Caveman Tales review for Nintendo Switch, PC

I?m trying to think of the right word to describe my feelings going into Caveman Tales. Excited? Way too strong. Cautiously optimistic? Getting there, but still denotes too much enthusiasm. Mildly interested? That sounds about right, but with an emphasis on the ?mild.”

The reason for my (incredibly slight) optimism is that I played Country Tales last month, and I didn?t hate it. This is somewhat noteworthy, in that everything else I?ve played from the same publisher has been almost unplayably awful. So playing a sorta-sequel to their one decent game had me ever-so-slightly intrigued.

Turns out I may have set my expectations too high, and I probably should?ve left well enough alone and gone back to Country Tales.

Not that there?s a huge difference between Caveman Tales and Country Tales. They?re basically the same resource management game, only one has an old west theme, and the other has — as you could probably tell from the name — a caveman theme. Consequently, instead of building homes and lumber mills while also collecting taxes and generating food and whatnot, here you?re building Flintstones-style homes while also collecting taxes and generating food and whatnot.

In other words, it?s exactly the same game, right down to the fact it?s asking you to pay $10 for something you could just as easily get for free (or, at least, freemium) on a mobile device. Much like its predecessor, Caveman Tales almost certainly isn?t worth paying extra just to play on your Switch, but also like its predecessor, if you can live with the price you?re getting a perfectly tolerable time-waster in return.

Ocean Media provided us with a Caveman Tales Switch code for review purposes.