Creating a village is easy; keeping it alive is much harder, as you will see when you play Habitat. Small houses, trees, and crops are represented as tiles on a small grid. To cut down a tree, just click on it. To plant a crop, you just click on it. To hunt a roaming wild boar, just... Well, you get the idea.

It's all very intuitive. What do the (incredibly faint) numbers on the ground mean? And when will Quest Mode accept that I have produced 10 wheat, when Habitat is usually good at introducing me to how it works, but when it doesn't, it stops my progress, stops my village from thriving, and the climate cools and most of my village dies from the cold (because of course it's my because it wasn't my fault) because of that.

I mention the tweaks because, as far as I can tell, the game is a puzzle-like building game that needs just a few more tweaks to be really good. It's cute, well thought out, reasonably designed, and not afraid to be unforgiving. Can you keep a village alive? No, of course not. The high scores are a bit lame, but they give a decent breakdown of successes and failures. When you're ready, reload the world and start again.

For more great free experiences, check out our compilation of the best free PC games.