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In this casual game you are responsible for a handful of villagers who escape a volcanic eruption and wash up on shore of a remote island called Isola. There appear to be very few resources available, and it is up to you to guide your people towards what they need and encourage them to explore the island and research crafts and medicine. Simple yet appropriate sound effects accompany the villagers activities, and soothing tropical music plays in the background.

Each of the villagers will begin learning the various skill attributes: Farming, Building, Research, Healing, and Breeding. Yes, that last one is breeding. Don’t breed more babies than your farmer can feed the village or there will be a real famine. A curious thing about the game is that it continues playing even after you turn it off unless you select “pause” on the main menu. If you aren’t careful, you might return to find your entire population deceased.

The controls in the game are simple. On the character menu, you must select which area in which you would like your villager to be proficient. If you don’t, he will become a layabout and never be a productive member of society. Drag and drop each of your villagers to their tasks. If they don’t want to do their work, be persistent!

I felt proud when Tofu turned into an adept farmer and also when Huata became a novice builder. I started getting attached to each of them. Eko found that the strange cactus near the wood line was a good medical supplement. Nurture them and teach them how to survive. Improve their knowledge so they can do bigger and better things.

When the full version was sent to me, I was surprised to see that the baby was 2 years old and running around the island picking mushrooms on her own. Her mother however, was unskilled and unsure what to do. I immediately directed her to the construction of a new hut so someone else could have a home for their family.

I noticed that there was plenty of food in the beginning, but suspected we would soon be running out of berries from the berry bush. The villagers either needed fish or a fruit-bearing plant to help us.

The next morning, I started the game and was shocked to find that my favorite researcher had died of old age. Her bones lay in the center of the village, the villagers walking around the decomposing body, ignoring her because they had no spiritual guidance. My researchers had yet to master the medical cactus near the cave. Surprisingly, a foreigner arrived in a boat looking for plants and seeds. The little girl in our village happily gave them to him, and he left us with some antibiotics that raised our tech level points. It was a little too late for the dead researcher.

With an impending shortage of berries I tried to make my builders and foragers more skilled in other areas. After clearing the beach of flotsam and jetsam, there was a brief celebration, but no one wanted to go in and make babies. It seemed as if the island was at a standstill in technological progress, so I left the game alone for a few hours.

I started up the game to yet another shocking situation:

“Alas the fates were not kind to your village. All of your villagers have died. The island of Isola remains a myth and its mysteries unsolved.”

ARGH!

So I started over. The second time I paid more attention to the berry bush and tried to improve the villagers’ agriculture skills instead of their breeding skills. Putting all your eggs in one basket is certainly not the way to make progress in this game.

The game play oftentimes seems tedious, especially if you do have to start over like I did. It takes quite a while to build up technological points, which increase exponentially as more of your villagers perform research. The goals seem insanely high, but with patience your people will attain them. I found that once there was enough food, I could leave the island on double speed when I went to sleep and find a lot of progress the next morning.

Soon I built a school and a garden and attempted to tear down a rock dam that blocked a babbling brook. I don’t know why the dam was there, so I assumed it must be destroyed. Meanwhile the children played in the ruins and with the butterflies and investigated the gnarly cactus next to the spooky cave where those strange eyes blinked eyes in the darkness.

The villagers told me that 15 was too young an age to start breeding. On the other side of the time line however, I discovered that some of the elderly villagers with high breeding skills were quite capable of siring more children. The population steadily increased, but I was reluctant to assign someone the task of being a “breeder”.

This isn’t a game that requires a lot of attention. You can let the villagers alone while you are at work (as long as you have prepared them with the proper technologies to feed themselves). Not a lot happens on a fast-paced scale either. If you are looking for constant action, this isn’t the game for you.

The game will stop and await your decision when there is an important island event, such as throwing out moldy food, greeting strangers on boats, and getting rid of pesky monkeys in your lab. Speaking of an island lab, the game reminds me a little of Gilligan’s Island. It’s a remote desert island, there’s a professor who lives in a big grass hut, and there is a goofy guy who runs around all the time wearing a funny hat.

One thing that tickled me was when one of the young villagers found a strange object made of wood and hide in the jungle. We decided to keep it instead of busting it open. It was strategically placed next to the school and called all the children to class when drummed.

The villagers started building a fifth structure, so I put all the adults on it to see if it would be completed faster, but again there was no noticeable difference in their progress or efficiency. I had to keep dragging them away from the boulder in front of the cave where the creepy eyes keep peeking out. They kept trying to push it out of the way. Also, I knew there was a buried treasure somewhere. I was motivated to find that.

In the beginning of Virtual Villagers you really must take great care in attending to your villagers, but later on there isn’t much to do. You will use a little strategy in getting them motivated towards their goals and building the population of the island up, but it is fairly linear in its progress.

I came back to the game to find that three of my villagers had died of old age in their late sixties. This was much better than my first failed attempt at the game. There was a large procession of villagers that took them to the burial ground for the ceremony. My favorite chief scientists are all buried next to each other.

I had a really fun time with this game. It was nice to get home from work every day and see what these tropical islanders had been up to while I was gone. This game isn’t for everyone, especially if you have very little patience. In addition to this, the game might be inappropriate for very young children who do not understand the concept of breeding very well. However, I think that the game-makers did a grand job of it, and I look forward to their next production.