From the options menu you can choose the speed of your game to be slow, normal or fast. You can adjust these times to suit your needs. You can also pause the game when you need to do so and the game will not progress until you start it back up again.
It is not a good idea to have too many people in your tribe in the early stages. When you have a lot of people in your tribe you will have more people to feed. Your food supplies will be limited so you have to make sure that you have enough food for everyone.
I kept my population around 10 for a long while until I had enough food that I could afford to provide for more villagers. Once in a while your villagers will make babies without your influence so you need to be prepared for that.
One of the very first things you want to do when you start the game is scroll to the upper right side of the screen, by the hill. On the ground you’ll see a piece of fruit, drop one of your villagers on top of it and they will plant the seed for your first tree.
Concentrate on getting mushrooms as much as you can. The best time to get mushrooms is when it is raining. Adults cannot collect mushrooms only kids can.
Build a fire and name a chief right away. Look at the sections below on instructions on how to do both.