My niece started a game a few weeks ago while visiting and forgot to pause it one night, when she opened it the next day all of her people were sick (algae in the ocean and no crops yet) anyways while she was building up her tech points to be able to farm her last man died. She has been running the game with 6 girls in the hopes of something happening to give her a man, all of the girls are grown now and a couple of them are elderly (ages 27-59), should she just call it quits and start a new game or try to wait it out? She now has 6 master scientist, 1 master builder (nothing left to build right now) and working on all 6 master farmers.

There are several different Island Events that can bring new villagers to your game, so it's never hopeless until all of your villagers have died.

How long is it between island events? I think she's only had 4 since she started the game. I've been playing it the past 2 days and only had 1 so far, unfortunately none have given any more people yet.

The game starts with an Island Event after 15 minutes, (when your village is brand new), then one 45 minutes after that. Then you'll get an Island Event every 24 hours. Note that pausing the game for extended lengths of time can prolong the amount of time you might have to wait for an Island Event.

Does game speed also have an effect?

I lost one of my ladies tonight so afraid to leave it running all the time, don't want all of them to die on me.

I understand the desire to avoid disaster by pausing the game, and if you can't check it often, that's probably the best you can do. The problem with pausing the game is that you will inevitably miss Island Events, which are the only possible source of new villagers. It's sort of a Catch-22 situation. The advice I usually give to players in your situation is a strategy that will provide the opportunity to get as many events as possible while the girls are still younger than 50:

Keep your game on slow speed to maximize the number of Island Events that you get in your villager's lives (more events happen during a villager's lifetime on slow speed than on any other game speed). Island Events are "scheduled" to occur a random number of hours (not game years) after the last one (usually in the range of 10-22 hours), so make sure that you launch your game at least twice a day to increase your chances of seeing the most events (and take care of any sick villagers or food issues). Also, don't pause the game if at all possible, since that will reduce the number of events that you get, sometimes significantly. If you frequently pause the game, you will see a reduction in the number of Island Events, because the game cannot generate a scheduled Island Event when the game is paused (so it will be skipped and another one scheduled from the time you launched the game).

While the mask tips do advise players to, "Pause the game if you go away for very long," it's not advisable to pause the game every time you're not playing. Our games are designed to use the real-time feature, which is how the the game 'continues' when it's off. The most progress is made, and you'll have the most satisfying game experience, if you use slow speed, rather than pausing the game, when you'll be away for less than a day. Unless you're very low on food and need to gather mushrooms to keep your tribe alive, it's far better to put the game on slow speed. If you keep your population levels appropriate for the available food supplies, you will not need to pause the game all the time.

I hope that helps you.

Thank you so much, I have about 4500 food for 5 people so I'm good on food for a while, a very long while if I don't get more people, so far I have one farming, 2 research and 2 building (until the briar patch is cleared) then I will have 3 research and 2 farming, should I put them all on research since I have so much food?

I always move my farmers to research or a building project when there's more than ample food. If you let them, those farmers will pile food up beyond what the tribe can ever eat!

At slow speed the number of food points earned per "normal" food item is reduced. The amount of food consumed per hour by the villagers is reduced by a similar amount. However, mushrooms have a fixed value (6 for a brown one, 35 for the rare red) so they become comparatively more valuable when the game is on slow.