Ancients of Ooga

Ancients of Ooga is a 2D platformer with puzzle elements from the Bacon Wrapped Games, the same studio that brought us, Cloning Clyde.

Most 2D platformers keep to a very specific recipe, but Ancients of Ooga is trying to do something more. It’s not enough to have the characters jumping around and doing various tasks; a puzzle element has been added and the fact that you can possess different characters makes it rather interesting.

There is a good reason Ancients of Ooga is not all that famous. It’s because it’s also not a great game. It’s not a bad one, and it has its flaws, but the biggest problem is that it actually tries too much, and that applies both to the gameplay and to the overall design.

It’s clear that the developers from Bacon Wrapped Games wanted to make a funny game, with quirky dialogues and situations, but most of the time it feels forced. Being funny is no something that you can just put in a game and hope that it works. In the case of Ancients of Ooga it’s not working.

The player gets to control various members of the Oogani tribe as they try to get free of the evil Boolis rule. It’s not a terribly complicated plot, and it’s not really the focus of the game. Each character that you control has various abilities, but, for the most part, they jump, hit, eat items, and barf them back out.

This ability allows them to carry item across the map. Many of the puzzles that you encounter will require players to control posses numerous members of the tribe. The puzzles are not all that difficult, some of them will definitely take some effort to figure out.

Another problem is the level design. Ancients of Ooga features a 2.5D perspective, which means that the character seems to be moving in a 2D world, but there is also some depth movement available. It’s confusing, and it wasn’t really necessary.

Also, the graphics is sometimes confusing. There are too many items present on screen, and it’s hard to figure out what’s happening. It would have benefited from a simpler design.

Ancients of Ooga will provide a modicum of entertainment if you’re willing to overlook some of the issues that we’ve mentioned above.