You should not have a disaster like that while the game was paused. Are you absolutely certain that the game displayed "GAME PAUSED" at the bottom of the screen when this happened? It's very easy to accidentally pause or unpause the game using the space bar.

We have put a lot of testing into the pause feature and have never seen anything like that occur. Would you mind describing exactly how you were pausing and unpausing the game? That might help up determine what happened.

Yes, it had game paused on the screen.
I pause it by using option and then pause the game speed. I stopped using the spacebar after it failed to work once and I did not realise till I opened it about 36 hours later. And my villagers left alone on fast went a little mad and all were refusing to work as they liked lying around doing nothing!

Then I got a green box with message abut the disaster.
But there I was looking at the skeletons.

Still had my technology points and the fire was still burning. Even after 36 hours or so.
But no food and no villagers.

Thanks for the information. We will see if we can reproduce this in our studio. It would help to know what you do after you pause the game from the options screen. Click Done, then Quit? Or do you do something else?

Sometimes I move to the other tribe.
I have 1 nature and 1 magic.
But if I am finished playing I will after putting it on pause via Options, then press Quit.

But this day I just quit I was so upset/disheartened.
I had just upgraded to the Mac v1.0.4 and had to trash my game preferences, 2 large tribes, I tried to explain to to them at Big Fish about the fact the game had been running several months but they said it I wanted to get the upgrade I had to follow their instructions.
So it was bye bye to my 2 large tribes. Even ir oine of them had a bunch of lazt so and so's!!

I asked if I saved the preferences to my spare hard drive then downloaded the game would it work if I put my preferences back in but they said no, I did try it, but it just kept on giving me Version 1.
So I had to trash every thing and re-begin.

Already upset at losing my 2 big tribes, I had just got used to this new tribe to lose them all "poof". I had not chosen a faction either yet, I had upgraded to Restoration 2 to get the lift mended and get the new trees in place. And uncovered the Roster of the Dead. And one Master Builder was moving the rubble, the plans were on the chalkboard for the bath, and I put my other 2 Master Builders to work in Research to get more points.
So baby and all died.



All it said was unknown causes for all of their deaths.

New tribe coming along slowly.


Then later I re-opened in and began a new game with the same tribe.

I don't have the Big Fish Games version of VV3 to test with, but I haven't yet been able to reproduce anything like this in my testing. I will let you know if we are able to figure out why you are losing your games.

In the meantime, one thing that would help you recover more easily if that happens to you again is to make backups of your savegame files periodically. If you have a backup, you can recover your game to the last point at which you made a backup. You can find the procedures for VV3 here.

That's what caused the problem! You must return to the game after using Options to pause it. The best way to pause the game is to use the space bar.

See the FAQ.

You don't have to click "Play" for pause to take effect. The FAQ entry says, "If you paused your game using the game's Options screen, the setting will not take effect until you either exit the game or click Play." The trouble comes when you leave it on the Options or Menu screen.

OK, thanks for that.
Just that was when I thought I had paused it with an old tribe, and had not, obviously did not look for the game paused, and quit and they had got up to all sorts whilst I was away for 36 hours on fast!!
So that is why I went to the Options menu and paused it there.

Pausing from Options screen works fine, as long as you quit the game. See my post right above yours.

To date, I have played VV1, VV2, and am currently playing VV3, and have only had one villager (in VV1) die from starvation.

For VV3, I used the following strategy at the beginning of the game -

Start the fire.
Plant the fallen fruit.
Get honey from the bee hive. I had only one villager doing this, but I did slightly train another one just in case.
I only had 8 villagers, 2 were kids & one was a nursing mom, which left me with 4 working adults. With one assigned to farming, one or two on building (to adept level), and the other one or two on research. Cross-trained my villagers to at least adept level while keeping everyone possible on research.

It's not necessary to have several hundred food points to survive; villagers can get by on much less, so every time my food got over 150 or so, I made my farmer research too.

Don't know about anyone else but all MY villagers have ADHD. Had to constantly keep putting them back to what they were supposed to be doing.

Got the 7000 tech points to restore the lift first. Then kept two villagers (possibly three if mom is finished nursing) researching while new trees grow. Hunted for mushrooms a lot. Easiest way is to pick up a kid FIRST, then cruise around & look. Find a collectible or mushroom, drop kid #1 on it, grab another kid & keep going.

I had practically everyone trained to Elder level before choosing a chief. I hardly ever pause the game before leaving, but I do change the speed to slow. That way, the fire stays lit, and the scientists hopefully keep researching (instead of taking a bath, watching the fish, or something else equally as useful).

Hope this was helpful.