Dolvun — A Stone Age Survival Strategy Game

What is Dolvun?

Dolvun is a free Stone Age survival strategy game that you play right here in your browser. Long ago, in the valley of Dolvun, six early humans climbed down from the trees. Hunger, wild beasts and bitter winters are waiting for them. You decide who gathers fruit, who hunts, who hauls wood and stone, who chips tools and who rests by the fire — one season at a time.

Every person in your Dolvun tribe is someone: they have their own strength, skill, luck and wisdom, traits that make them good or bad at a job, partners, children and a place in the tribe's chronicle. Children are born a little wiser than their parents. Look after enough generations and your stooped tree folk become stone knappers, then a hearth clan, then mammoth hunters — and finally modern humans with a story of their own.

The five eras of Dolvun

• Tree Folk
• Stone Knappers
• Hearth Clan
• Mammoth Hunters
• Modern Humans
• Season Two — coming soon

In most caveman games your cavemen stay cavemen forever. In Dolvun they evolve. Each era sets three trials — finish two of them (all three on Wild) and have someone wise enough, and your tribe steps into the next era. Wisdom grows with every generation, with every invention and with culture, so the tribe you raise is the tribe that evolves.

What makes Dolvun different

Dolvun isn't an action game and it isn't a clicker. There's no timer, no grinding and nothing to buy. It's a turn-based caveman game where every season is a small decision and every person matters: the old woman who knows the best berry patches, the young hunter with a bad leg, the couple you keep sending to rest so the tribe will grow. You'll remember their names, because the chronicle does.

Dolvun is also a game about Stone Age life rather than Stone Age warfare. The danger comes from the world — cold, hunger, predators, disease and the odd dinosaur — and the way through is planning, invention and raising the next generation well.

How to play Dolvun

1. Choose your founders and a difficulty. Gentle is kinder and lets you rewind if your tribe dies out; Standard is a fair challenge with one rewind; Wild has more disasters and no second chances.
2. Give everyone a job for the season. Gather, Hunt, Materials, Craft, Build or Rest. The panel under the camp shows what you can expect — how much food, the odds of a hunt and the risk of injury.
3. End the season and see what happened: food brought in, babies born, ideas sparked, injuries and deaths.
4. Rest to invent and to grow the family. Ideas come mostly from resting, and partners who rest together are the likeliest to have a baby.
5. Let the chief decide once the tribe passes 12 people: pick a focus — stock up, hunt, build or recover — and the chief assigns everyone by their strengths.
6. Evolve. Finish the era's trials, raise someone wise enough, and step into the next era.

Not sure what to do next? Ask Ember, the spirit of the fire, in the top bar of Dolvun — it tells you what matters most right now.

Dolvun survival tips

• Winter is the real enemy. Fruit stops growing back in winter, so bring food in during spring and summer. Fruit keeps for two seasons and meat for three; a Storage Pit adds a season, and Smoking makes meat last eight.
• Rest is not wasted time. Someone who rests heals, comes up with ideas and may start a family. A tribe that never rests never invents anything.
• Read the odds before you hunt. Dolvun shows your chance to hit and the injury risk for every strike. A mammoth feeds everyone, but a hunt that goes wrong can cost you your best people. Spears and Drive Hunting make big game much safer.
• Heed the warnings. Disasters announce themselves first — yellow tags in the corner of the camp. If the ground shakes, a dinosaur is coming. A Palisade keeps most beasts out.
• Move before the land runs dry. When the fruit is picked clean or the camp is too cold, move to a neighbouring area. Buildings stay where you built them, so choose a camp you'll want to come back to.
• Think in generations. The wisest person alive decides when you can evolve. Language, song, burial and cave painting all make children wiser — culture is how a Dolvun tribe gets smarter.

Play Dolvun on phone or desktop

You can play Dolvun on any computer, tablet or phone with a modern browser — there's nothing to install. On a desktop, press Play Dolvun and the game starts right on this page; the full-screen button under it gives you the whole monitor. Hover over anyone in your Dolvun tribe and press 1–9 to change their job without opening a menu.

On a phone, tapping Play Dolvun opens the game full screen, laid out for a phone: the camp at the top, your people in the middle and the season button at the bottom. Press your phone's back button or Close to return to this page. Either way, Dolvun saves after every season in the browser you're playing in, so you can close the tab and pick up exactly where your tribe left off.