The Lost Tribe

The Lost Tribe is a video game in the strategy genre developed by Lawrence Productions, Inc. and published by Lawrence Productions, Inc. originally released in 1992. It is currently playable on DOS, Mac.

One of the best and most unique edutainment titles ever made, The Lost Tribe is a fun survival simulator reminiscent of MECC's Oregon Trail, but with much more sophisticated gameplay.

The premise: a tribal village has recently been destroyed as a result of a violent volcanic eruption. The only course of action is to find their ancestral seat, a place rumored to be many weeks away and a paradise on Earth. After the leader of the tribe has been killed, you are chosen to lead the tribe to the promised land. Your goal is to keep your tribe members happy and well fed, and to find the home of your ancestors before winter comes. Otherwise, your tribe will rebel against you and abandon you to your fate.

When you start a new game, you can choose from six different routes to lead your tribe to safety, each one more difficult than the last. The game uses a very user-friendly interface, and it doesn't take long to understand what each icon represents. In the center of the screen is the map, made up of hexagonal tiles similar to those in turn-based war games. Your position is marked by the hexagon icon with two tribesmen, and the yellow areas are the places you can travel to (you can only travel one square at a time). The left menu column shows the status of your tribe, including how many days you have left until winter, the satisfaction level of the tribe, the amount of food supplies, the number of spears and the hunting skill. The menu column on the right is where you choose what to do during that turn, e. g. hunting, practicing spear throwing, resting and worshipping the (religious) idol. Clicking on the last icon brings up an excellent online survival guide, packed with information on everything you need to know, such as tribe profiles, hunting instructions, and the landscape and its conditions. The action icons also change depending on what you are doing. Click on one of the yellow hexagons, for example, and you can choose whether you want to travel slowly or quickly, or send out a scouting party. You'll also face random events, which require you to make a decision among several possibilities, similar to the multiple-choice questions in Interplay's Castles.

What makes The Lost Tribe a lot of fun is the excellent balance between education and gameplay. You'll always learn something new about survival skills (even if the game's tribe is a nondescript, generic 'tribe' that doesn't represent any real-life tribal culture), and success depends much more on careful planning than random luck (as seems to be the case with Oregon Trail).

With solid gameplay, intriguing concepts, and excellent graphics (the game mixes cartoon-style animations and digitized movie clips to good effect), The Lost Tribe deserves to ascend to our hallowed Hall of Fame.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.