Tribe is a fun little development game and from what I could tell there is plenty of land to pre-occupy your time with in the full version. If you enjoy point and click RTS games that are light-hearted and easy to learn, Aztec Tribe is worth checking out. Personally I thought it would be a good game to leave on the desktop for when the kids get to play on the computer.