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By Jonathan Bolding published 30 July 22

The colony building game starts off hunting mammoths and wants to end with steel swords.

City builders and colony sims usually take a dedicated tack, focusing on one period, but recent indie release Sapiens is going all-in on scale. Starting with two people, you'll lead your tribe through "thousands of years of technological breakthroughs."

Sapiens only released into Early Access this past week, so don't expect all that now. As is, it's mostly the start of the stone age. A bit of Neolithic dabbling. 

Despite that there's a lot of promise in the game as-is, showing off a flexible snap-based building system that lets you make and reproduce a wide variety of buildings. You can also get a feel for how Sapiens takes some inspiration from the god-game genre, letting you issue pretty direct commands.

There's a lot in store over what the developer expects to be several years of Early Access. "You can expect to see the addition of boats, fishing, horseback riding and the transport of goods. More interactions with other tribes will be added, with the ability to trade or steal, recruit or fight. Also, expect to move further into the medieval era and beyond with the crafting of metal tools, and more advanced farming and refining processes," says the store blurb.

Interestingly, Sapiens' Steam page says its been developed with multiplayer in mind, making it one of the rare colony sims that has it. It'll also be moddable.

Sapiens is being solo-developed by Majic Jungle, also known as Dave Frampton, a 20-year game developer who previously worked in mobile games. Sapiens is his first release on PC. You can find Sapiens in Early Access on Steam. (opens in new tab)

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

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