This here isClanfolk, a settlement sim about a family of Scottish tamagotchis.
Sadly, it’s true.
It is a drier, slower and more bucolic take on the exact same game.
Let’s look at that first night.
Probably a result of the diarrhoea he contracted from the dirty water he’s been drinking.
The others cannot make fun.
If godliness is next to cleanliness, the Macdonald Clan are Satan’s toilet brush.
Partly this is thanks to judicious clicking and perpetual editing of pawn behaviour (Tasks!
The overwork button!)
and partly it works thanks to the unknowable bedlam of code that lurks underneath it all.
I can’t knock the game for its effort at simulation.
An entire family has just shit themselves.
But personalities, quirks and ability feel less significant here.
It quickly becomes a game of unlocking the next bit of equipment.
The process for this is opaque.
There’s a big research tree you might view by clicking on a panel labelled “ideas”.
That sense of low-burning confusion is something that affects the whole game.
Which is more the fault of an ugly (and I assume placeholder) user interface.
It’s a confusing mess of symbols, with samey buttons all dressed in wood panelling.
It isn’t unintuitive so much as unmemorable and unclear.
It feels chaotic, scattered, with menus and submenus arranged like an English Professor’s desk.
It’s very hard to read.
All this before I have built a torch to hang on the wall.
All this before the poop holes!
There’s a generational system, for example, whereby idiot babies grow into idiot adults.
It’s a good idea.
There is satisfaction to be had in raising the clan.
I diligently got to work hollowing out shelter from a stony hill.
I built a storeroom for food and a quarters for sleeping and a barn for animals.
I made the children haulers.
Everything else is a secondary concern.
But this is all something I have seen already, and in a better condition.
That might seem a silly thing to say given Rimworld’s own itchy fingers when it comes to influences.
Clanfolk is a desaturated, rough-looking version of that same design goal, released nearly a decade later.
I enjoy wallowing in failure, sure.
Losing is, as always, fun.
But I’ve already played a more complete, and more colourful version of this game to death.
