Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey has a wild new approach to upgrading your character. Forget experience points and new equipment, you need to evolve your hominoid brain so you can go from primitive to your prime.
You gain new skills in the jungle and swamps by experimenting and surviving. It's trial and error—so you might want to find your footing before you take on a giant python barehanded—but the skills you do learn will open up new ways to thrive.
Using your sense of hearing to pick out predators, altering branches to turn them into useful tools, communicating with your other clan members, every action is a step towards learning a new skill. This Neuronal system replaces your standard—and let's face it, pretty boring—skill tree.
It means you can control your evolution too, choosing which neurons in the brain you unlock. Even though you control one clan member at a time, you're driving the development of your whole clan, and you can increase your learning potential by exploring the jungle with a junior member of your clan holding tightly to your back.
Life in the expanses of Neogene Africa is never going to be easy, but gaining the right skills will increase your clan's chances of surviving and thriving.