The Neolithic strategy game asks players to guide a tribe through harsh eras using cards, culture, religion, and careful settlement placement.
Copsol has announced First Age, a single player card based strategy game set during the Neolithic era. The game is planned for PC and Mac, with the release date still to be announced.
First Age puts players in charge of a small tribe trying to survive through a chain of historical and almost mythic Ages.
Each run is built around cards, resources, settlement placement, and long-term scoring. The goal is to earn enough points to pass each Age, then keep the tribe alive until the final stage. That makes the game less about quick turns and more about building an engine that can hold together when harsher conditions arrive.
The core system mixes card drafting with settlement building. Players place buildings, villagers, and animals on a board, then try to connect them through adjacency bonuses and wider settlement effects.
Cards can interact orthogonally, diagonally, or across different spaces. A strong card may help on its own, but the bigger gains seem to come from chaining several effects together.
Developer Copsol lists 275 cards with unique abilities, 75 cultures with stackable modifiers, 95 religions, more than 100 Ages, 30 relics, and 5 races.
Those numbers point toward a game built around repeat runs, unusual combinations, and different ways to solve the same survival problem. Culture can stack bonuses without a listed cap, while religion opens routes tied to divine effects, sacrifices, tree growth, and other tribe shaping choices.
Resources are split across several tracks, including Science, Culture, Religion, Gold, Wood, Stone, Clay, Food, and Loot.
Each one supports a different style of play. Science can be used to invent new cards and expand the board. Gold gives access to cards through a more uncertain route, with the chance to find options outside the usual pool. Other resources appear tied to construction, survival, and the broader rhythm of the settlement.
The Ages are where the pressure comes in. Some events may be manageable, while others can seriously disrupt a run.
Plagues, droughts, ice ages, and other threats can force players to adjust their plans rather than simply chase the same combo every time. Relics add another layer through story choices and rewards, including decisions involving rival tribes, sacrifices, and rare discoveries.
First Age includes Steam achievements, Steam Cloud support, leaderboards, stats, Steam Workshop support, and a level editor. It looks like it takes the familiar idea of guiding a civilization from fragile beginnings and compresses it into a card-driven board where every placement can change the shape of a run. For sure, a game to follow and wishlist on Steam.
