Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey – Avoiding Mass Extinction

The early history of humanity holds an undeniable fascination. The question of where we come from can influence where we are heading, although based on the experience of playing Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, it is remarkable that humans as a species didn’t die off before it began.

Ancestors is a somewhat unlikely combination of God Sim and Survival game, where the player attempts to lead a tribe of apes through the process of learning, discovery and evolution in order to bring the apes to the point where they become the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens.

The player controls a single ape avatar at a time, travelling through a lush jungle in order to discover what is within it, learn how to make and use tools and find other apes to join your tribe, before passing on the information collected to the next generation. If the ape dies, the player is put in control of another ape, but everything the previous ape has learned is lost, forcing the player to start again from scratch.

The frustration of dying repeatedly is one that becomes all too familiar as the player attempts to progress further into the environment and learn new things. While the jungle is rich with things to find and explore, it is also teeming with lethal hazards, ranging from poisonous berries, venomous snakes, sabre-tooth cats and even thorn bushes capable of shredding flesh like tissue paper.

Very little in the way of guidance is provided to the player, the basics of movement and what each button on the controller does is provided, but for every other aspect of learning and survival, the player needs to apply trial-and-error. If the ape avatar is injured, the player needs to find a kind of leaf that will stop the bleeding, but frantically stripping the leaves off various bushes yields nothing, as the life of the ape slowly bleeds away. As it turns out, once the ‘leaf essence’ is gathered, it needs to be ground into a paste with a rock, but good luck figuring that out. There is no inventory system, so it is not even possible to store useful things like wound-healing leaves for later use. On the other hand, that makes a certain amount of sense, as where would a naked ape store it anyway?

On the plus side, the environment looks incredible. For what is nominally an indie game, a lot of attention to details has been put into the plants and animals, and the animation is impressive, with the various creatures moving with a convincing degree of realism. This is reflected in the travelling system of the avatar ape, which is activated by holding and releasing a button to grab and release tree branches and leap between trees using the built-up momentum. This system is quite satisfying and fun to use, and reflects lead designer Patrice Désilets previous work on titles such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the Assassin’s Creed series.

The Evolution system is also fairly intuitive, exploring and encountering new things grants ‘Neuronal Energy’. When the ape goes to sleep, this energy can be applied to learn new abilities, or improve existing ones. The interface for this is represented by an image of the various branching neurons in the brain of the ape. One of the earliest and most crucial abilities to unlock is the ability to use both hands simultaneously, which unlocks the ability to make a sharpened stick, which can then be used for hunting.

Another positive is the way that the enhanced senses of the ape are used. Pressing a button shows an overlay which highlights particular things of interest that the ape can see and hear. Liberal use of this ability is critical to traversing the environment and avoiding hazards, such as the snake slithering through the grass unseen.

Patience is something best cultivated in playing Ancestors. With so much of interest out there to explore, the temptation to rush out into it is almost overwhelming, but that approach invariably leads to death. Instead, a slow, more cautious approach is often a better idea, regularly utilising the ape’s enhanced senses to discern danger before proceeding. The slow and steady approach also works towards building relationships with others of the tribe, as in order to mate and pass on genes, a certain level of intimacy needs to be cultivated, which mostly involves grooming and back rubs.

Ancestors is a title that skews towards realism, and attempts the difficult tightrope walk between providing a meaningful challenge and what makes a game fun. Though there are glorious moments when everything ‘clicks’, for the most part the player is left in frustrated confusion. This appears to be by design, as the developers at Panache Digital Games have said that since the apes don’t know what they are doing, the same should be true of the player. Sadly, this does somewhat strip much of the fun from the game.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is something of an oddity. There is a lot of depth to uncover, and problems to overcome, but with a difficulty curve like a brick wall, many players will end up walking away in frustration. For those with the patience of a mountain, this is worth checking out, as the lush environments are beautiful to behold, and there are a lot of fascinating discoveries to be made and passed on down the generations. For most, though, the deliberately obtuse nature of the gameplay will be a turn-off.

2/5