Have You Played… Dawn Of Man?

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Have You Played… Dawn Of Man?Abadagus

Abadagus

In strategy games that cover broad swathes of human history, it’s always a bit sad that the Stone Age is, at best, an early game sideshow – something to be breezed past in a couple of technological leaps on the way to better things. Not so withDawn Of Man, which concentrates on the various something-lithic periods to the exclusion of everything else. In this game, pointy bits of iron, ploughs and cheese are end-game tech.

It is, as such, a pretty slow game. Progress in this ice age world is appropriately glacial, achieved in meagre increments, and because of this your settlements never develop beyond meagre, hard-won hamlets. Even so, it never feels like a grind. The sheer effort involved in assembling every pitiful hut, or acquiring each threadbare goat, makes everything in your paltry civilisation feel like a treasure beyond reckoning, rather than just abstract units to be hoarded.