This game literally reverted me back into a chimpanzee.

I love the idea of being thrown into an environment with limited information and tools to try to challenge you to play in a way you're not used to, but there are different games that do this idea with similar difficulty curves way better. It's just simply not fun to play and the rewards aren't even that exciting when you actually do well.

There are just simply way too many enemies that one shot you everywhere you go while you're desperately trying to figure out how to feed or heal yourself, just making for a miserable experience once the funny monkey gimmick wears off.

Despite how vocal some folks like to posture themselves regarding the uniqueness of the medium and its use of interactivity to convey experiences not found in other artforms, judging from Ancestors' lukewarm reception, both from the critics and the consumers, it appears that the notion of utilizing gameplay with the purpose of anything other than immediate "fun" is still vastly underappreciated and maligned by most. Designing an entire game around the idea of discovery and progress through the process of trial and error seems like a sure way of shooting yourself in the foot, yet somehow Ancestors manages to pull off this venture while creating a unique combination of immersive survival sim and surprisingly good edutainment.

Initial frustration and sense overload that accompanies the first couple of hours eventually lead to a succession of small victories as you slowly figure how your fragile ape manipulates himself and his surroundings, and the ever presence of predators lurking about makes each detour into the wild an exciting and dangerous quest that has you dreading every second you aren't on top of a tree, making each territory conquest an important milestone. Ancestors succeeds in implementing the experience of human evolution through its guideless gameplay, making it hard not to feel the crushing weight of time and nature as you get your ape to stand on his two feet and guide his clan into the outskirts of the even more perilous Savanah setting where there are no trees to hide in.

If anything, I wish the game was even more cruel. As the game systems and mechanics start to unveil themselves over time, the artificiality of Ancestors inevitably starts to show off, and much of its previous obstacles and challenges start to become either obsolete or easy to shrug off, with birth even becoming just another tool to exploit. Maybe it's just me speaking from a place of privilege, considering I played Ancestors after a bunch of QoL updates were added in response to the inumerous criticisms at launch, but in a world where Rain World exists, I do have to wonder how much better my experience with Ancestors would have been if I didn't have the ability to choose how much HUD information was displayed and if the game continued its initial punishing difficulty until the very end.

It's depressing to see that the one time Ubisoft people stop doing Assassin's Creed to do something else much more worthwhile, it is immediately shut down, which kinda sends mixed signals about how much people really want them to do something different. But when you take into account that Ancestors came out in the same year as works like Death Stranding and Pathologic 2 did, I guess we can be optimistic about the future of videogames.

PS: No, you can NOT throw your feces in this game. I know, I was beyond disappointed as well.

This is a game about surviving and evolving as early hominids across time, developing into more modern hominin species in overcoming the challenges of the world around them. After survival, your goal is to see how much faster you can evolve as a species than science suggest. While not without its inaccuracies and liberties taken, it's confidently rooted in Paleoanthropology and seeks to craft an enjoyable experience through the lenses of our distant ancestor Hominid/Hominin. Thoroughly engrossing thanks to minimal hand-holding and a very thoughtfully crafted "Help" page that gives the player a general idea of progression but avoids specifics, forcing you to quickly realize to pay close attention to the discoveries and "tips" that pop up when you accomplish something with your primates. This hands-off design approach can be made even more stern through an option of forgoing a tutorial and even a HUD. The adventure can initially be very frustrating without either, but allowing for play this way was a risk well worth taking. For those who can overcome the (truthfully pretty shallow once acclimated) learning curve, it culminates into every step of the journey feeling like a genuine series of discovery and accomplishments. While I eventually came to use the "Full Hud and minimal tutorial" option myself after an evolution or two, I strongly recommend this game be played from start to finish as minimal as one can stand. To that effect, I won't take full stock of what could reasonably be picked out as flaws but its worth noting one in particular (though I don't begrudge this game in the slightest for it): Replayabiliy is not a factor. This was clearly designed as a one-and-done experience. That said, you can only experience this for the first time once, and this game is more than deserving in experiencing it to its fullest. While it may certainly be possible, as with all games, to return to it again in years hence with sultry nostalgia flirting with my future self, the Odyssey is over for me. That's okay though, because it made for a unique and immersive set of experiences that I'm sure one day will be fond memories.

The concept behind this game is absolutely amazing, but numerous quality-of-life issues, and a general lack of polish, cause the gameplay to really struggle at fully bringing that concept to life, even with the help of the game's stunning graphics (which could honestly be mistaken for a nature documentary).

The idea is so simple and clever that I'm surprised it hasn't been done in a game like this before. You control a tribe of apes, who over 10 million years evolve from an unnamed chimp-like species into Homo Ergaster, the earliest humans. The player's job is to guide them, taking control of one ape at a time, slowly building their skills and intelligence by making tools, hunting, and gathering food. The challenge is that the game won't tell you much apart from the most basic controls such as Jump, Grab or Sleep. Instead of a map, you are reliant on your ape's senses to find food, threats, and landmarks for navigation. The rest of the mechanics and environment must therefore be explored through pure trial and error.

Brilliant idea, right? Sadly, the game is all downhill from there. There is a combination of assassin's creed-style context-based controls for running, grabbing items, and climbing around in trees, with quick-time events for fighting and crafting. The former often do not work correctly, usually grabbing the wrong item (annoying), or occasionally falling out of trees, then desperately trying to grab surfaces to stop/slow your descent before you hit the ground and get injured (infuriating). After a while of doing this, it just seems easier to sprint/leap along the ground and deal with the occasional animal attack quick-time event as it happens, which feels against the spirit of the game.

The quick-time events are quite easy, because there's just one type. You hold a button, then release it when the screen flashes and controller rumbles. All of the fighting, building, and social bonding boils down to this one action, so you will become a master before even reaching the first evolution. As you can imagine, this gets boring fast, especially because early on, you will have to do it multiple times to complete just one task. It does get easier after a while, as you evolve fine motor skills and learn how to sharpen rocks into knives, but surely the early game should be spent on more fun things than manually crafting spears at a rate of 2 minutes each.

And you will need to carry spears constantly, because the wildlife AI is the most broken thing in the game. They simply do not behave like real animals, either getting stuck on terrain features, spawning randomly behind you for a surprise attack, or running across half the map and freezing because you scared them too far away from their default path. This becomes especially irritating as over a third of the in-game achievements, which you need to do in order to evolve, ask you to force two animals close to each other so that they fight and one kills the other. Thank God that these weren't included in the Steam Achievements, and may God help you if you attempt to get them all anyway.

An additional annoyance that becomes apparent after a while is that your evolution doesn't really feel like it's happening over millions of years, because the game-world constantly looks exactly the same. The only change is that you and enemy wildlife spawn on slightly different areas of the map. Everything else remains unchanged, including things such as plants and food, which apparently can last for millions of years in the same place without rotting. I'm not asking for geological changes, but would it be too much for the trees and bushes to change over a million years, or for the wildlife to evolve alongside you and become more dangerous?

[SPOILERS] The lack of polish shows itself in other ways too, such as the game ending abruptly after reaching the final evolution, rolling the credits, and then freezing on a black screen. If you press start, you can still see the stats of the ape you were playing before you launched the evolution, and from there you can return to the title screen. The game doesn't even let you play as the first human species, because if you reload, you're still that same ape. This is anti-climactic, and actually makes it impossible to unlock all the skills on the skill-tree, as some require you to evolve first, which feels like a bunch of salt in the disappointment wound. [/SPOILERS]

So yeah, that's Ancestors. On the whole, I'd say it just barely manages to capture the concept that it began from, and it's still worth playing if you're into that idea and are open to reading a strategy guide. But it could have been so much better if it had just been given a bit more care and development.

I can see why people don't like this game. All their frustrations with this game are true. It's very difficult to start, they explain barely anything to you which makes simple tasks complex and you'll end up dying a lot.

But this game just has a charm to it.

I'll admit I used a guide to help me, but once I got the basics down, it was fantastic! The concept is just unique and a breath of fresh air. I love exploring different areas of the game; conquering your fear is so satisfying! Learning to fight predators and becoming an apex predator will never get old. I will agree that it gets repetitive and I do wish they expanded more areas and with more creatures and animals.

This game certainly isn't for everyone. And I only paid £10 for this game instead of the full price. However, this is one of my favourite games and it never ceased to amaze me when I first played it.

Music is also a banger btw!

I should have listened. Reviews for this game were more or less universally terrible with the same critique showing up over and over again - that the game is immediately convoluted and complicated and confusing. Well, add my voice to the chrous. What sucks is that this game really should have been playable and enjoyable! The goal here is "guide a troop of humanoid ape creatures through the process of human evolution over several generations" and you accomplish this by exploring and investigating, mating, fighting off animals and other threats, and growing skill trees meant to propagte down through your future lineage. It's a cool concept, the game was pretty, and the controls weren't terrible to use. A winning formula! Except that the game doesn't explain anything whatsoever. This is not an exaggeration. There's no tutorial at all, and you're thrown immediately into the game with no guidance and no clue how to progress or succeed. The makers did this intentionally, citing that human evolution itself only happened through a series of trial and error. Well, yes, but that's a terrible way to design a damn video game! This game would have been immensely better and more playable had it walked the player through even just one day of this explorer-evolver simulation - it's time to eat, maybe go have sex with that ape, hey what's that sharp stick do, etc. Instead it's just confusing and hard to understand. A shame, since all the other elements of an interesting game seem to be here!