Jack of All Tribes HD offers a good deal of polish and is filled with small details that make it fun to play and watch. We're reminded of some of the voyeur pleasures of games like The Sims, where half the entertainment isn't controlling characters, but just observing them. This is casual fare, where you can easily get distracted while the action unfolds on screen and you occasionally tap to interact. All time management games have an undertone of "god gaming," but Jack of All Tribes HD makes it pretty clear that you're controlling the destinies of the tribesmen inhabiting the primitive land where you find yourself. Luckily, you are not alone.

Most of the game is a top-down view of the villages and territory you are helping the locals build. As you progress through Jack of All Tribes HD, you'll break away for a few rudimentary hidden object challenges, but these are rare and extremely simple. Most of the action involves helping the little men on your screen find their destiny by building shelters, growing food, and living their dreams. When you realize that "living the dream" can range from grabbing a quick bath to riding a dinosaur, the humor of Jack of All Tribes HD becomes clear. Accompanying the action are some good sound effects and rudimentary music. The sound effects are key, as in most time management games, to alerting you when action is required. Used sparingly, the queues in Jack of All Tribes HD are effective and often very amusing.

There are genres of time management that get a bit sugary-sweet for my taste. Maybe it's the soft visuals and pastel colors that turn me off, or maybe it's the simplistic objectives of filling orders, growing plants, serving drinks, etc. What Jack of All Tribes HD offers is a time management game that doesn't feel like time management, thanks to a lot of variety in the level design and your objectives. Rather than just serving x number of people in whatever endeavor the game assigns to you, Jack of All Tribes HD aims for higher ground. The story is set in a distant time, one Jack is transported to, where you/he quickly become a leader. Each time you begin a level, the local tribe is counting on you to set things right. To accomplish these tasks, you'll need to find ways to mobilize the villagers to collect resources.

The fundamental resources in the game are money, wood and food. At the outset of a level, it's up to you which of these you focus on, but you learn that not much happens without adequate supplies of food for your workers. Money and wood help you build and upgrade structures, which attracts more workers and generates more resources, but requires more food. This is casual resource-gathering, in the sense that you can't really get yourself into too much trouble by making the wrong decisions. You do have incentive to beat the clock, which requires smarter use of resources and planning. Other than a lower score, there's really no failure in Jack of All Tribes HD. As you progress through each level, the villagers expect more and more from you, so you'll end up satisfying requests for things like tiki bars and bubble baths... There are even a few breaks in the resource gathering to play very simple hidden-object interludes.

As resource games go, Jack of All Tribes HD is a great example of how to make things easier for new players. The genre tends to be well suited for older players who can think logically about timing and scheduling and the variable weight of resources. This is done so that young players can't really fail, and more seasoned players can go to town competing for score. There is also a lot of interaction on the screen that is perfectly crafted for young players. In several levels, you'll see your village attacked by marauders, leaving you in the role of defender, tapping the bad guys repeatedly to shoo them away. The hidden object levels are really just for variety and present very little challenge compared to some of the more elaborate seek-and-find game on the market. In a nutshell, Jack of All Tribes HD is perfectly balanced for young players that want the feel of an epic adventure, but can only process so much strategy in one sitting.

As with most games on iOS, the mechanics are pretty simple. The control scheme in Jack of All Tribes HD takes a moment to get used to, because it doesn't always give you immediate feedback. You learn to recognize some visual indicators that an action is triggered, but there's no queue of pending actions, as in some games. There are also lots of actions that aren't directly mapped to resource gathering, like grabbing villagers and moving them around, or tapping houses where they're sleeping to wake them up for work. You can even corral errant pigs and chickens to keep the food production moving along by tapping and dragging them when they get out of line.

Jack of All Tribes HD isn't crafted for the seasoned gamer, and even more faithful fans of casual gaming may not find enough challenge here. What the game does well is build an engaging series of resource-gathering challenges across a wide world with eclectic villagers, humorous dialogue, and unique challenges. It's a perfect match for younger gamers looking for a way into the real-time strategy genre.