I always find it funny when I see a suggestion in a loading screen on a pause menu. “Think about how you’d act if you had to survive in the wild,” they will say. “I don’t know, I’d probably curl up in a ball, cry for a week, and die a horrible and painful death as I rot away across that time,” I’d reply. A bit dark for this early in a review, but when you’re going back to the dark ages, you might as well keep it consistent.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a game about your aunt and uncle that are in their 60s bumping uglies at a swingers party in the back yard. It is about the time before iPhones, indoor plumbing, and that one uncle you wanted to carve up like a turkey this past thanksgiving. Taking place about ten million years ago in fact, before we were really walking upright and communicating even in our basic grunts as we do on Twitter now.

You play as a monkey in a clan of several monkeys, at the early days of our unshaved ancestors; the literal monkeys clinging to a rock falling through space. With that, you have to survive as one would in the wild. This means avoiding dangers, finding food, building fundamental shelter, and yes swearing quite a bit when there’s a big bird or snake trying to eat you. Very much the small child in a big scary world in the sense of Limbo or Inside; but there’s less of a puzzle to it all.

A lot of Ancestors is about discovery, such as scooping up water and sniffing it, grabbing berries from plants and checking if they are ok to eat, and having a swingers party. You begin with a cutscene of the dangers; snakes, crocodiles, falling from trees, getting an STD, being attacked by Big Bird from the Muppets, and telling your partner they have a medical condition without a cure for a couple million years. Following this, you’re meant to find a safe place as a small chimp, but there are issues with this.

At least from my playthrough, tutorials didn’t show up until after I’d done what they were trying to teach me. Playing as this little baby that’s terrified of everything and sees the danger in everything without its parent, I was a little disorientated, as you’re meant to be. The idea of danger, for the most part, is what I’m saying isn’t presented well enough to know what the danger might be or where it will come from. It is all red outlines of big teeth about to eat you, as it comes from everywhere, it just feels like noise rather than a warning of what will happen if I go in X-direction or standstill.

Beyond this very noisy beginning, it is all about exploration and putting enough sand around a green lady that Charlton Heston gets a bit angry. As well as the aforementioned: Picking up shrubs, rubbing plants on your genitals, and drinking water. This is when the game opens up to be about your senses and discovering where to go, how to survive, and keep your clan moderately alive. Eat berries around them, drink water, or sleep around them and they will follow your lead.

This is when I decided to turn back to my PC, open some podcasts, and see if there was anything new I wanted to listen to. Which is to say, it isn’t a very interesting gameplay loop unless you like doing remedial jobs and reading a bit of Latin. From here on you’re meant to learn what plants to eat, where to drink water, and don’t go standing in bird nests. Over time, while listening to stories of murders being normal for a while then blending faces, you’ll evolve the species a little more. You really couldn’t do worse than I have.

Within the first settlement, I killed three monkeys, gave birth to another two of them, and evolved us about 10 minutes into the future. Something tells me, the now great species that stand atop the food chain with hunting implements greater than just a spear, wouldn’t even get to that religion bit us stupid humans created. Just feel lucky I don’t command our ever-evolving species, we’d still be bashing rocks together hoping for fire, and we’d never know that the Clangers have since moved since we invaded.

As a whole, Ancestors is a terrifyingly complex simulation of survival in our species’ early days. With a complex control system, to begin with, it all feels overly cumbersome for a basic survival game. While it is beautiful and majestic at conveying the idea of climbing, picking up, early communication, and life as half-formed species with the world that wants to kill you, complexities weigh it down. Along with already mentioned tutorials not appearing for a while, I felt at a loss.

Have we just become so stupid with autosave systems and being held by the hand into battle? Maybe. I’m torn on the idea of figuring out systems on my own, as it felt natural to learn the world I was in while learning the basics of the game, but knowing nothing led me to be more careful. You shouldn’t be, it is a game about playing the systems to advance the monkey race to great heights; sometimes that means throwing Klive off a cliff. You need to make mistakes and figure out what specific things mean.

The prime example of our primate pals is at the bottom of the screen. I don’t know if I broke something, but without the tutorial, I had to figure out the orb at the bottom is your life, strength, and general warning system of your three main requirements: Food, drink, and sleep. You don’t do these three regularly, you’ll not be able to climb, you’ll be slower, and you’ll probably die. So with none of this explained, I learned what I could climb, what effects foods and other edibles, and how being attacked effects me.

The reason that orb is important is the other thing at the bottom, for that’s all I can call it, a thing, a doohicky, a whatchamacallit, a Barry, or most likely, “the thingy.” It sits in the bottom left, it is an eye with a white bar swooping down towards said eye. I know it is doing something, I know it is probably important, yet I’ve still to figure it out. I had a theory it was to do with Big Bird swooping down, maybe danger, but when I’m about to be attacked I’m not paying attention to it. It is there and I doubt the game will tell me anytime soon. Hesitantly I want to say that’s a good thing.

Being entirely about learning, you’d be without anything to do if you were just outright told straight away. What it does tell you, and suggests in the pause menu is vague enough that the entire discovery is up to you. In short, it is pretentious and requires a lot of time to learn everything. Not that this is bad, you know how to move; the very early basics of playing are simple enough, they are told and can be understood. However, moving forward on the evolutionary scale isn’t going to be easy.

In fact, it would be better to take a couple of hours, throw monkeys against the wall, and learn how the game works. Don’t play to survive, play to eat things you’re not meant to and learn. Either way, you’ll have to restart your lineage at some point if you’re not doing what the game isn’t telling you to do but wants you to nonetheless. As much as it feels like protohistory Assassin’s Creed with all the beautiful movement, it isn’t about having that fun movement.

Your mission, for the most part, is to evolve our early bipedal ancestors into the land of homo sapiens that groom themselves a little more. Every death is counted against you, every birth in your favor, and it is hinted at that you have to get there earlier than we did. As a game it isn’t entirely revolutionary, it doesn’t even evolve gaming all that much, but it feels like it does more than it should. With a simple idea, the scope feels like it was blown out of proportion.

In conclusion, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a game that feels large because it doesn’t tell you where to go or what to do, but rather vaguely hints at its goal. With a movement system that is spot on and steps above Assassin’s Creed, as the lead designer previously worked on the series, it feels right. However, with little direction or fun to be had while getting to the goal, there’s very little to recommend unless you like being attacked by boars and eaten by snakes the size of buses.

An Xbox One review copy of Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey was provided by Private Division for this review.

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Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

$39.99 USD

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Fun exploration.
• Movement that feels right.

Cons

• Dull survival gameplay loop.
• Threats get in the way of fun.
• A lack of a goal worth your time or effort.