There are survival games and then there's Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey.Â
Life in the jungles and swamps of Neogene Africa means living by your wits and making sure you have those wits in the first place by experimenting and upgrading your skills with the Neuronal system.Â
There's no mini-map, so you'll learn to navigate with your sense of smell, your hearing, your intelligence and with the good, old fashioned power of your eyeballs as you pick out landmarks.Â
Like any survival game, food, water, and sleep are essential, but you're not going to find an abandoned supermarket to loot out in the prehistoric wilds. Your hominoid clan will learn what fruits to gather, and their medicinal, or damaging, properties. There are plants, eggs and sources of protein out there, but you'll need to evolve the enzymes to digest them or suffer the negative effects.Â
Of course, you’ll need clean water as well which can be found at streams and waterfalls, but beware the stagnant waters of the swamps. If you want to hunt game like warthogs you'll need to evolve the skills to use tools, allowing you to fashion the sticks and rocks around you into weapons, then you’ll need the mobility skills to make the most of your new weapons.Â
In Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey it's not just the strongest that survive, it's the smartest.