Ancients Of Ooga (XBLA) – Review – Xbox 360

The developers of the platforming puzzle game Cloning Clyde, NinjaBee and J. Kenworthy Entertainment are back with a spiritual successor to Cloning Clyde. Booting up Ancients of Ooga will remind you of all the challenging, unique, and exciting puzzles from Cloning Clyde you came to love.

Story: The Ooganis were once peaceful little creatures who lived in a world ruled by their seven chiefs. One day, a foul and smart beast, the Boolis, came into this world telling the Ooganis to live their lives freely. The Boolis offered flowers and grubs as friendship. Eventually the Ooganis accepted these gifts but it made them dumb. They were now slaves doing what the Boolis told them to do. They put their seven chiefs in a cage and fed them grubs too, but after many years, they died….except for one. This remaining chief called out to the Ooganis spirits (that’s you) for one last effort to bring peace to the world once again.

Gameplay: As the Ooganis spirit you must travel to each of the seven realms and bring order back to the world. Each realm presents a similar challenge to the last, but involves greatly differed problems and puzzles. As a spirit, you can take control of any Ooganis that has decided to join you in the revolt against the Boolis. Each realm has a different theme – water, earth, fire, stone, etc. – but the overall idea is the same; enter the tribe, introduce yourself, befriend them, help them out with a problem, remove the Boolis population, resurrect their chief, play as chief and sacrifice him to continue. Along the way, you will have to collect items. With an overall tribal theme, the Ooganis are cannibal creatures. Acting as a temporary inventory, players can pick up and chew on objects and other Ooganis to easily move them around the level. You can either swallow these items, puke them back out or sacrifice them on an altar. Occasionally you will be given powers; these powers are only used within the realm you are playing in, but they allow you to easily navigate the level or defeat the Boolis.

Graphics/Audio: Ancients of Ooga uses a very colourful and clay-like art style similar to Cloning Clyde. It’s a little more polished and cartoonish compared to traditional clay-like games, but in whichever case, it looks great. The music is very much in line with ancient tribal music in that it heavily uses drums and bone instruments. The Ooganis are before the English language so they use actions, mumble, or scream.

Multiplayer: People these days expect all games to have online multiplayer support where they can play with their friends or random people around the world. Ancients of Ooga keeps it simple and only has local splitscreen co-op. You and a friend can play through the entire single player game together. The experience is as you’d expect and it works well. You each control your own Ooganis and walk around the level as freely as you want. You aren’t required to stick with your co-op partner. I love co-op games, especially splitscreen so naturally I was excited when I heard this was included. However, splitscreen in this game can be laggy. This is usually why developers don’t include it in their games, but I’m personally really glad it was included.

Overall: If you’ve played Cloning Clyde, you’ll know what to expect with Ancients of Ooga. With a small team from J. Kenworthy Entertainment working on Ancients of Ooga, and about four years in development, I can feel the passion and dedication that went into making this game. To prove this passion, if you are able to get an overall score of 650,000+ you will unlock an alternate ending that pays homage to Cloning Clyde. The Ooganis are funny and the puzzling gameplay is addicting. It’s simple and repetitive but it drives you to continue and see what ultimately happens to the Ooganis in the end. You actually sort of feel for the Ooganis. Although repetitive, players can expect many hours of gameplay from Ancients of Ooga and, if you haven’t previously checked out Cloning Clyde, I recommend doing so as well.

Pros:
-Addictive puzzle game
-Humorous setting and characters
-Splitscreen co-op
-Alternate ending that pays homage to Cloning Clyde

Cons:
-Frames drop occasionally in single player causing laggy gameplay
-Splitscreen co-op is laggy
-Tasks in each realm are repetitive

Score: 7.5 out of 10

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