Gaming Review: The Time Tribe

Posted by Jeff on March 17, 2013 at 8:14 am

The now-in-college-at-age-16 wonderkid, Cooper McHatton, makes his 2013 debut on OWTK with a review of an exciting new online game with a very rad Steampunk-y logo called The Time Tribe. Take it away, Cooper.

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The kickstarter funded, deceptively educational, mystery point & click, online story-based adventure game, The Time Tribe, is an exciting entry into a somewhat untapped gaming market.

After spending some time now with the Time Tribe I’ve come to a conclusion: It’s incredibly deep! I’ve sank a good 6 hours into the game by now and it would seem I’ve barely scratched the surface. Here’s the extended scoop:

The Time Tribe reminds me of a junior mystery novel reminiscent of book series’ like The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Name of this Book Is Secret (The Time Tribe story is about four time traveling children. Neat, huh?). The big difference of course is that The Time Tribe is also an online game, the primary experience of which relies on point and click adventure style gameplay with occasional minigames thrown in. Good portions of your child’s time within this game will be spent in deep exploration mode and being highly observant — they will really have to pay attention to every detail, everywhere! It’s really quite great what comes together, and the flow of things inside the story and the game works nicely.

Their are plenty of other things The Time Tribe nails as well. The voice acting is superb and being able to choose what you say in your dialog is excellent. The art style and music fit the game perfectly. I’m also going to give this game a HUGE compliment right now: I had no idea it was supposed to be educational until I Googled the name. Every single educational overtone in the game is cleverly disguised as story and puzzles, and only at rare points is it at all obvious. This is a remarkable achievement!

That’s not to say the game doesn’t have it’s faults. The mini-games are quite glitchy and the overall interface could be smoothed out a bit. But I’d attribute both of those complaints to the fact that the game is still in beta.

It’s awfully difficult to complain too much though about a free to play game that’s in beta. Wait, did I mention that before? The Time Tribe is completely free to start playing right now. There are micro-transaction bits that will add depth to the play (such as new storyline options and in game objects), but are in no way required to enjoy The Time Tribe.

If you and/or your ages 8-13 year old kids enjoy a good mystery story, online spelunking, and puzzle-based video games, I’d wager that you and they will find The Time Tribe to be a jolly good time.

Get started with The Time Tribe right now, for free.

by Cooper McHatton