Ice Age Life · free on iPhone, Android and the web

Live a lifebefore history.

You’re born into a band of foragers on the Ice Age steppe, 22,000 years ago. You live the whole thing, a year at a time. Then winter takes you, and you start over as someone new.

Download on theApp StoreGet it onGoogle PlayPlay free in your browsericeagelife.cc, nothing to install
The homeland card: Dnieper Mammoth Steppe, 22,000 years ago. Begin Unoru's life.
Unoru at 18: health, spirit and prestige, and a card about the stories told around the fire.
A spring board: Mudslide, Wolves on the Trail and First Greens, with the band waiting in the hand.
Scroll

One Stone Age life, start to finish.

Then you die and do it again as someone new.

How a life goes

From a kid underfoot to the elder nobody listens to.

A year a turn. Each one brings something to decide and a season to get through. The game doesn’t skip the boring parts, and it doesn’t skip the hard ones.

Inside a hide-covered mammoth-bone house, a grandmother holds a newborn up to the firelight while the mother rests.
Every life starts here, in a family you didn't choose.
18years

Your name

The bands meet and you're given a name. Which one depends on what you've done.

Drag through a life. Everyone in the game has a face for every age, and grows into it.

What kind of life is yours? You find out by living it.

  • Hunt mammoth until the band can't eat without you.

  • Fall hard for someone two camps over.

  • Raise three kids through a winter that was only meant to take one.

  • Take in a half-wild wolf.

  • Cross the wrong man and spend the next twenty years squaring it.

  • Do something worth remembering, and hear your name long after you're gone.

The season board

Every season is a board.

The weather, the herds, the sickness and the strangers come up as cards, and you decide who in your band meets which one. Send the wrong person at a wolf pack and you lose them. Send nobody and everyone goes hungry.

Try a round. These three cards are from a real spring in the game, scored the game’s way.

Spring, The Green ReturningYear 0 · Round 1
0 food2 at risk
ThreatMudslideNavigate 46 · +4 foodNobody
ThreatWolves on the TrailHunt 50 · +12 foodNobody
BountyFirst GreensForage 36 · +6 foodUntouched
Drag a person onto a spot under a card, or tap them and then the spot. Each card's badge tells you how it goes before you commit.
You see it coming

Each card shows whether it holds before you commit, including harm that would reach camp.

You see the sum

Every result shows its working, like Hunt 53 +21 lent = 74 vs 50. A loss you can check is one you learn from.

Or let the band sort it

Hit Auto-play and everyone finds a place. Step in when it matters.

Spring melt on a steppe trail: two hunters with spears face three wolves while a mudslide breaks loose on the slope behind them.
Wolves on the Trail. Who do you send?

Your band

Thirty-odd people, each living their own life.

Nobody in the band is scenery. They pair up, have kids, grieve, fall out and move away on their own time. And every one of them has a mood, and a feeling about you.

Dahak is simply herself today: present, capable, unhurried.
From Dahak’s profile
The Sun Rock Band, sorted into the day's parties: gatherers, small-game hunters, a hunting party, and those at camp.
Dahak's profile: her mood, how you get on, and what you can do about either.

Everyone has their own face, at every age.

Morning in a steppe camp: a gathering party heads for the creek while hunters check their spears and children chase a puppy.
Morning in camp. Everyone has somewhere to be.
A family with packs and a dog walks away from camp toward a neighboring band's smoke on the horizon, friends waving goodbye.
When a band gets too big, a household packs up and joins the neighbors.

Wolf to dog

Every first life starts with a wolf at the edge of camp.

Taming it is the first goal in the game. There’s no bond meter to watch. The game just tells you, in words, how it’s going.

  1. wary still
    “Grey-Foot watched you eat tonight from just past the firelight, and did not run when you looked up.”
  2. warming to you
    “Grey-Foot fell in beside you on the walk to the water, and you only noticed halfway back.”
  3. almost yours
    “Grey-Foot brought you a gnawed bone and dropped it at your feet, watching your face.”
  4. chosen

    Then he chooses you. Now he comes with the band every season, not just the cold ones.

The quotes are real lines from the game.

Autumn dusk at the edge of camp: a lean, wary wolf stands just past the firelight while a young woman crouches and holds out a strip of meat at arm's length.
Every first life starts here: tame the wolf at the edge of camp.
Cold months first

A half-wild wolf only runs with the band in autumn and winter, when you’re both after the same herds. In spring and summer it’s off at its den.

It hunts with you

On the season board, a dog that’s bonded to you lends its strength on a hunt.

Pups of your own

Raise a camp-born pup whose mother or father is a dog you’re bonded to.

Every dog has a story

When it joined you, when it chose you, its first hunt, its litters, and its death.

Dogs get the same 16 temperaments as people.

  • Lively or reserved
  • Curious or cautious
  • Sweet or sharp
  • Biddable or willful

Four traits from real dog personality research. And 32 faces, a pup and a grown dog for each.

Inside a winter house by the fire, a small child holds a sleepy camp-born pup while its mother, once a wolf at the edge of camp, lies watching with her chin on her paws.
A camp-born pup, and a mother who chose you.
A winter hunt on open snow: two hunters with spears run behind two dogs that are turning a small herd of reindeer toward them.
A bonded dog hunts beside you.

Eight homelands

8 places to be born, so far.

Every first life starts on the Mammoth Steppe. Finish a homeland’s goals and the next one opens, all the way out to the glacier coast at the edge of the world.

  1. Open grass steppe under a huge sky, a mammoth family crossing a river, a small hide camp on the bank.
    Dnieper Mammoth SteppeUkraine

    “We go out with the herds and we come back to the same houses.”

    Explore the Mammoth Steppe
  2. Three wild ostriches walking across golden loess ahead of a storm front on the East Wind Plains, with two hide-clad people watching from a rise and broken white eggshell in the foreground.
    The East Wind PlainsChina

    “Other people chase. We dig in and let the year come to us.”

    Explore the East Wind Plains
  3. Red sand and spinifex surround a dry winding creek, with three people and kangaroos beside a shaded pool under a low red ledge at dusk.
    The Great South LandCentral Australia

    “Wait at the water and the meat walks to you.”

    Explore the Great South Land
  4. Snow-capped Altai peaks above a frozen river valley edged with sparse larch and pine, with three hooded hide-clothed travelers crossing solid ice under a pink sky.
    The Frozen HeartSiberia and Mongolia

    “Follow the reindeer, not your feet.”

    Explore the Frozen Heart
  5. A deep dry red-and-gray canyon in southern Namibia, with an ordinary unmarked rock overhang beside a dark shaded pool and a wild springbok on the rim.
    The Painted SouthNamibia

    “Everything here is measured out from the water.”

    Explore the Painted South
  6. The Dordogne: a green river under pale limestone cliffs with rock shelters, reindeer crossing at a ford, morning mist.
    The Sheltered ValleySouthwest France

    “There is always someone over the next rise here.”

    Explore the Sheltered Valley
  7. The Great Rift highlands: sunlit golden grass, red rock and scattered thorn trees above a blue lake, with rain falling from a dark cloud across the valley.
    The Great RiftKenya

    “There is no cold season here, so do not wait for one.”

    Explore the Great Rift
  8. Sunlight reaches an open cold sea and scattered seasonal ice, with low snowy hills, birds and rocky tundra in the foreground.
    The World's EdgeAlaska

    “Camp where the sea comes up, not where the ground looks good.”

    Explore the World’s Edge
  9. Later eras

    Locked for now. More are coming.

Meet all eight homelands

The little drawings

1,175

A word game you can read at a glance.

It’s all words. But every animal, threat, person and choice also gets its own small drawing, so a busy screen has a shape before you read a word of it. Pick a family.

Hover or tab through to read a name.1,175 drawings in the game. These are 172 of them.

Every day of the year

It opens in a different color every day.

All 366 days have their own pair of themes, a light one and a dark one. Halloween is a pumpkin patch by day and All Hallows’ Eve by night.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
January 1Light outside, dark inside

Light · newyeardawn

Dark · firstdawn

366 days, two themes each, drawn from 707 palettes. Hover or drag to see any day.
By a stone oil lamp in a cave, a girl presses her right hand to the wall while an older woman blows ochre around it, beside the faded handprints of people long gone.
Then winter takes you, and your soul starts over as someone new.

When it ends

Then winter takes you too. It takes everyone.

You can’t save, and there’s no redoing things. You make your choices, time keeps moving, and eventually the life is over.

But your soul doesn’t stop. It starts over: new body, new family, a new corner of a hard and beautiful world. And something of who you were comes with it.

  1. One life ends
  2. Your soul goes on
  3. Someone new is born

Straight answers

The short, honest version.

The Ice Age Life poster: two smiling foragers with a spear and a bow in a snowy camp, mammoths behind them, and the line Live a life before history.
Is it free?
Yes. The whole game is free on the App Store and Google Play. Ads keep it that way, and there are a few things to buy if you want them. A Firekeeper membership turns the ads off.
What's in the browser version?
The same game, at iceagelife.cc. It's free, with nothing to buy, no account and nothing to install. There's a banner ad under the game while you play. It saves in that browser, so the app is the better home for a life you want to keep.
Do I need an account?
No. It opens straight into a life. If you want, you can sign in with Apple or Google later to back up your progress, but you never have to.
Does it need the internet?
No. A life plays fully offline, and your save lives on your device.
Where can I play?
iPhone and iPad on the App Store, Android phones and tablets on Google Play, and any desktop or phone browser at iceagelife.cc.
Is it all text?
Mostly, and that's on purpose. It's all words, so the steppe looks like whatever your head makes of it. Every person, animal, threat and choice also gets its own small drawing, so you can read a screen at a glance.

One life at a time

Live one for yourself.

Free on iPhone, iPad and Android, and in any browser with nothing to install.

Made by Sunlit Game Studio, a small independent studio.