It’s a Jungle Out There – or, more specifically, a jungle tribe living in your PDA. You see Handy Entertainment, the developers of Dreamway and the Riverland Screen Saver (you can read my review here…) have just released another screen saver program for the Palm OS5, PPC, and Smartphone and have appropriately named it The Tribe.

 

Unlike Riverland, The Tribe does not have a real-time mode in which it takes a full 24 hours to morph through the daylight and night time hours. (This is fine with me since I generally kept Riverside on an accelerated pace where it went through the day in a one-hour period…)  Rather, they have given you the option of viewing a tribes often comedic actions during a 5, 7.5, or 15 minute “day” that will be sure to capture your attention and the attention of anyone else in the area.  It’s almost akin to looking through a portal into the lives of a small tribe of natives (eight people including the baby…) as they go through their daily routines.

 

 

As with Riverside, The Tribe uses Handy Entertainment’s SSManager (screen saver manager) on the Palm (and a similar application called PocketCandy on the PPC) to control the options of the screen saver. These include the options of keeping the screen saver on while the PDA is in the cradle and other launching preferences.

 

 

Unlike Riverside, however, you do not need to access the SSManager program in order to change the time modes.  Instead you can tap on analog clock (if it has been activated from within the SSManager) and change the modes from slow, medium, and fast.

 

As much as I have enjoyed watching the Riverland screen saver on my Zodiac as it sat in the cradle on my desk, I enjoy The Tribe a lot more.  The colors are bright and vibrant and the animations really catch your eye.  I have even found that folks around my office gather in my cubicle for a few minutes to see what the little guys are going to do next. 

 

 

 

 

In addition to being able to scroll up and down to see extended portions of the screen (and other animations such as a visit by a UFO, I found that the animations and gradual changes from daylight to dark and back again to be very smooth.  I would suggest scrolling to the top of the screen until you are totally familiar with what happens there every day and then using the bottom of the screen for a while as a change of pace. Afterwards, you can switch back and forth (simply by using your navigation buttons or Zodiac joystick) during particular parts of the day to catch your favorite action.

 

Summary: This program offers real “eye candy” appeal for those of us who like to wow our friends and the low price makes this a Must Have application. The Tribe is very affordably priced at $6.95 and there is a trial version available. 

Note: In addition to The Tribe and Riverside, Handy Entertainment offers a free Matrix screen saver and plan on releasing a sequel to Riverside in the next week or two.