“MONKEY MAGIC!!! MONKEY MAGIC!!” Ever since hearing the chorus of this song from the iconic TV show Monkey blaring out my TV back when I was still in primary school I’ve always thought about how awesome it would to be an actual monkey that could also smack the bejeezus out of people utilising crazy Kung Fu moves, maybe I just had a strange childhood, in fact wanting to be a monkey is probably just utterly strange in itself but thankfully now you can be (sans crazy Kung Fu moves) thanks to Panache Digital Games and their new release Ancestors : The Humankind Odyssey.

We are about to go back, waaaay waaaay back, the kind of waaaaay back that would even cause Dr Who to have to make several stops to refuel his TARDIS in the process of getting there. Ancestors : The Humankind Odyssey (hereafter referred to as Ancestors : The Humankind Odyssey, because I am lazy and can’t be bother continually typing out the full title) is set in Africa back 10 million years before humans ever existed. The Earth 10 million years ago was a wild and untamed place and is certainly a very different environment than what we are used to today, no smart phones, game consoles and 4K TVs here kiddies, just harsh conditions and danger around every corner.

You are thrown straight into the Ancestors : The Humankind Odyssey after viewing a brief cut scene showing your ape dad being utterly eviscerated by what I can only describe as a lethal flying death machine, you thought swooping crows were bad, try surviving against a bird that is the size of a 3 bedroom house, before you even get time to shed some ape tears you are given control of a baby ape and tasked to find a hiding place in order to prevent yourself from becoming the utterly horrifying flying death machines next snack. You are then rescued by an adult ape and become part of a new tribe.

With Ancestors : The Humankind Odyssey being a survival game your basic tasks from thereon in are to survive the brutal, harsh and cruel world, evolve and procreate in order to keep your lineage alive. Aside from the normal tasks in survival games such as eating and drinking in order to stay alive you are also taksed with learning how to use the environment around you to create weapons and tools in order to hunt and basically make your daily life as an ape easier. This can be as simple as bashing two different types of rocks together in order to create a sharp rock for cutting things or stripping a branch of leaves to make a stick and then using the rock on it to turn it into a spear like stick used for hunting and self-protection from the various horrifying giant snakes, sabre tooth tigers and other beasts that litter the absolutely huge map. I really enjoyed the control system for crafting in this game as it involves you swapping stuff from left hand to right in order to use objects in the correct way, the way you use the shoulder buttons on the controller to swap items from hand to hand feels natural and when crafting you have to listen out for a chime in order to work out the perfect time to release one of the shoulder buttons in order to craft the item or else you fail. You gain experience from most of the actions you perform from using your senses to discover knew items, creating new tools or even eating new foods, and it is best to always carry around a baby ape from the tribe around with you as this increases your experience gain.

Experience is then spent by browsing a skill tree and choosing new skills such as being able to swap items from hand to hand whilst moving or being able to use your senses better in order to discover items further away, bear in mind you can only carry forward a certain amount of your skills each time you choose to evolve and this is determined by the number of children currently in your tribe, this causes you to really spend time thinking about what are the most useful skills to carry forward to the next generation of your ape family. There are also special generational traits that pop up from time to time and these are carried forward by making sure you keep certain apes alive before evolving. Procreating is as simple as finding a suitable mate, giving her a bit of a back rub and then inviting her over to your sleeping place (if only it was that simple in real life) next minute you are having hot monkey sex as the camera pans tastefully up in order to spare us of what that actually looks like and then a baby is born, each female is only capable of giving birth twice so you really need to be sure that you protect those cute little buggers, especially when carrying them with you on missions outside your camp.

Moving around and exploring the world feels fantastic, the climbing mechanics are intuitive and the apes look amazing as they swagger and waddle around the environment, the jumping and grabbing mechanics are also great as you fly from tree to tree but require a lot more caution as one false move can send you plunging from way up in the trees to your death. Exploring allows you to find new flora and fauna that you can use to further your chances of survival and also allows you find bigger camps for your family of apes to migrate to, and also allows you to go on missions to examine the mysterious meteors that periodically drop from the sky. Moving about the environment away from camp is also a tense on the edge of your seat affair as with less than a moments notice you can be ripped apart by anything from a giant crocodile to a sabre tooth tiger, this is why it is important to develop your senses and spend some skill points before journeying too far away from camp in order to increase your chances of survival.

You can fend off or even kill enemies with sharpened sticks or rocks, the combat is based on a timing mechanic and you have to really time actions right in order to dodge or strike at the correct time, I never really did master the combat  so I tended to find myself using my senses to avoid combat unless it was absolutely necessary. I found myself becoming incredibly attached to the members of my ape family and it was always devastating when one got wiped out from becoming a snack for a roaming predator. It is possible for your clan to become extinct so it is of the utmost importance you try to protect as many of them as possible, in one save file I found myself with only females left in my tribe, therefore making it impossible to reproduce, having to start again is heartbreaking but it also mirrors what life would have been like back then with extinction being a constant threat.

I found Ancestors : The Humankind Odyssey to be a hugely refreshing take on the survival game genre, from the great control scheme through to the fantastic graphics it’s a game that doesn’t force you to explore it fills you with a sense of wanderlust and makes exploration a tense but joyous affair. I really appreciated the way the game is unlike the majority of current video games in that it does not hold your hand in the slightest, it simply drops you into the world and leaves you to work out the games many intricacies and mechanics, this makes it feel so much more rewarding when you craft a new tool or discover a new location.

That being said I could not recommend this game to everyone, it does require a huge amount of patience and its especially slow pace may bore some gamers and turn the off which is a shame as at its core Ancestors : The Humankind Odyssey is a really enjoyable experience unlike any I have seen before.

Review code provided by Private Division