Sapiens Published by Guillion Bros. Age Group: Age 8 and Up Type: Arcade License: Free to try, $10 to register

SAPIENS takes you back 100,000 years to the everyday life of the Neanderthals. Incarnate a young hunter from the Light-Foot tribe. Explore, hunt game, keep up friendly contacts with other tribes, trade objects, make assegai heads and, when necessary, fight for your life. Play the game in either French or English.

This is a simulation, with many paths to success. It can involve fighting other hunters, but the online documentation encourages communication (from a set of phrases) and alliances. Weapons are used in hunting animals. Knowledge of the environment is important, so explore the territory to find locations of the springs, the game and the other tribes.

Defining a new character starts a new adventure. Name the character, choose whether it is to be a man or a woman and select characteristics like agility and charisma. In the shareware version, you always play a character named Torgan. Preferences allow for definition of music type and sound effects, and the second player. The second player can be controlled by the computer or by a human player.

This is a fun game once you get used to some quirks in the user interface. My Torgan died of thirst a few times until I worked out how to tell him to drink. Instead of clicking on the down arrow in the list of actions click just below it. This changes the hand cursor to a finger pointing down, which in turn accesses additional menu items including 'consume'.

Move around using landscape or lateral views. Don't forget that your character needs to eat, drink and sleep on a regular basis - the 'health' command gives details of status, and an icon (heart or skull) summarizes state of health. Use ESC to get out of the window with the movement controls. Be careful in use of the mouse as you might hit an ally by mistake.

My 8 and 10 year old enjoyed this game once they had helped me to figure out how it worked!

Download Details

Requires:
System 7

Filename: sapiens.bin

Filesize: 707 k

Download Sites:

US : http://www.myriad-online.com/