Real-time Play:
- This game continues to progress while you are not playing. You need to use this to your advantage and not get frustrated.
- You are not going to be able to push this game out in a day; you just can't force it.
- To speed things up, you can play in fast mode (available in options).
- I advise that you just keep the game running in the background while you do your other tasks on the computer.
- Also consider going back to normal, slow, or pause while you are at work or sleeping.
- Putting it in slow mode overnight will allow plenty to happen without the risk of waking up in the morning with too much damage to your tribe.
- Also be sure to have assigned your villagers the appropriate skill preference; you don't want to go to bed and discover every female in your village with a baby (well, maybe you do; but that's for later!)
- Play several games at once. If you are determined to keep playing, then start 2 or 3 tribes. If you do this, you can start with different starting tribe mixes and try doing different tasks first.

Villagers:
Nursing mothers: Will not work and will carry their babies until they are 2 years old in game time; about 2 hours in Fast mode and almost 4 in Slow mode.
Children: From the age of 2 to 13, children will not work. They will pick up mushrooms, relics, and lab items and run around all over the place! They are very handy to keep orange masks out of the way (see below).
Teens: From the age of 14 to 17, teens will work. They will not pick things up any more. They cannot reproduce. Your younger villagers are particularly prone to stopping work and not knowing what to do. You just need to keep putting them back to work until they gain some skills.
Adults: Age 18 and above. Adults will be able to reproduce.

Character Selection:
There are several ways you can select a specific character.
1. You can click on him.
2. You can use the Detail arrows on the main screen without going into the Detail screen. Using the left arrow will show you the youngest villager first and the right arrow will show the oldest. The view will move around and show you the selected character circled in white. If you are paused, you will have to click on the little picture to see where the person is.
3. You can go into the Detail screen. Whichever person you are on when you click done will be the person selected.

Detail Screen

Details:
- Your Detail screen is usefully in several ways.
- The main screen only shows the name of your character, her current selected skill and action.
- The Detail screen shows you the age, health status, skills, likes and dislikes of your characters.

Skills:
- One goal of the game is to get your villagers to be masters at the skills, which means to fill the blue bars.
- There is a check box on the right that you can check so that your villager will prefer to do that task. It does not seem to make them improve at a skill any faster, but it will have them persist at that skill longer and more frequently.
- It is especially important to have these boxes checked appropriately when you are leaving the game as you want them to be productive while you are gone and not standing around too much.

Farming: Basically this is food collection. Be sure to have at least one person collecting food. If you get below 300 food, have more farming people checked as your villagers will start to worry about food. I check either this box or Research for my little ones too, so that when they turn 14 they "might" start working.
Building: Besides building structures, building skills will increase with dismantling totems, working on the statue, and doing repairs. Concentrate on getting one master builder at first and then work on getting a second one. All building will go better if you have Master Builders, plus absolutely need at least two later (see walkthrough). You might also want to consider using males to become Master Builders because you may find your female nursing a baby when you need it.
Research: To gain points you must do research in the lab. This is a skill that you need lots of your people to stick with. You need lots and lots of Tech points and this is the only way to get them. You also need at least one Master Scientist for some of the puzzles.
Healing: Increase your healing power by healing sick villagers and studying at the "hospital."
Parenting: Increase parent skills by trying to reproduce and having children. You can also tell stories and teach at the nursery school.
Devotion: Increase Devotion skills by trying to convert the blue masked heathens. Also one can honor at the statue.

Item Collection:
- You will need to collect mushrooms, relics, and lab items.
- Only children under the age of 14 can do this.
- They need to have a heathen free area between the object and the destination. As you play, you will discover just how far away a heathen needs to be before your tribe gets scared.
- These items disappear and often faster than you would expect. As soon as you find something to pick up, press the space bar to pause the game.
- Find your child by pressing the right arrow key on the detail menu at the bottom right of the screen.
- Move your child to the object and then check around the pick up area, the path to your destination (food hut for food, hand statue cubbies for relics, and laboratory cubbies for lab items), and the actual destination for red and orange masked heathens.
- You will not find collectibles in the dry lake or at the edge of the woods or up by the farm or pools.

Maximize your pickups (cheat/hint):
- A really handy hint to maximize your pickups is that you can actually drop 2 or 3 children on a single item. As long as you drop the next child as the first is picking up the item you will double or triple your input. This is especially useful in the beginning of the game to maximize food when mushrooms are your only food source and later when you are trying to build up your energy as each duplicate relic gives you 10 energy points.
- To do this trick, pause your game; drop a child on the item; pick up the next child and hover it right next to the first child; unpause the game; drop the second child right next to the first.
- You do not have to do this super quickly and you don't need to drop the child super close to the first child. Just wait for the first to squat down and as he does so, drop your next child.
- It turns out you can do this a second time for 3 pick ups by pausing the game as you drop the second child, picking up a third child, unpausing, and dropping the third child. Personally I played the first time through to almost the end before I figured out how to do this; so it really isn't that necessary if you can't quite handle it.

Heathens:
Blue masks: These are the ones you can convert. Send the person you have chosen to be the first devotee (to ramp up its skills quickly) to any blue mask that doesn't have a light flashing over its head. Eventually the Faith meter will go past the center and you will get one to convert to your tribe. Blue masks are completely harmless. However, there are times when they will get in your way; when that happens you can just keep trying to convert them and they will get annoyed and walk away.
Purple masks: These are harmless also. These are heathens who are attached to a puzzle of some sort. Once you solve their puzzle, they will join you.
Orange masks: These are the ones who will chase you. If you are carrying something or doing a task, you will drop what you are doing and run away. However, you can use the running away to your advantage because you can lead the orange masks away from an area. It's very easy to get them to move towards your camp by just dropping a child (or adult, but children run faster) on the orange mask and they will give chase for a short distance. However, there are plenty of times that you want the orange masks away from your camp or statue. In this case you have to be a lot more persistent with picking up and dropping the villager in the direction you wish to go. Don't let an orange mask keep you from going anywhere; just move them out of the way.
Red masks: These just scare the heck out of your villagers. The only way to get them to move is to scare them with a godly power, such as lightening. Also solving puzzles that involve the red masks, such as destroying a totem, will cause them to move on to somewhere else.

Stop the orange masked heathens (cheat/hint):
- Take a child or a nursing mother and drop it on an orange mask, especially the rascal that is always running around and getting in the way.
- When the orange mask starts to chase, pick up your child just a little bit, you will frequently find that the orange mask will stop moving.
- When it does stop moving, click on M to open the map and then close it.
- If you are lucky your villager will be stuck hovering over the orange mask and both will stop moving.
- If you are not lucky, your person will be stuck in the air and the orange mask will still be running around. Just keep doing it until you capture him.
- As long as you don't leave the game completely or change tribes, he will stay trapped.

Godly Powers:
Spawn Butterflies (10 energy): This is a great way to distract your children, including your orange mask rascals.
Swarms of Bees (25 energy): When your noni bush runs out of fruit, the bees will regenerate the fruit. The bees are also handy for chasing off heathens, although not the most effective.
Divine Sunshine (50 energy): Chases away the rain and fog, but not really necessary to use.
Lightning Strike (100 energy): Zap your heathens to get them to run away for a while; does not work in the pools.
Hand of Bloom (150 energy): Instant plant growth. Use to regenerate your crops or to instantly grow a patch of mushrooms.
Tempest (300 energy): Cause a storm; great to fill in your lake.
Fog of Doom (400 energy): You can use this fog to mask yourself and get close to the orange and red masked heathens. I used it at the end to get to the blue masks when they were hanging out at the encampment with the others (see Jenga trick below).
Time Warp (500 energy): Super accelerate one of your villagers. I transferred this power over to a newer tribe and was able to build a hut in about a minute. This would be great to have when destroying the Blocking Totem.
Revive (600 energy): Bring a villager back to life. This only works before they are buried in the mausoleum. You use it on the bones.
Grant Youth (700 energy): Make someone young. You can use this on your old folks that have lots of skills, make them young again, and then when they turn 14 you can polish off the missing skills to work on the Jack of all Trades trophy.
Earthquake (800 energy): Self-explanatory.

End of the game:
So when does the game end? Your choice, I guess, as I don't believe this game has a definitive end.
Here are a few choices:
- Solve all the puzzles. This seems a little early to me as there is still a lot of stuff left to do.
- Convert all the heathens. This is when I decided to quit as I just got tired of the game.
- Complete your collections.
- Receive all your trophies. This is next to impossible to get unless you are playing a second time because one of the Jenga trophy requires that you tear down a building with an earthquake. However, earthquakes don't come to the end and it's hard to hold off on building the clothing hut (at least it was for me!) Also you just have no guarantee that you will have triplets before you reach the 80 population limit for breeding. And then, do you really want to keep playing until you have 10 masters of all 6 skills? Not me, but you can certainly do it.
- Get bored and just stop.

Jenga trick: One way to use Jenga is after you get the Earthquake in one tribe, take it over to another. To do this just select the godly power you want to use and then click on the menu. Change tribes and you will see the godly power available for use. I also tried this with the Time Warp and was able to build a hut super fast! However no matter what power you pick, you will transfer over the highest power you have.