King of Dragon Pass - More cows, more cows, I need more cows!

I heard about this game when I played Banner Saga and people were comparing that game to this. This is basically a tribe building simulator where you act as the king. You have a circle of elders that make the choices of everything that happens in your little clan. Although you do have the final say in what happens, these people will give their opinion of everything that happens and what choices to make and their total stats will determine how the action you pick turns out. Every now and then something random will happen such as your people find some fossils and you can choose to sell them, destroy them, bury them back, or put them in your clan hall. Or some ugly men in your clan will show up saying they can't find a wife and you have to help them. In fact that happens a little too often. Your clan sure has a lot of ugly men. While you're not marrying off ugly men, you're probably sending out an exploration party, recruiting more farmers, building shrines, or even raiding other clans and stealing their shit.

This game is pretty complex but there is a tutorial when you first start the game. The tutorial doesn't explain very much but it gives you a very basic idea on how to play. Emphasis on the very basic because you're going to fail and die and you'll feel bad. When you first start, the game will give you a story where you can pick multiple choices that will determine how your starting clan turns out. This will determine what type of clan you are, warlike, peaceful, or balanced. It will also determine your starting god out of a list of 10+. A important part is how much land you decide to grab early on in the game. You can claim just enough land, a little more, a lot more, a shit ton more. The bigger the land the harder it is to defend against raiders. The first time I started I picked just a little more land and soon my clan grew too much that I ran out of room for cows. Cows are your most important resource. Everything in this game revolve around cows. You can trade the cows, eat the cows, sacrifice the cows, and the enemy will even come to steal your cows. So you send raids to steal your and some of their cows back. Never ever run out of room for cows and worse, don't start eating your cows because you spent too much time raiding other tribes and making enemies instead of farming crops. You'll end up too worn out to raid other tribes for land to expand your cow herds and end up starving and dying.

I like to point out that there is only a limited amount of random events going on and you're bound to see the same ones over and over. But each time your play through the options you pick might be different based on your circle. In one play through I was able to convince everyone to stop ragging on a guy and another play through the same choice somehow ended up failing. One thing I like about these random events is the art used for them is really nice and how completely random or bonkers they are. You'll see people riding around on moose and you're wondering what kind of weird horses these strange settlers from the north are. Or meeting duck people whom you can try to enslave or work together with. Even finding dinosaur eggs that if you keep and raise, will turn into triceratops and use them as battle mounts on a raid. You can send an exploration on a spot on the map and random events will happen. Sometimes your people get caught and killed, sometimes they get gifts or find strange objects, sometimes you piss off another clan and they send people to raid you. There are a lot of raiding going on so even if you are a peaceful tribe, its good to make defenses like watch towers and barricades so you don't lose as much when they do. However I heard you can't win through diplomacy.

Its a strange quirky game but its somehow really enjoyable. If you like the random events of The Banner Saga and enjoy running a tribe and raising a lot of cows then you'll enjoy this game.