The Tribe Must Survive cover
The Tribe Must Survive screenshot
Genre: Simulator, Strategy, Indie

The Tribe Must Survive

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A long and hot summer needs it's cooldown periods. A perfect opportunity to dive into the darkness of The Tribe Must Survive. To help you guys prevail, we've joined the Swedish Midsummer Sale, where our hardcore colony survivor is now on 30% off.

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The Tribe Must Survive: Now 30% off

Tired of summer? We've got something that will refill your need for the sun to rise. The Tribe Must Survive, our Lovecraft-inspired colony survival is now 30% off!

Just two weeks ago we launched the Explorer Update, adding a more relaxed game mode that lets you take on the darkness at your own pace. In addition we added 15 new achievements, many of them focusing on what the community has named the "Impossible Strategies", seemingly contradictory ways of completing the game that only the most skilled players would dare to try.

If you already part of the game's community, this is the perfect opportunity to spread some dread to your friends. Check out the summer sale here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1729940/The_Tribe_Must_Survive/

Explorer Update (v 1.1.7) - Patch Notes

Tribe Leaders,

We seriously consider all the feedback we receive when planning our updates. Much of the feedback we have gotten since launch was about the game being too hard and sometimes even frustrating for new players. At the same time we also see that there are a number of players that have become incredibly good at the game, to the point where they have beaten all Challenge Levels and Achievements, and have Tribes with hundreds of Members and thousands of resources.

So we decided that with today’s Explorer Update we should make the game both easier and harder! To achieve these mildly paradoxical goals we have introduced a new game mode, while also adding 3 new Challenge Levels and 15 new Achievements.

Explorer Mode


A new “Explorer Mode” has now been added as a choice when you start a new run. Explorer Mode offers a more relaxed way of playing The Tribe Must Survive, which is ideal for new and experienced players alike, to get more familiar with the game. There are no Disasters, Inner Conflicts, Act Perks, or Challenge Level modifiers, offering the opportunity to learn and experiment with the game’s core mechanics at one’s own pace. There is still a plethora of decisions for Tribe Leaders to make through in-game Events and through the ways you grow your Tribe. While this new mode offers a more forgiving gameplay experience, there are still elements that can go wrong, leaving the Tribe starving for Wood or Food for long periods of time. The Tribe Population on Explorer Mode is capped at 300 Tribe members. Achievements cannot be unlocked in Explorer Mode, but there is permanent XP gain at a reduced rate, to help you work towards unlocking the next perk.

Whenever you feel up for it, you can return to the compelling survival experience we know and love, by selecting “Survival Mode” when starting a new adventure. This game mode is how The Tribe Must Survive is intended to be played. Prepare to still die a lot as you find a way to overcome all five Disasters. The Challenge Levels and Achievements are unlockable in this game mode only.

15 New Achievements


Show off your mastery of strategic choices by attempting to unlock some of the 15 new Achievements added to the game. These Achievements do require a thorough understanding of the game and can sometimes hint at contradictory strategies. Can you survive the Locust Disaster without building any Hunter's Halls? How can one unlock all Building Upgrades in a single run? When there’s a will, there’s a way and nothing can stop a pioneering Tribe from surviving.

All the above, plus the usual list of tweaks and bug fixes are now available with the new update. Take a look at the full list of changes below:

Patch Notes


New Content



  • Added Explorer Mode, alongside the default experience, now called “Survival Mode”.
  • 15 new Achievements - Some are very hard, some even harder!
  • 3 new Challenge Levels:
    • Level 8: Maximum Number of Trees per Tile -2 (5 —> 3)
    • Level 9: Tolerance and Stability is capped at +1
    • Level 10: Chance that new Tribe Members have the Weird Gleam: 25%

  • 3 additional XP-Levels that unlock 3 new Personalty Perks (22 in total now)
    • Level 20: Primal Instinct: When Fear is above 35, gain -20% Movement Time (from -3 Extraversion to +3 Neuroticism)
    • Level 21: Devoted Spiritualist: Medicine Farm Productivity +20% (from +3 Openness to +3 Conscientiousness)
    • Level 22: Mediator: Increases Cohesion Threshold by 2 (from +3 Openness to +3 Agreeableness)

  • 3 New Events

Quality of Life Additions



  • By popular demand, we added a 4th Game-Speed for those who like to play fast. The new speed is 8x; twice as fast as Speed 3.
  • Information about Perks that decay over time is now correctly displayed in Events
  • Clarification about Perks that end at the end of a Disaster has been added to the related tooltip
  • Use of infinity UI-icon when population is uncapped
  • UI now shows number of relics left in excavation building

Balancing Changes



  • Reduced Fertile Maenad Tribe Growth from 10-->5
  • Reduced the Stone Cost of Pleasure Dens to 0, and slightly increased its Wood Cost
  • Reduced Excavation Stone Cost 50—>20
  • Reduced number of hives in the final locust wave 10—>9
  • Reduced tent sleeping time from fermented fruit 20%—>5%
  • Reduced Tribe Growth from Wild Reproduction 10—>8
  • Many small timing/condition and balancing improvements to Events
  • Buffed “Slaves To The Yellow King” (final Yellow Spiritual Aspect). Food Need Time Interval is now reduced by 50% (from 70%) and Movement Time is now increased by 10% (from 25%). This will make this Aspect much stronger, as it will require much less food need satisfaction, significantly reducing the required food and time spent eating.

General Improvements & Bug Fixes



  • Fixed a bug where the Journey inventory was not cleared, if the Journey had not started. This change prevents the inventory exploit, during the Locust disaster..
  • Fixed a bug where you could lose Challenge Level progress
  • Fixed tooltip flickering
  • Fixed a UI glitch in the Outpost Caravan setup screen
  • Fixed an issue that occurred when Tribe Members died in an Outpost and got “Twice Born” in the Main Camp
  • Fixed an issue where the fire would be off an hour too early after loading a save game where wood was low.
  • Fixed icon size in the UI of selected buildings
  • Fixed a bug where empty Excavations would still show Relic production progress
  • Fixed some formatting bugs in the trading menus
  • Fixed a bug where mouse wheel scrolling would not open strategy view and added a hotkey for it [V]
  • Improved weather particle system performance —> Flood and Locust disaster are now a bit less taxing, performance-wise
  • Improved Tribe Member Collider performance —> Large numbers of Tribe Members will be a bit less taxing, performance-wise. Especially when many of them are in the same place.

As always, we hope this new release deepens the experience and gives you more ways to discover and master the mechanics of the Tribe. Once you have tried it out, you are more than welcome to hop onto our Discord server for support and casual chat about the update, the game and beyond. Leading Tribes does not need to be an individual sport in this Lovecraftian Stone Age!

And remember; even if the Tribe does not Survive, it can at least Explore!
- The Tribe Must Survive Team

May Patch v1.0.18 - Patch Notes

Hello Tribe Leaders,

Thank you so much for your support and attention to the 1.0 Release last week! It has been incredibly heart-warming to see your reactions to the game, figuring out strategies to persevere through the endless calamities that befall the Tribe Members.

For this week, we proceeded with some fixes to improve the overall experience. Here is what you can expect from today's update.

Patch Notes



Quality of Life improvements:



  • Added linking between agents and buildings, making it possible to navigate from a selected Building to the assigned Tribe Members and vice versa.
  • Resources (Stone, Ore, Animals, Ruins, Meds) are now selectable and display UI information
  • Added an explanatory text about the Inner conflict event effects

Other fixes and changes:



  • Furnace resource consumption is now indicated through the UI toggle and through a consumption tooltip
  • Fixed a bug where you could not destroy the Trade Posts in Act 5
  • Fixed a bug where the cursor was not visible after cut scenes
  • Fixed a rare issue where getting multiple achievements at once could result in a race condition
  • Localised personality perk conditions

As always, don’t hesitate to join in our Discord server. It is always exciting to see you having fun with the game and we very much appreciate you taking the time to post.

You know the drill; whatever it takes... The Tribe Must Survive!
- The Tribe Must Survive Team

The Tribe Must Survive 1.0 is HERE!

Tribe Leaders,

You have survived through endless dark nights, overcome disasters and kept the fire alive until the new dawn. The day has come… The Tribe Must Survive 1.0 is out now! We’re eternally grateful for those who joined us in our Early Access stint and equally grateful to anyone joining us today.
It’s been a journey beyond our wildest expectations, and we’re thrilled to finally be able to launch the game with all of you.

For the 1.0 release, we’ve made several significant changes to the game including adding in-game objectives, roguelite mechanics to unlock between games, and even a challenge mode for those tribe leaders who remain unfazed by regular difficulties.

Without further ado, take a look at the changes coming in with the 1.0 version:

Patch Notes



Progression Systems


Added Progression Systems that support all players, from early-game onboarding, to endgame mastery.

  • New Species Goals will provide new players with a set of goals to strive towards in the early stages
  • New Level-based progression allows players to unlock new features, perks, and bonuses, gradually increasing gameplay depth
  • Added in-game notifications to signal completion of Species Goals
  • Scoring system reworked to accommodate progression changes
  • New Challenge Levels add wicked new gameplay modifiers to challenge even the most skilled players - unlocked after beating the game once
  • End-of-Round screen overhauled to display Score and progress towards next unlock
  • New Progression screen added - accessible at the start of a new game, and through the Pause menu
Note: The new Progression systems are brand new features and will not take into account progress on previous runs. For the best experience, we would recommend that you start a fresh run after installing v1.0.16.

The Children of the Mother


Those who surrender themselves into the Mother’s embrace will find their pain replaced by a soothing bliss. However, the deeper you fall into Her arms, the harder it becomes to break away.

  • New Spiritual Upgrade Tree: Gives access to 11 new Spiritual Aspects (2 more can be unlocked)
  • New Resource: Poppies can now be found on the map, which can be used to produce Red Medicine
  • New Personality Perks provide gameplay benefits to Tribe Members inclined towards the Mother’s Personality Traits
  • New Events were added
  • Various events were adjusted to account for this new Faith

Inner Conflicts


Growth can lead to division. Once the line is drawn between “us” and “them”, everything can be justified.

  • Two new Spiritual Inner Conflicts were added, with 12 accompanying events on each
  • Two new Philosophical Inner Conflicts were added, with 12 accompanying events on each
  • Cohesion and Inner Conflict mechanics were rebalanced, in order to make them more likely to trigger in Acts 4 and 5

Other Additions



  • Added new Outro cutscene, when beating the game
  • Added localization support for Simplified Chinese, and Japanese
  • Added support for Cloud Saves
  • Added useful highlighting of Hints in the game UI

Balancing Changes



  • Increased Lumber Camp productivity from 4 to 5 wood
  • Increased the Medicine gathering job speed for a slight increase in productivity
  • Decreased the effect of the “Lonely” perk from -25% Productivity and -25% Movement speed to -10%/-10%
  • Reduced Stone Pit wood costs from 80 to 60
  • Reduced “Distillers” Building Upgrade chance to remove weird perk from 25% to 15%
  • Reduced “Influential Inventions” Building Upgrade generated influence points from 1 to 0.5 per Research Point
  • Reduced the event perk “Copper Stripping” from 1 Copper bar / excavation% to 0.1 Copper bar / excavation%
  • Removed the light radius penalty from the Flood. The inner radius of the fire isn’t reduced anymore
  • Increased the Panic and Riot bar thresholds for some negative events
  • Made the Panic and Riot bars fill ~20% faster when above the thresholds and deplete ~20% faster when below
  • Added missing Philosophy modifiers:
    • Freedom —> +33% spiritual progress
    • Control —> -3 Tribe growth
  • The fire-related Building Upgrades now also apply to Outpost fires
  • Many changes to the balancing of the interaction system in order to make factions and Inner Conflicts more interesting
  • Increased the Ritual lead up time and decreased the Ritual duration, in order to give Tribe Members more time to join the Ritual without increasing the overall time it takes

General Improvements



  • Fixed an issue where scene lighting would not update when a building gets destroyed
  • Fixed an issue where resources in the caravan would not display properly
  • Fixed tooltips flickering
  • Fixed an issue where relics would not get subtracted when unlocking the final upgrade
  • Fixed an issue where the philosophy sentiment would wrongly go to 10
  • Fixed an issue where Building Upgrades could have negative costs
  • Fixed an issue where the plus button would not work on Windows
  • Rebalanced “Bedbound” perk, so it is not deadly all the time anymore
  • Removed daily medicine consumption from the game
  • Fixed some Trade-related edge-cases that would negatively affect gameplay
  • Added more settings to the in-game preferences
  • Added “Skip Intro cutscene” setting
  • Added a “Destroy Building” hotkey
  • Herds are now visible on the strategy view, once discovered
  • Increased some of the font sizes
  • Added Dead people to the Agent UI
  • Added many small tooltips, text and usability improvements

We sincerely hope you enjoy this Full Release version of the game. It has meant a lot to us to see you play during Early Access and read your views on the game. We have been eagerly working on this update and we are excited to be sharing this moment with you.

Please don’t hesitate to join our Discord server and leave a review about the game on Steam. We are always happy to hear your thoughts and stories from the Lovecraftian Stone Age!

Play The Tribe Must Survive, live, lose, thrive, and survive!
- The Tribe Must Survive Team

Tomorrow’s the Day!

Tribe Leaders,

The sun is about to rise, hope is on the horizon!

- The Tribe Must Survive team

Preparing for 1.0 release

Tribe Leaders,

The sun rises on our 1.0 launch on May 23rd. In just two more days, we’ll be celebrating the full release of The Tribe Must Survive. Join us to celebrate the dawn of our game!

- The Tribe Must Survive team

Developer Deep Dive - 1.0 Progression

Hey Tribe Leaders,

It’s time to gather around the safety of the campfire and let us share some stories with you about the future; specifically one big change that is coming with the 1.0 version of The Tribe Must Survive, which is set to release May 23, 2024.

In this Developer Deep Dive, we want to take the time to highlight one of the extensive changes coming to the game. The team has been hard at work refining the game based on community feedback from the Early Access phase, so we wanted to share that with you all.

If this is the first time you’re checking out The Tribe Must Survive, don’t worry, because we also want to make sure you’re able to follow along this journey with us and get more insight about the game and the work that goes on behind the scenes. We hope you enjoy it, and it gives you a better understanding of the game’s systems.

Your First Steps

For the uninitiated, jumping into a game like ours for the first time can sometimes be a daunting challenge. There are a variety of systems to master, challenges to overcome, and often concepts to wrap your head around. The Tribe Must Survive is a deep, cerebral game that challenges how you approach tribe management and handle the events that can occur throughout a playthrough.

One of the major improvements we’ve added to the 1.0 release version of the game is the Species Goals which will help to give those of you taking your first steps a set of goals to strive toward in the early stages.


Alongside this, is the level-based progression that gradually introduces new features, perks, and bonuses. Our aim is to create a ramp effect to gradually step up the depth. Your efforts during each run will provide you with Score points that contribute to your Player Level. Completing one Level is rewarded by a boon that can help you in your next run. There are a total of 20 Levels to unlock.

We are a rogue-lite experience, meaning failure is a core part of the learning process and evolving your strategy. Do not be discouraged; mastery is a key component of the overall experience.


For The Wizened

We have one more surprise coming to 1.0, which is not for the faint-hearted: the new Challenge Levels! Once you’ve proven your talent as a Tribe Leader and had your first Tribe survive through their first 100 days, you can unlock the ability to play the game again, but with a new challenging twist that was not there the first time around. Beating the game again, unlocks the next Challenge Level and so on. There are a total of 7 Challenge Levels to beat, each one incrementally adding a new challenging modifier to endure, on top of the ones that came before. It’s been a lot of fun to see Tribe Leaders challenging each other during Early Access, sharing knowledge on Discord and pushing themselves forward into optimizing their runs. We hope this new set of tough challenges will inspire existing and aspiring “Tribe Must Survive” masters alike.


We hope that you’ve been able to learn a little more about what’s to come with 1.0 in regards to the progression systems and the big improvements heading your way! For more hints into what else is coming with 1.0, feel free to check out our latest roadmap update.

As you can see, there’s a lot of depth to be found with The Tribe Must Survive, so we’d gladly invite you to join our Discord and continue the discussions there. Whether you want to better understand one of the game’s other systems, or have a general question about the game, don’t hesitate to come along and ask!

See you at the game’s full release on May 23, 2024.

-TTMS Team!

May Hotfix - v0.43.5

Tribe Leaders,

Thank you so much for your support and attention to the latest update, we are so excited to see the positive reception of the improvements we are making. As always your feedback is really appreciated in helping us build the best possible version of the game! Here are the fixes we have implemented based on the issues you have flagged:


  • Fixed an issue where players with old save-games might not be able to load into the new version
  • Fixed an issue where Tribe Members could starve even if there is food available.

Base on your Feedback we looked into the various edge cases in the Tribe Member behaviour again and found the case where they would go to sleep while having the Starvation Perk active and therefore could starve while not being “in-shock” and while food is available.

As always, don’t hesitate to join in our Discord server and leave a review about the game on Steam. We are very excited to hear your thoughts about the upcoming additions and we cannot wait for you to experience them yourselves!

And remember; whatever it takes... The Tribe Must Survive!
- The Tribe Must Survive Team

The Tribe Must Survive - 1.0 Release Date Announcement!

Tribe Leaders across the world rejoice!

The humble tribe that is our studio can at last announce that “The Tribe Must Survive” will be released in 1.0 VERY soon!

The 1.0 of the game will be released after a short Early Access period on May 23rd. We’ve made several improvements to the game as part of its release, and we’re honored to have you alongside us on this journey, thank you!

If you haven’t already, pick up “The Tribe Must Survive” from the Steam store page, or if you have, perhaps gift it to a close friend?

Remember; whatever it takes... The Tribe Must Survive!
- The Tribe Must Survive Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1729940/The_Tribe_Must_Survive/