I just started the game yesterday. I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'm having a good time doing it. I had 2 puzzles solved, food, researchers, a builder, even a child. Then, I open up my Zire 71 today and they are ALL DEAD!!!!!!!! What happened? is there anyway I can find out what happened? I mourn the loss of those silly little villagers.

Many of us get attached to those silly little villagers. You should have seen my reaction the first time my favorite villager died (a sweet little blonde-haired girl named Lala, who was wearing a red and white polka-dot skirt)! Unfortunately, there's no way to determine exactly why all of your villagers died. It's unusual to have them all die suddenly, although we have seen reports of it before. There are several things that can spell trouble for your little people, especially in the early part of the game. A declining food supply and untreated illness are the usual culprits if it's been more than 12 hours since you're checked on the game. The tribe needs more attention at the beginning of the game to help them survive until they've improved their skills and made some technological advances.

I'm going to assume that you didn't have a crash, since you didn't mention anything about experiencing one. Another thing that can kill your villagers is adjusting the system clock on your Palm, but you didn't mention that, either.

You may never know what happened to them, but it's unlikely that you'll experience that again with a new game. One thing you can do to get a starting group of villagers that you like is to keep starting a new game (over and over, if necessary) until you get just the right group of villagers to begin a new game. I do that sometimes, to see if I can get Lala back!

Thanks for the reply. I just hope they didn't suffer. I started a new village, and I'm afraid to sleep.

The easy way around that is to pause the game before you go to bed. They'll be safe all night and will be waiting for you in the morning, happy to see you!

> Another thing that can kill your villagers is adjusting the system clock on your Palm, but you didn't mention that, either.

If I adjust my time zone when travelling, what's the result? Suddenly + or - 8 hours does what?

The effect on the game depends upon whether you adjust the time forward or backward. Adjusting the clock backward usually affects only the "Realtime hours played" statistic in Village Sim, and can make it display an incredibly large number of hours played. That situation will usually be resolved once time "catches up with itself" (so to speak)!

Adjusting the clock forward by many hours can be more problematic for your villagers, because it's the same as leaving your little tribe unattended for that period of time. The good news is that ill effects are easily prevented by launching Village Sim (or any of LDW's realtime games) and pausing them before adjusting the system clock forward. That way your villagers (or plants or fish) will be placed in "stasis" and will be fine when you resume play again.