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.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is one of the most interesting survival games I've played in the last few years. With very interesting mechanics and a gameplay capable of evolving together with the brains of the apes, Ancestors lets us experience the struggles of the human evolution. Unfortunately cumbersome controls and a difficulty that easily leads to frustration which partially ruins the experience.

Although this foundation is stable enough for a big game, it actually shakes tremendously in the higher floors.

Ancestors is not a stereotypical game: its mix of survival game and roleplay elements enhances an adventure as imperfect as it is precious, and definitely deserving of the spotlight.

Ancestors is the basis of what could be a very good survival game once it's been patched, or for a second opus. It's hard to learn, very repetitive, but once you got the first few hours in, it starts to reveal its potential.

Ancestors Humankind Odyssey is a game which we embody the deans of humanity, immersed in the fascinating, extremely immersive and often moving adventure of the great story of life. However, Panache Digital Games has not completely managed to offer a game always technically up to the originality of his proposal. It is nonetheless a singular experience that arouses great sympathy and for which it would be a shame to miss out, especially if the few really disabling design flaws were to be corrected soon.

Ancestors The Humankind Odyssey is a unique game. You must guide your clan through time and evolution, which is fun with lots of experimentation. There's also a lot of frustration to be had however. Still, the game offers a special experience.

Ancestors develops an incredibly ambitious idea, and to some extend, it does achieve its purpose. There are moments that are simply incredible, although its repetitive mechanics get in the way often that we would’ve liked.

A survival game that feels like a puzzle and plays a bit awkwardly. Overall, a brain-burning but enjoyable experience.

In Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, survival is easy once you decipher the basic mechanics of evolution and sit through the cutscenes, but the journey is full of moments of discovery.

This is simply a game too ambitious for the budget available, which tries to dwell on the farming, but with good ideas on his side.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey does something genuinely original with the survival genre; no matter how often I've missed a jump and splattered on the jungle floor or got blindsided by a panther I kept on playing. Every time I've been infuriated, I've come back for more. It may lack a concrete story, but you'll find yourself writing little stories in your head as you roam – the time you dodged that giant eagle, or distracted a tiger just long enough for your fellow primate to reach a tree. If Panache can squash most of the bugs, this could be a Game of the Year contender.

Initial bewilderment gives way to fascination as you understand what Ancestors is trying to do, but fiddly controls and a lack of hand-holding leads to frustration.

Ancestors:The Humankind Odyssey is a mixed experience. The idea behind the game which takes you through 8 million years of human evolution is wonderful, but on the other side forces many limitations on the developers, and in the end you'll either fall in love with it or hate it.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is one of a kind, but it works more in theory than in practice.

In the end, Ancestors is a fine experiment that I’m sure will interest a lot of people, but I must say it wasn’t quite my cup of tea. As fun as it is to run around and climb stuff, leading a group of apes into a bigger group of somewhat smarter apes is not exactly an exhilarating proposition – especially when you can easily screw up to the point of losing the clan, not finding a surrogate, and having to restart the game and relearn everything all over again. If the idea of playing through evolution without any guidance and getting your ass kicked by nature appeals to you, then definitely give Ancestors a chance – it’s the kind of experience you’re probably not getting from anywhere else.

The marvel of evolution gives way to a gameplay loop that quickly irritates without enough variety to spice it up, which, when combined with poor combat, fiddly controls, and repetitive crafting, all add up to an experience that might drive you bananas.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey teaches us the evolution of humanity. But the game is not very successful in terms of mechanics.

There are fantastic ideas at work here, but the confusing opening hours and an abundance of repetitive tasks will put a lot of people off.

Guiding a clan of primates through generations as they evolve certainly makes for a unique experience, and there are times when Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey comes together. But a lack of guidance on basic gameplay mechanics, as well as some clumsy controls and unsuccessfully executed ideas, make for a highly uneven game.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey begins 10 million years in the past and puts you in control of our evolutionary forefathers. You must guide them on their path toward humanity, which means teaching them how to fish, how to hunt, and how to walk on two legs. Ancestors executes its vision of our evolutionary past with care, but it just isn’t very fun to play.

At its core, this mixture of action-adventure, evolution and prehistoric survival is interesting, but held back massively by a bunch of cumbersome and badly explained mechanics as well as clumsy controls.

A:THO ignores the mechanical DNA that make open world games and survival RPGs so much fun. There’s nothing revolutionary about depriving you of map functionality and an adequate tutorial. This isn’t an evolution so much as a freak mutation that will die off in the wild. There are other games that achieve what A:THO attempts; play them instead.

A novel premise wrapped in an awkward and repetitive survival slog.

Poor climbing and fighting aside, the gameplay loop is mind-numbingly tedious: eat, drink, make babies, sleep. Keep doing that for hours, and you’ll unlock one semi-useful perk or another, so you can eat, sleep and drink some more. [Issue#240, p.40]

In summary, you’ll know if Ancestors is up your alley pretty quick. And kudos to you, I genuinely hope you enjoy it, so they can make more games that are this out there. It’s something the industry absolutely needs even if they’re not ready for me yet. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it and who knows? I may come back later when it’s had time to sit with the general population only to really discover its wonders. But for now, my dear reader, I’d rather forget about my ancestors lost to time and play a game like Ape Out instead.

This might be a game coming from Patrice Désilets, it is not a very convincing one. The first ten hours of this survival game are mysterious and exciting, but then all that's left is mediocre gameplay.

I was deeply frustrated by Ancestors, so it may seem strange for me to say that I found a lot of promise, complexity, and nuance here as well. The novel concept and grand scope are far more appealing than dozens of other action or survival games on the market. This is a deeply flawed but richly imagined effort, but like many ambitious gaming projects at launch in recent years, it can now either die off like the Neanderthals, or evolve into something better from here.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey wants to offer a kind of pseudo-realistic experience from the past, but forgets that there is a modern person behind the buttons who just wants to be entertained.

A survival with a fascinating setting and fresh ideas that is horribly let down by its endless repetition.

Despite its problems, and they're not insignificant, Ancestors has an unusual magnetism. [Issue#337, p.116]

Our ancestors didn’t have it easy, and that’s the for-better-and-worse message reverberating through every interaction in the game.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a beautiful, ambitious game of evolution. Unfortunately, the sheer initial difficulty, repetitiveness, and discouragement associated with some of the mechanics and replayability will likely limit this title to only those most dedicated to seeing the game through to the end. For a lack of better words, it feels as if this game needs to go through a bit of evolution itself in order to smooth the roughness and make players want to journey through this odyssey.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey replicates the fumbling, trial-and-error progress of evolution, which often isn’t fun, but there are monkeys in the game, and that is brilliant.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a bold experiment that really leans into putting players in situations where they have to be creative and resourceful without any hand-holding. Gamers who kick a kick out of the survival genre (like these 10 great survival titles) and love the pressure of finding that next source of food or safe place to sleep will likely get a lot of enjoyment out of Ancestors once they adjust to the controls, but it will likely feel a bit too challenging and aimless for the average gamer.

For every cool "a-ha!" moment in Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, there has been something that has me on the verge of rage quitting. There's a fascinating, novel concept in Ancestors, but with so many bugs and other tedious issues blocking it, the joy of this survival game feels like it's constantly kept millions of years and a bundle of evolutionary feats away.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a brilliant tech demo for an RPG system that has the potential to revolutionize the way we progress our characters in games, I just wish it there had been a little less proof of concept and a little more fun.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey was such an interesting idea on paper but from its complex and unexplained environment to the severe lack of exciting objectives and goals to work towards, the game doesn't quite manage to entice the player to make the very best of humanity.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an ambitious game whose conceptual vision is the very thing that bogs it down. There's a lot of unexplained expectations of the player, and, by the time those are worked out, it's easy to become bored or frustrated with it. Very likely, both. Combined with abundant technical problems, there isn't a lot to praise about Ancestors and even less to recommend.

The game has an original setting and at first attractive environment. Unfortunately for players, millions of years are truly dragging, and the sluggish gameplay makes the struggle for survival a struggle for your own sanity. [Issue#298]

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey promised so much, but it ultimately isn’t any fun to play. The lack of direction, the clumsy controls and unwieldy mechanics make this a huge missed opportunity that just doesn’t hang together as an experience. The DNA of a great idea may be here, but it needs a significant amount of evolution before it can become realised.

It’s initially interesting, but its bundle of ideas and systems stumble between clever and stupid, intuitive and clunky. Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey needs more time to evolve.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a wonderful idea that fails to deliver on almost every level. While it can be breath-taking to look at, it is a tedious chore and needlessly unforgiving. I applaud Patrice Désilets and his team for attempting something new and fresh, but great ideas alone do not make for great games.

A tiresome and unforgiving survival game that purposefully makes things as difficult and repetitive as possible, while offering very little in the way of entertainment.