Ancients of Ooga, from the Kefling creating Ninjabee, is bizarre. It’s like a form of demonic possession where you hop from Oogani to Oogani in order to make them complete tasks, open doors, throw levers, and yes, sometimes even sacrifice themselves... that’s the life of the Oogani.

But it’s their own fault for getting into such a predicament that they need to call upon your divine intervention, so don’t feel so bad. You’ll find out all about that in the storyline and I won’t spoil it for you.

This game is very much like The Lost Vikings, Lemmings and other side-scrolling puzzle platform titles. But it’s so much more. In most of them you just direct the characters to do what you need them to do but in Ancients of Ooga you actually take control of them by displacing their spirits.

The game is quite cool really. It’s got great graphics that definitely bring the genre up-to-date. The puzzles aren’t all that difficult but they’re not supposed to be. You will need to be observant and use the map at times but that’s to be expected. After all it’s a puzzle game at heart as well as an action game.

The Oogani come from various tribes, each tribe has some particularly useful skill and you can endow them all with certain powers that will help as well. There are bad guys to kill and things to collect, barriers to overcome and more. All in all, it’s quite well done and we would expect nothing less from Ninjabee.

There are also collectible items to grab up while you’re possessing your Oogani worshipers in the form of bones of the Ancient One, spices, and items to be eaten. Some items will be needed to solve a puzzle, others will be needed to help you survive and more.

In Ninjabee fashion every facet of the game has been paid particular attention, the sound, graphics, gameplay and level design all are superb and really, they seem to be making some of the best XBLA titles available today.

There’s also split-screen co-op available in the game so you and a pal can Ooganize an Oogani party and play together. It seems that there will also be possible downloadable content for the game as well as there’s a spot on the menu for it, so it could continue to grow, dare I say, Ooganically?

Overall Ancients of the Ooga is a well-thought-out and entertaining puzzle platformer. The game is set for a June 16th release on Xbox LIVE Arcade and should be well worth the 800 MS Points. Keep an eye out for the GDN review when we get nearer to the release date.

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