Overview
A simple guide to understanding the game, playing it, and winning (along with getting all the achievements!)
Biomes and resources
There are two types of cards: weather, and resources.
Resources are:
critter, plant, tree, mineral
Weather is:
Sun, rain, wind, thunder, meteor, quake
Resources depend on what biome they are put in (aka, the tile color). Weather changes the biome.
Generally, you’ll be using grasslands, mountains, deserts, and swamps to progress the game.
Brown areas, one of the main biomes you’ll see at the start. Created as a midpoint when messing with weather, not particularly useful.
Available resources: (and what card to place on the biome to create them)
Boulder (Mineral)- yields stone, flint
Bramble (plant)- yields twigs
Dead Tree (tree)- yields wood
Green grass, the other starting biome. Created from rain on grasslands/deserts.
Available resources:
Boulder (mineral)- yields stone, flint
Wheat (plant)- yields wheat
Tree (tree)- creates forest biome, yields wood
Chicken (critter)- creates chicken (meat, feather, bone, poop)
Created from placing trees on grassland. One tree is not a forest- placing two trees slightly apart will cause a darker green area to spread, this is the forest biome.
Available resources:
Boulder (mineral)- yields stone, flint
Berry bush (plant)- yields berries
Apple tree (tree)- yields apples, wood
Bear (critter)(50%)- yields leather, meat
Sheep (critter)(50%)- yields wool, poop, meat, bone
Created from using sun on grasslands, wastelands.
Available resources:
Sandstone (mineral)- yields sand
Cactus (plant)- yields cactus
Palm Tree (plant)- yields bananas, coconuts, wood
Created from rain on grasslands.
Available resources:
Clay (mineral)- yields clay
Herbs (plant)(50%)-yields herbs
Toxic berries (plant)(50%)- yields toxic berries
Willow tree (tree)- yields wood
Can be annoyingly hard to create, but is luckily not a key biome. Created from a very high temperture, high humidity swamp. You’ll need patience, luck, and some sun/rain/thunder. Usually using thunder on a swamp is likely to span some tropics, but again, it’s a bit hard (and a slight waste of a rare weather effect). Jungles really aren’t needed or that worth it, except for making vaccines to cure plague.
Available resources:
Clay (mineral)- yields clay
Herbs (plant)(50%)-yields herbs
Toxic berries (plant)(50%)- yields toxic berries
Jungle tree (tree)- yields wood
Snake (critter)- yields leather, venom, meat
Created by quakes. This is a very key biome to have for your late game technology and resources, as it is step one to creating a volcano.
Available resources:
Ore (mineral)- yields ore
Tree (tree)- yields wood, doesn’t create forest biome
Bramble (plant)- yields twigs
Created by placing two quakes in an overlapping area. Using a quake next to/slightly overlapping an already mountain area will make a volcano. Volcanos are key to late discoveries!
Available resources:
Sulfer (mineral)(MUST be placed directly next to a volcanic tile)- yields sulfer
Tree (tree)- yields wood, doesn’t create forest biome, will instantly catch fire
Bramble (plant)- yields twigs, will also catch fire
A KEY resource that can be difficult to discover. Oil is a tile/resource made when two quakes overlap in a desert terrain.
Oil is a sub biome of mountains, like volcano, but very important and thus noted as different. You need oil to progress into late-game.
Created from low temperature areas. One of the simplest ways to create one is to place a lot of rain/wind on the same area, driving the temperature down. Tundra will form.
Available resources:
Ice block (mineral)- yields ice
Pine tree (tree)- yields wood
Sheep (critter)- yields wool, meat, poop, bone
Bramble (plant)- yields twigs
Placing rain on a tundra will always create snow, and a snowfield. Tundra and snowfields are not needed enviroments to progress the game.
Available resources:
Ice block (mineral)- yields ice
Pine tree (tree)- yields wood
Polar bear (critter)- yields meat, leather
Bramble (plant)- yields twigs
You know, the ocean? It’s right there. You can’t make more of it.
Coral reef (mineral)- yields coral
Seaweed (plant)- yields seaweed
Fish (critter)- yields fish
The not-biome that borders the ocean. Acts more as a desert than anything, but technically isn’t.
Sandstone (mineral)- yields sand
Bramble (plant)- yields twigs
Palm Tree (plant)- yields bananas, coconuts, wood
Starting off and settling in
First thing you do is place the base of your humans. This can only be done on grassland, and your random world is only grassland/wasteland at this point, so this step doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter what your world is like, or where you put your base.
You start with two humans. There’s a tab to the top right that looks like a thought bubble. Using this to keep track of what humanity wishes for is suggested for the game, especially in the very beginning.
Humanity is self sufficient, with a dosage of stupid- just like real life! Also to the top right is a button shaped like a house. This is your base, where you can keep track of humanity’s resources, as well as alignment.
Humans vary in their behaviors, and your actions affect them- to a point. There’s a bar viewable that lets you track how humanity’s nature currently is. When humans are evil or peaceful, it is locked in and cannot change. It also takes very little time for humans to settle into either evil or peaceful.
Evil humans are made when their wishes do not come true, their discoveries are more violence based (like discovering gunpowder), and violent natural effects, such as thunder, quakes, meteors, and killing.
Peaceful humans are made from having their wishes filled, and avoiding the above actions. Learning a lot, especially about farming and simple life, seems to nudge them closer to peaceful.
Between that is violent, mixed, and kind.
Alignment has only minimal effects on how humans behave.
You can still play and win the game with an evil race of humans, but it can be harder. Evil humans are very likely to kill wild animals instead of taming them, for one, and also make a spacetime victory impossible. They also pretty stalwartly refuse to learn domestification, a very useful technology to have. However, they can still create a rocket, leading to a rocket victory. The lack of animal taming can make it more likely evil humans will starve to death, as they will certainly try to hunt food instead of seeking more sustainable options.
Also, humans won’t invent guns unless they are violent/evil, but there’s no achievement or purpose to that happening anyways.
It’s generally recommended you try to have peaceful, kind humans. This is done by seeing their wishes and always trying to grant them, while sometimes avoiding natural effects that will take them violent. Does a human want a plague? Too bad! Don’t use the plague on your humans. They will die, and also turn evil.
The game takes a few tries to complete simply because your initial cards are locked in the shop. You can get pretty far without them, but some very key cards- meteor, quake, thunder- are locked by the shop. Luckily, it doesn’t take too long to unlock all the cards (yeah, it’s very suggested you unlock all the cards), and you can learn as you play. This is a game that rewards discovery!
Everything you can discover (and how!)
There’s a lot of combos and discoveries, and a lot are also based on mankinds current IQ (viewable from the base icon). While I don’t have exact numbers on this, I can tell you the rough order/process of discovering things and progressing through the game. This is thus in that rough order.
When humanity hits a certain point- slightly post having a farm house base, generally- they will start to build a church in your name. Cool, right? Actually, horrible. Churches will give you infinate energy to play cards, BUT will also cap mankinds IQ at 120, even if you discover new things- preventing you from progressing. When you see a church being built/is built, your main goal is to get a meteor and destroy is ASAP. You can still place and use resources, but you should not discover anything until the church is gone- the gained IQ from your tech doesn’t count when IQ is still capped.
A list of tech, and what you need to play an ‘investigate’ card on to unlock/unlock conditions.
Boat- any ocean tile
Fire- create fire anywhere on map. Easiest ways to do this- thunder on grassland. To save a thunder card, place a tree in a desert and use a sun on it.
Pickaxe- any mineral
Axe- any tree
Fishing Rod- fish
Knife- flint
Fire, axe, and pickaxe are your most important techs by far. Fire unlocks a lot of other things, while axe/pickaxe are how humans collect resources. To get started, you’ll want to use a ‘sample’ card on both a tree and a boulder, so that humanity can create the basic tools it needs to survive. This is the main purpose of the sample card.
Cooking Pot- puddles of water or gathered water (viewable in base)
Charcoal- a log from a tree
Oven- A burnt (been on fire) tree. You can create burnt trees by striking them with lighting or making them catch fire from sunlight.
Farming- Poop
Domestication- a sheep or chicken
To stop humanity from starving, getting farming (before taming generally) is key. This lets humans create a constant source of wheat, letting you not waste your plant cards.
Windmill- Wheat
Toxic berries- toxic berries (humans will just die when eating toxic berries unless you research this)
Cacti needles- cactus (humans will just die when facing cacti unless you research this)
Medication- herbs
Spinning wheel- wool
Clothing- leather, cloth
Fertilizer- Bone
Writing- feather
This is a divider bit of text. The next section is around ~120 IQ and beyond.
Smelter- Volcano tile
Glass- sand
Gunpowder- sulfer
Refinery- oil tile
Metal- ore
Currency- gold ore (created from meteors only)
Telescope- glass
Adv. Medicines- herbs after a certain IQ point has been hit
Lightning Rod- when humanity has high IQ (past the 120 mark), using lighting close by will help them realize ‘conductive properties’, granting a large IQ boost (+12) and lightning rod tech
End game tech is below.
Computer- batteries, which you get from striking a lightning rod with lightning. You’ll want to do this at least twice.
Spacetime- found from plutonium, which is dropped by aliens after a peaceful humanity interacts with them. They drop plutonium every few minutes. Acquiring aliens involves crashing UFOs (Which appear after building a telescope) with lightning). Once they crash, they will roam the ground.
Rocket ships- automatically discovered after a period of good food/a lot of advanced resources being collected (aka metal, batteries).
Cars- automatically discovered after a period of good food/a lot of advanced resources being collected (aka metal, batteries). They will need to have built factories. This one took ages of tries for me to do for unclear reasons, it seems a bit weird to trigger.
Achievement guide
All achievements! Let’s go!
Gatherers
Use a plant card on a forest biome. Bosh! Done.
Medication
Use an inspect card on a swamp herb. Easy.
Mount oops
Create a volcano by placing two quakes near each other.
Earth’s riches
Create an oil reserve. Two quakes, but one of the quakes is on a desert.
Hot stuff
With a higher IQ, use inspect on a volcanic tile to learn about smelting
Industrial revolution
Have a lot of metal/glass/batteries/oil and have humans create a factory. You just need to wait this one out, really, after inventing the needed techs (resourvoir, lightning rod, smelting). Make sure they have enough of the resources needed.
Zzzap
Hit a human with a thunderbolt, directly.
Vacation retreat
Using trees on grassland, expand a woodlands area to include your starter campsite.
Town
Keep advancing IQ until humans make a town center building. This is just based on IQ and discoveries. Remember to beware churches, which can ONLY be destroyed by meteors.
City
See above, but a step farther. Sky towers are automatically built when IQ is high enough.
Megapolis
Keep humanity from starving and you’ll get there easy. Make sure you discover farms early so they have a lot of food resources.
Meal prepping
Discover the oven (investigate a burnt tree) and the cooking pot (investigate water)
Farmers
Discover farming (in vestigate poop), animal pens (chickens or sheep), and have IQ/food/population at the level that humans make a farmhouse base.
The good life
Have 50% of eaten food processed. This is not that hard when you get to more advanced stages. Simply put, this is only calculated at the end of the game (when playing THE END card), so if you get humanity to the point of having the cooking pot and good IQ, most dishes will be cooked. Enough playtime in this period of humanity’s reign will mean over 50% of eaten food will be cooked.
Rocket science
Invent the rocket. This is automatic when humanity has high IQ, oil, batteries, and metal. To get this, you need to have humans build a rocket- and use it, when you play a THE END card. It will not trigger if you just quit the game or build it.
Keep em dumb
Have at least 6 people but an IQ lower than 70. Not very hard, really- make sure they have farms, but don’t discover much else. As long as they have food, the population will slowly grow.
For the love of god
Humanity will build a church (and get you this) when they have high faith. This is simply granted by giving them a lot of wishes, and is pretty hard to avoid when you’re playing a peaceful set of humans.
The colonies
Have three bases on three islands. You have little control over this. Plenty of the random starting maps will have three islands. Though you can create more land by using a meteor, it’s a rare card and generally just creates mountains/beach unless you waste a lot of weather to tamper. Humans will not move to this new land. Restart until you end up with three islands and wait; humans are keen to expand anywhere.
Nerds
Getting an IQ over 200 isn’t that hard as long as you stay diligent against churches. Just keep discovering things!
Ice age
Invent clothing, and humanity will stop freezing to death in tundras/snowfields. It’s hard to say exactly what triggers this achievement, but I suspect it is based on overall worldly temp. Decreasing temperture is done with rain and wind.
Tastes like chicken
Use a sample card on a dead human and get some meat off them. An effective way to do this is just have some tundra/snowfields biomes, wait until a naked human heads by there and freezes to death, and using the sample card on their frozen dead body.
Haute Cuisine
Having all types of food isn’t impossible. You’ll want every resource, basically, meaning you’ll need meat, chicken breast, seaweed, fish, berries, flour, and apples. Advanced groups of humans shouldn’t have trouble getting this.
Creator of many things
To unlock all resources, see the rest of this guide! The hardest is for sure plutonium, a late game resource with just one use. You’ll want to hit a UFO with lightning to do this- first, build the telescope to have UFOs appear. Then, use a lightning card BELOW the UFO- not directly on. Aliens will give plutonium to peaceful humans.
Crowd control
Use a meteor on humanity.
Unnatural selection
Have humanity survive the plague. This is done by having a lot of population, advanced medicine, and resources such as coral and venom, which are used to make vaccines. Plague can pretty easily kill everyone unless humanity is ready. If they survive plague completely, you get this achievement.
Back to the future
Have humans create the spacetime portal. This is simply done by examining plutonium, once you get it. Humans must actually build the portal for the achievement to trigger. Like rocket science, you need to end the game for the achievement to trigger.
Metropolis
Having modern houses is pretty easy when IQ is high enough. The invention of cars is automatic when there’s enough oil/metal/batteries and a factory made. Getting both together, and earning this achievement, can be a real pain. All you need is for both to trigger at the same time.