Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a third-person open world survival game where you Explore, Expand, and Evolve to advance your clan to the next generation in this exhilarating new adventure from Panache Digital Games. Embark on the most incredible odyssey known to humankind: human evolution. Spanning from 10 million to 2 million years ago, begin your journey, before us, in Neogene period Africa. Explore a beautiful yet ruthless world, from swinging through tree branches in the jungle to stalking prey across the golden savannah grasslands. Decide what attributes to learn and hone in order to pass down knowledge to future generations, from crafting tools to enhancing evasive tactics against predators. Just like real life, make sure to eat, drink, and sleep to stay alive and have the energy to face any danger that may come your way. Grow your clan and find strength in numbers as you progress through critical evolutionary stages of human evolution. Your choices will write your clan’s story and determine if you can survive your evolution.
Steam User 152
---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☑ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10
Steam User 30
***might contain spoilers to the game mechanics***
Unique game that throws you into the “shoes” of individuals in our ancestral lineage. The game mostly revolves around a small tribe of individuals and you get to play as one of them in a lone wolf type of gameplay, or as the leader of the tribe, leading the group to scavenge, hunt and explore. The game is a survival based game and similar to our ancestors, you are an easy pray, but as you gain experience, a neuronal energy, your character develops and learns new skills, even how to counter predators. In order to speed the development, you can carry up to two infants with you to gain more of the neuronal energy.
Unlike other games, where your playable character is permanently improved, here everything gets lost, unless you pass the generation and eventually evolve. In order to evolve your species efficiently, you need to gather mutations and fyi you can load up 3 adults with 6 infants, when you mutate your offsprings.
Additionally, the developers really did their job when going through anthropological facts. In this regard, the game gives you an introductory information about human evolution. Unfortunately, they get many things wrong and it is important to note some examples, such as the Australopithecus species is not our ancestor, rather a dead end branch in our ancestral tree. Another downside is that evolution is not linear and does not jump from species to species. On the other hand, the mechanics regarding omnivorous behaviour and bipedalism are well implemented and, as it was with our ancesters, greatly improve humans “game”.
I bought at the discount for about 10 euro. It was one of the best games I have ever played. I enjoyed it even more, because it reminded me a lot from what I have studied in my majors. If there are any DLCs going forward, I am definitely in. Great job, developers!
Steam User 24
Devs please revisit this game. The thought and love put into is clearly visible. You clearly wanted to make a great product which you did but the game could use updates. Your fan base love it but its missing some polish. I enjoyed not having all the answers to how to do something even though its possible and having to figure it out. You've got fans of this game and youre missing out on some of your crowd due to frustration. Some people just want to play the story. Expansions would be great. The thought of progressing even further would be great. Evolution concepts would be spectacular. Please read your player base critiques and try to cater as best as possible. I dont' know if this idea is dead but you made a great game i would recommend but whats next?
Steam User 28
As a paleontology enthusiast, and fascinated about what the human evolution experience might have been like, this is one of the best games I've ever played in my many decades of game playing. Top 10, easy.
Be careful, I played it obsessively for some three straight weeks. Could not get enough of it, like a vacation in pre-history.Absolutely amazing.
The interface is clunky, hard to select specific tribe members when standing above sleeping spots, when multiple items are lying on the same spot, that needs improvement,etc, but none of that really mattered.
Steam User 20
Pros: I love that there's no map screen and you have to figure things out intuitively. It makes this game very immersive. The leveling of neurons to actually effect basic motor coordination like using two hands or swapping while moving make me feel like I'm really evolving. It can get a little redundant once you figure out how it works-gen up, make 6 babies,examine dead elders, gen up again-but I think the game does a great job of capping this with skills to grind, forcing you to explore and get lost in a beautiful landscape of immersive biomes. I also greatly appreciate them staying as close to scientific accuracy as they can. Though, some phrases seem very dumbed down like, "faster than science."
My only complaint about this game is that its goal is to evolve "faster than science." Let's pretend that's the proper way to word "faster than nature" or whatever. The game rewards (actually penalizes) you with years for accomplishing feats, then pats you on the back with new forms until you quickly reach the final evolution-an unplayable species-without having explored/achieved everything with so many skills left to learn. From that save you cannot use the evolve feature to lock in new mutations without it ending the game. There have been updates since I last beat it, so maybe it's been fixed. If not, it seems the most efficient leveling for skills is to explore as slowly as possible, make as many micro evolutions as you can, and kill off any elders without mutations to keep the time slider from ending the game too soon .
What I'd like to see in updates or sequels:
-Other groups of hominids encountered
-DLC
-Seasons. This could be a bit much
-projectile crafting . Obviously, later species/sequels
-Free roam as final species to continue exploring
-Contagious illnesses . Might be too much
-Fire in some usable context
-Dang monkeys that all listen when I tell them to scoop mud! lol
Great game ! One of my all time favs! I'm very much looking forward to an expansion or sequel, though it's been a while and there seems to be no word of it yet
Steam User 21
Don't let my play time fool you; I completed the game on console. :) It's a fantastic game but challenging, in that it doesn't hold your hand, but is vast amounts of fun. People who have complaints about the game usually complain about things like "Oh, you can't make a fire or build a hut!" These people don't understand that those kinds of advancements took millions of years to develop, and this game takes place BEFORE such things. So that's something you need to understand before you purchase.
Steam User 27
This game is absolutely incredible.
I've just completed the game. Here are my thoughts.
I've always been an fan of things like Palaeontology and Anthropology, and when I saw this game, I knew I had to pick it up.
The game can seem slow at first, but I found the reason why I never got bored of it was because it was just so IMMERSIVE. Personally, it really felt to me like I was THERE, being the ape I was playing as, and leading my clan. Every danger felt so real, that I needed to be on my toes all the time. The movement system felt so refreshing. There wasn't one place I could not go, not one surface I couldn't climb. It gave me the opportunity to learn things as I went, experiment, and learn from my mistakes, just as our ancient ancestors did all those millions of years ago. I loved the system of evolution, too. It really gave an incentive to really play the game and explore, try to hunt, etc.
All in all, I think this game really put you there, on the ground, millions of years ago. It is very immersive, and never gets boring. I would love to see a sequel to this game where we play as H. Ergaster, and so on.