Explore. Expand. Evolve. Let’s turn back the clock nearly 10 million years ago on the Earth’s timeline. Welcome to the Neogene period, where the first identity of man’s early hominids began to develop. Weird start? Not necessarily. Patrice Désilets, creator of Assassin’s Creed, helped create Panache Digital back in 2014 and since then has been hard at work to make original, intense, beautiful, and fun games. Their first title filling in all of those criteria, known as Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey:
Ancestors takes place during the Neogene period, as previously mentioned, when the first forms of hominids were beginning to develop in certain parts of Africa. Here, players take on a role of a clan member. It could be a child, and adult, or an elder. But it’s always a member of the clan. From here, players have to keep their clan alive; nurturing, feeding, mating, so on and so forth to keep each one alive. But know, resources in the specific area of the jungle you begin in do run out. Which only means that eventually, you’ll need to branch out.
Exploring parts of Africa that your clan hasn’t seen before causes fear. And there are two options: fall back, or press forward. When pressing forward, you learn more about the new areas, learning the treetops, the ground, the waters, so on and so forth. And once that fear subsides, you can take over that part of the land. From here you can expand, finding other hominids and helping them with water, food, antidotes, and they’ll join your clan. That’s the explore and expand part.
But eventually, you have to evolve. Because you don’t play as one specific clan member, you see the progression of time through the clan’s activities. Physical and intellectual changes happen the longer the clan learns. And the game takes place during the ending length of the Neogene period; from 10 million years ago, to 2 million years ago. That’s a lot of time to evolve. But the evolution is up to the players and what they choose will eventually change the course of how the clan evolves. Which can mean a focus to a specific attribute, or a more balanced outlook. The choice is yours.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is set to come out August 27, 2019 for PC on the Epic Games Store. It will come out sometime in December for PS4 and Xbox One. Get ready to choose how you explore, expand, and evolve.