Fit check
Is The Ancients worth it for you?
We tell you who should skip it, too.
Play it if you…
Good fit- Turn-based strategy players interested in managing a prehistoric society rather than a modern state
- Players who enjoy balancing food, seasonal threats, and hunting as part of survival
- Players interested in shaping a tribe's culture, beliefs, and social arrangements
Skip it if you…
Saves you a refund- Players who want fast, real-time combat may find the turn-based, hex-tile battles too deliberate.
- Players seeking a narrowly focused combat game may hit a wall when survival management and social decisions require attention alongside hunting.
- Players looking for a modern or futuristic setting will not find one here.
Our take on The Ancients
The pressure point is the mix of survival and society management: players who want hunting to be the main activity may bounce when food, seasonal hazards, migration, and social decisions all compete for attention.
What is The Ancients?
Guide a prehistoric hunter-gatherer community through the final ice age in a strategy game where turns structure survival and expansion.
Balance food and other supplies as seasons bring freezing weather, dry periods, and dangerous wildlife. Track and pursue animals, then engage rival clans across hex-based battlefields. Investigate early inventions, make equipment suited to local conditions, and build homes and arms. Travel between sites and ecological regions, with the tribe’s clan count and membership changing along the way. Decisions establish languages, faiths, customs, and forms of social and political organization. The central challenge is maintaining a society in prehistoric environments while guiding its development over successive eras.
How The Ancients plays
- 01Seasonal survival
- Food, resources, and protection from cold, drought, and animals are part of keeping clans fed and healthy.
- 02Hex-tile battles
- Tactical encounters take place across map tiles and involve multiple clans.
- 03Regional crafting
- Research and make primitive tools suited to the tribe's geographical surroundings.
- 04Tribe identity
- Decisions can shape language, spiritual beliefs, cultural practices, and social structure.
- 05Migration between regions
- Moving across Earth exposes the tribe to different biomes and can change its clan and member count.
The Ancients compared to similar games
Old World centers on leading a historical empire across generations, including political marriages and heirs; The Ancients instead focuses on prehistoric clan survival, migration, and shaping tribal culture. Xenonauts is a turn-based strategy game about squads defending Earth from aliens, while The Ancients combines survival management with development of a prehistoric society.
The Ancients: platforms & release
Is The Ancients worth it?
It is worth it if: turn-based strategy players interested in managing a prehistoric society rather than a modern state. Skip it if: players who want fast, real-time combat may find the turn-based, hex-tile battles too deliberate.
Where can I download The Ancients?
Use the Download Now button on this page: it opens The Ancients's store page, where you can choose how to get it.
What platforms is The Ancients on?
Windows only.
Keep looking
More from Camlann Games
All games →
