Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a rebellious game about human evolution, replete with challenge and storytelling opportunities of bare survival.

So far, I have put about six hours total into the game between both sessions. I am very excited to learn how to wield a weapon to kill predators, and to explore more into the jungle. This has been a really unique and challenging experience, and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey has gigantic ambitions. It proposes ten million years of evolution, condensed into a 10 GB game, and that is a feat worth highlighting. If you like stories with endearing characters, a precise goal and someone telling you what to do, Ancestors will leave you disappointed. In that case, it offers only a redundant and sometimes incomprehensible gameplay loop, with a pretty repulsive look to boot. For the more adventurous, Ancestors will awaken your most primal instincts to put you in the shoes of our great ancestors, and bridges genres in a brilliant way to serve its theme.

For anyone interested in a rough idea of what our early ancestors went through as they slowly evolved over time… this game does offer an effective look and feel for that. It has some pretty irritating issues… but for the most part it is likely to draw you in and see you exploring your environment trying to unlock that next ability that will unlock the next branch on the family tree. Evolutionary denialists… well I assume they are not even considering this title anyway, for everyone else… if you can get past the hangups… Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey actually manages to mix a bit of education with an interesting game that may well find you absorbed for hours on end.

The world of Ancestors is an intricate system with its own rules generating exciting events and stories. That is why it’s so fun to explore.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is far from being a title that the mainstream crowd could easily pick up and play. Technical aspects, like the wonky camera and uninviting controls, can be overcome with time, but the camera system and lack of any direction are enough to turn off most people. Stick with it through multiple restarts, however, and you'll discover a title that has loads of fulfilling moments and deep characters you'll get attached to, despite a lack of understandable speech. Games have rarely done something like this, and that fact is amplified when you look at the scope this is trying to cover. If you're looking for a survival title that feels different and distinct, give Ancestors a look.

Ancestors is not a perfect game, and I think it could have benefited from another six months in development. But the overall scope and reach of the game make playing it worthwhile. I hope the developers will let people know more about some of the mechanics used, like the weird mini-map, because players will want to know. Weirdly, I feel ready, somehow, to be left alone in a jungle.

Panache Digital Games has created a truly immersive, lush environment that’s thrilling to explore and traverse. Utilizing our natural instincts for discovery is truly the most ingenious aspect of the game, as it rewards us for problem solving in ways that already come naturally to us. It’s such a gratifying experience to see our hominids start out with no understanding of the world, to then become fairly self-sustaining creatures thanks to education and discovery. More than anything, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey shows us what amazing creatures we truly are and how far we’ve come as a species. Understanding our past is the gateway to our future.

Ancestors is a game that goes off the beaten track, literally and figuratively. It can be challenging at times, but it gets easier once you understand this simple trick: if you die all the time, it's not because the game is too hard. It's because you're doing something wrong.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a risky, brave and immense game. Evolution as the key to everything. A huge and difficult experience just like life.

It’ll be an acquired taste, but for those who have the patience for its deliberate opaqueness, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is the type of game its fans will be playing on and off for months, if not years. Its challenging nature makes it equal parts compelling and frustrating, but there’s no question this smart survival adventure contains loads of rewards for persistent players.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is like no survival game I’ve played before. Charting human evolution is an extraordinarily complex concept for a video game, yet Panache Digital Games has pulled it off by way of carving its own route through a crowded genre. There’s nothing flashy about the brutal landscape in which you attempt to evolve your lineage, and I assume some won’t be interested in a game with unlockable abilities that include being able to sniff a bit farther or hear a little clearer. But this is a wonderfully unique experience that will be deeply appealing to those interested in a hardcore challenge, that just so happens to be rooted in a time period that is completely unexplored territory.

Ancestors is a great step forward for the survival genre. It has all the pieces you'd expect, including water and food requirements but also a few unique ones. All of these tie into the game in a much better way than in most other survival games. Plus, its narrative of guiding humankind through its early evolution in prehistoric Africa makes for a great story to play in a beautiful place to do it.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an impossibly ambitious game, attempting to summarize the whole of human evolution into the span of a few hours—and succeeding to a surprising degree.

A refreshing concept, smart and well executed with a solid immersion and a deep progression feeling that let you forge your own story through evolution. Unfortunately, the game isn't for everyone and it can be frustrating, especially in the first hours, thanks to camera, interfaces, or punitive death system.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is difficult and opaque in many important ways, but its premise is refreshing and its vision compelling enough to keep the player moving forward. Expect lots of false starts and failure at the beginning, but eventually the mechanics become familiar and the achievement of inching the species forward becomes uniquely rewarding.

In an industry where many games are about completing a checklist of objectives, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey doesn’t tell players what to do, it asks what they’re capable of.

A completely fresh idea delivered with a mix of already tested mechanics. The result is an almost perfect game which would have been perfect if it was focused a bit more in enjoyment rather than simulating the exact life of Hominidae.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an original take on the survival genre with a beautiful flora, but with some problems in its fauna.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a fresh take on the survival genre, one that takes us through the steps of human evolution, but falls short of its potential with a gameplay loop that becomes monotonous really soon.

A very unique game about the evolution of man that isn’t afraid to drop you in the world and make you figure out everything for yourself, which may turn some people off immediately.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a brave and original video game that seeks to surprise.

I found the game very satisfying overall. There are, of course, a few hiccups here and there that will doubtless be resolved in time. Nothing is so terrible, however, that it takes away from the overarching experience.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a breath of fresh air in the sandbox/survival genre. At the same time, the original atmosphere and compelling gameplay is blended with some subpar elements that ought to discourage many players - and there's too much repetitiveness.

Despite some repeated combat and the boring management system, it's fun to play as a gorilla and explore jungles.

There are many open-world survival games, but none of them is quite like Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. The game takes advantage of its ambitious premise and delivers an immersive and meticulous survival game that rewards experimentation and curiosity in a unique way.