This isn't really a major issue though, and I suspect it has to do with the very open-ended nature of this game. It's completely up to you what you have your villagers do, and when you have them do it. You can choose to have them all look for food, or all build a hut. I would imagine this freedom would make creating a tutorial extremely difficult. The tutorial does excel at providing the general information you need to know though.

Basically, you need to tell the villagers what to do. Being human, they often don't do exactly what they're told, but you can tell them what you want them to do. A large part of the game play involves picking up a villager who has wandered off, and returning him or her to the assigned task. As a villager develops skill at a particular task, focus also seems to increase, but in the early stages it feels rather like trying to get a cat to complete a task.

There are five main tasks to which you can direct your villagers' efforts: farming/fishing, researching, breeding, healing, and construction. Each of these tasks helps your village grow and become stable. Some villagers are born with skill in a particular task, but many are not; either way, you can choose exactly what skill should be their focus. Figure A below shows the Details screen, with a villager set to be a researcher.

FIGURE A


Mazi the researcher. Roll over picture for a larger image.

It's completely up to you how you choose to deploy your villagers, but you may find that many ways end in failure. For example, if no one is looking for food, your little people won't survive for long. Researching is how you earn tech points, which are used to increase skills in the five tasks, so doing no research is also risky. Playing at the low difficulty level, I've had to restart quite a few times due to having only one or two villagers left; my understanding is that the hard difficulty level is quite the challenge.

Once a villager is pretty well trained at completing a particular task, that villager tends to wander off less often. They do, however, often head out to do things such as drink well water and be curious about any number of things. You can haul them back to their assigned task, but they'll generally come back to it on their own after taking a short break.

More than one villager can work on a particular task at a given time, and you'll likely find yourself having them do this quite often. This can lead to some interesting pile-ups in the graphics. Figure B shows five of my six villagers hard at work at the research table.

FIGURE B


The scientist convention. Roll over picture for a larger image.

When this occurs, it can be very difficult to select precisely the villager you want; fortunately, you can scroll through them on the Details screen, then select Done to be moved to the desired one.

Ongoing game play
On one level, Village Sim is really very basic--survive! There are some very subtle points however, which add interest over the long term. Exactly how should I allocate my villagers? Who should I allow to breed? When do I begin construction on a new hut? Do I focus on research or food gathering? Varying your answers to these questions leads to very different games.