Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey (AKA "why can't I stop playing this fucking monkey game")

Meredith Cohen
Nov 19, 2020
2 min read

You're in the jungle. You pick up a small object, what is it? You take a closer look: it's a rock. Specifically, a granite rock. You smile to yourself and begin to crawl over to your friend to show them your new discovery. Suddenly, a lion? You're dead. Your children are now orphans and are lost halfway down a cliff-face. Your family is distraught, they yell at the sky and vow to avenge your untimely death. A snake kills them all, swiftly and without remorse. Your children are forced to carry on your bloodline alone and evolve without your guidance.

*Sad monkey noises*

As I write this, I've put about 40 hours into this game. Most of those were spent trying to create fire, which I soon learned (through Googling) was not discovered this early in humanity's evolutionary timeline. Bugger. Then, I spent many hours building up my "neural network"

This is not my neural network, it belongs to someone on Reddit. I'm horrified at how much more I'll have to play this game to get anywhere near the end of my evolutionary timeline.

You earn "neuronal energy" by completing actions in the presence of a baby monkey (I will continue to call them monkeys and not apes, sorry. It's probably wrong but I don't care). For example: When I, as an adult monkey, pick up a rock and use it to hit another rock, the baby goes "oh..... interesting..... might just fuck around and use this to learn how to pick up objects and smash them together..... the plot thickens" and then eventually you can use rocks as weapons, to sharpen sticks, to make mushroom paste, etc.

I'm at the point in my evolutionary timeline now where my monkeys have learned to walk on two legs (for a time), they can digest nutrients found in mushrooms and crayfish (instead of getting sick from them) and they can control their emotions. Now that sounds like a great development. However, in reality it just means that when there's a threat, my monkeys ignore it unless I tell them to worry about it. I have to actually tell my colony to be alert when there's a predator around, instead of them automatically becoming afraid of it. Not the most useful advancement, but I see what they were trying to get at.