There have been many contingencies in case civilisations crumble, plans to keep the government going, and restore society as best as possible. Still, daydreams are preoccupied with ideas of living out in the lawless wastelands, films about loners seeking existence in the wastes, and games about rebuilding from the ruins, but with a whole new paradigm governing them. In 1998, during the height of the Real Time Strategy boom, one game took to the ravages of the post-apocalyptic world and put you in the command of those trying to rebuild, a game known as Tribal Rage.

In the year 2030, the world has gone considerably wilder. Nuclear fallout and all the nightmares depicted in 1984’s Threads have come to pass. California, (a familiar face for post-apocalyptic video game hi jinks) has become the host of several gangs who each want to rule the wastelands in their image. Elvis enthusiasts, Amazonians, Death Worshippers and more all seek to sculpt the ashes in their image. Who will win and how comes down to the players’ cunning and a lot of lead.

Drawing on the comic-book-inspired origins of the late 90s, Tribal Rage features a variety of unique factions all vying for the charred remains of the West Coast, and the tongue-in-cheek nature has a zeitgeist-capturing quality. While the defaults should give you enough to go on, the unique selling point is its customisation, allowing the more creative of tacticians to devise their units in a Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri fashion, or their scenarios. It’s nice having quick access to creative elements. The customisation is extensive, giving Tribal Rage a winning edge in that department, and it is a good thing for a strategy game to have. While predefined units can be easy for a developer to balance, it doesn’t reward the ingenuity that can come from the battlefield.

When it comes to gameplay, Tribal Rage is a rather straightforward affair. At the bottom of the screen lies a menu where you can select from all the troops, and as long as you have money, you can materialise them at will. Like the Command and Conquer economy, only a lot more streamlined. A lot of the point-and-click fundamentals that made the genre popular on home PCs remain. You click your units and point them at whatever you need to be destroyed, research technologies to give yourself a tactical advantage, etc., familiar tropes just given a Ruiner Pinball edge.

Tribal Rage isn’t as strongly remembered as some other strategy games that came out of the late 90s; there doesn’t appear to be a dedicated mod team or an open-source recreation trying to make the ideas shine on. The post-apocalyptic theme has promise, and I would like to see some of its ideas live on outside of Fallout or Mad Max, especially in an R.T.S. Along with the little flourishes that (although stronger in other games) make Tribal Rage feel unique. The fourth World War may be fought with sticks and stones, but it makes for a fun R.T.S. game.

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