Weapons are used in hunting animals. Knowledge of the environment is important, so explore the territory to find locations of the springs, the game and the other tribes. Defining a new character starts a new adventure. Name the character, choose whether it is to be a man or a woman and select characteristics like agility and charisma. In the shareware version, you always play a character named Torgan.
Preferences allow for definition of music type and sound effects, and the second player.
The second player can be controlled by the computer or by a human player. This is a fun game once you get used to some quirks in the user interface. My Torgan died of thirst a few times until I worked out how to tell him to drink. Instead of clicking on the down arrow in the list of actions click just below it. This changes the hand cursor to a finger pointing down, which in turn accesses additional menu items including 'consume'.