7 Grand Steps: What Ancients Begat

This game is definitely not for everyone, but I found it to be interesting and fun... until I hit a late game bug that derailed my progress significantly. I'm going to play more, but it was quite frustrating to spend hours building up the economy only to have it bug out and fail. @Devs, let me know if you want my save game or a screen shot. Bug detail: I have a screenshot shared illustrating it, but basically after spendings dozens of turns buying new fields, growing population, expanding grain production, and etc, something bugged out and reported my grain output as 0. Specifically, I had 998 planted fields that yielded 0 grain. I was deposed for spending more grain than was grown. No explanation of famine or other issue - the game just bugged. (or, if this is intended, it really sucks without an explanation as to how that occurred.) EDIT: DO NOT PAY $20 for this game. Get it on sale for $0.99.

When I played this game for 2 hours a decade ago, I remember liking it.

An interesting concept at its core but it eventually gets rather repetitive. Potentially more enjoyable as a multiplayer game, but single-player it feels very empty. You have a system of having two characters you use to make tokens and children, and use those tokens to advance in inspiration, adventure, discovery, and training the children, which is a neat idea at first. There is a good amount of strategy involved in balancing out when you want to make new tokens, and when you want to use those tokens to avoid getting eaten by crocodiles, or to get the beads needed for advancement. The problem is because the tokens you receive are dependent upon what you trained the children up as, it can potentially take forever to advance at all i.e. if you trained them up with pottery but neglected forging, then pottery will turn up far more frequently during token making. This causes the game to become a slow trudge as you desperately wait forever for one of the less frequent tokens to turn up to give to the next generation, and start to try and balance them out. Problem there is the generation will often end before you've sufficiently done so, and the cycle begins anew. Perhaps it's just me, but this game really isn't to my taste. Not my kind of fun.

Come for the weirdly satisfying coin slots, stay for the multigenerational emotional damage.

I don't really love or hate this game. It's right down the middle. I don't really get the strategy for this but I'll say that I lean more towards like than dislike

A sort of interesting timewaster game that's at way too high a price point. Combines arcade token mechanics with simple RPG and idle gameplay. The result isn't bad, but isn't amazing either.

A historical simulation that turns the struggle of a single family line into an absorbing cycle of survival across generations. At first the mechanics seem opaque and even clumsy, but once the systems click, the game becomes unexpectedly compelling — managing marriages, children, social status, inventions and the slow climb through ancient society. The repetition is intentional and sometimes exhausting, yet it mirrors the theme: everything you gain can be lost again. The audiovisual style blends early-20th-century arcade aesthetics with Mediterranean folklore, and despite its rough edges, it fits the experience. After over ten hours with it, I found a game that can be frustrating, mechanical and strangely insightful at the same time. Not for everyone, but if historical simulations interest you, this one has a tendency to get under the skin.

It's pretty fun once you get the hang of things. My only complaint is that it should have achievements.

Ah, what the hell! This game is not the best game, it is heavily dependent on RNG, but at least it tries something unique. I haven't played a game similar to it before. I recommend it but keep your expectations low. I think the worst part is the RNG because you can easily fall behind because of it and when you have fallen, it takes time to get back on track. Otherwise how it presented its story through a board game was really interesting.

Truly one of the most unique experiences. It sits on the border between game and art, as a powerful representation of life. Love it.