I'd never normally bother with something like this, but I feel like I really had to write something up as the controls for this game are hella janky, and the Devs are being super cagey about information. All this "work it out for yourself, we won't help you" is all fine and well if the controls are intuitive and flow well together, but they aren't and they don't. Frankly any part of any game where I have to use my MOUTH because the game expects me to have 3 hands or multiple thumbs and I don't (e.g. trying to navigate while carrying a pile of items quickly, which requires both the holding down the A-button and using both Analogue Sticks simultaneously), speaks VERY poorly of the control-scheme. Contrary to expectations your greatest enemy in this game is NOT any sort of stalking saberkitty nor giant strangling meat-tube... but screwing up the controls and falling horribly to your doom.

Take note: This is primarily a guide to logistics. Getting safely from A to B. There are other general guides or crafting guides or whatever, and I may write other guides myself, but this one is for a single specific topic.

Also as an aside, I know there are a lot of terrible "guides" for this game that are just p!ssing around, and while I don't take myself seriously, I am genuinely trying to help here... so... yeah.
I am verbose though.
That is to say I blather on and on and write huge blocks of text. I apologise for putting you through that in advance, but that is just how I am.

Right. This is the rudimentary explanation of button controls.
By "rudimentary" I mean the controls that appear on the HUD under whatever conditions. I will try to cover as many of them as I can, though at this stage it is only the button input / method.
Note I'm going beyond just movement here, but for the rest of the guide I will only be focusing on logistical controls.

I personally use an Xbox One Controller (not because the game recommends it, but because I always use one if I can), but Mouse + Keyboard is viable. There are actually a small few notable differences between the two I'll go into after the tables. For the most part I will refer to gamepad / controller buttons rather than the keys.



Anyway...
Most controls are just pressed, but a lot involve holding down a button. The devs have some p!ss-poor wishy-washy explanation for it, but it isn't intuitive.
Note that sometimes holding down a button for one function will segue into another function if an additional condition changes, so be careful.
If no method is shown, just tap the button / key. Note also that many actions have to be unlocked via neurons.








(right hand unless otherwise specified)






(I'm honestly surprised there are entire buttons / triggers exclusively dedicated to such a minor feature)








Anyway... let's get on with this.

When you start this game, you're very limited in your controls, and that includes movement. You'll be stuck on 4 legs like the inferior quadrupedal ape you are. You'll also be quite slow.

The basic tutorial and help section see fit to remind you that you can "Sprint" by holding down A / Space.
This is your standard way of moving faster at the expense of stamina while on the ground.

Obviously it is a TERRIBLE choice of button for Controller players like myself. I'd much rather run with the Right Trigger (but I'll be holding that down anyway while running, for other reasons), but they made it so we have to use the same button for running, jumping, grabbing things and menu confirmation, while the Right Trigger is exclusively for being Alert. Keyboard users only have to contend with awkwardly springing like a flea into the air if they let go of the run button mid-motion. Controller players also have to contend with accidentally grabbing the nearest item due to letting go of the movement stick BEFORE the A button when near an item (and possibly stuffing it in their gob if it is food, which will then cause any other monkes in the area to go into stripmine mode)... so we have to be VERY careful about running about due to the incredibly stupid controls...

... But I digress (as usual)...


Now, when I first started playing, I noticed that "Sprinting" didn't seem to do much of anything besides blur the edges of the screen (notice that disgusting motion blur?)... and I was wondering to myself: Why can't I go any faster?
THEN I noticed sometimes I could move a bit faster, and other times I couldn't. It took me a while to figure out why.

In a word: Mood.

At the start of the game, you cannot control your mood. It depends on your circumstances. You will be "Calm" while in your home camp, "Vigilant" while outside it, and "Alert" when enemies are detected nearby. On the ground, at least. You become Calm when climbing high enough up trees, but that doesn't help matters here.
Note the eye in the lower left corner of the HUD (assuming you have it switched on):
That greyed out eye with no adornments indicates the Calm mood. You'll be able to go a bit faster when you're calm than you can while Vigilant.

Then the moment you run outside your camp, you'll end up in Vigilant mood. You should immediately notice that your quadrupedal gait changes and your monke keeps looking behind them. That eye in the lower left will become a brighter shade of white and get little lines above and below it.
When you're Vigilant (which will be most of the time you're on the ground until you evolve into Millennium Man), your "sprint" speed is slowed so much you might as well not hold it at all. And it might be best not to bother, given stamina limitations. It is actually faster to jump about (hold, release, hold, release, etc) at this stage, but again... stamina limitations.
You're going to spend ages in Vigilant mood until you gain the ability to control it, then most likely never bother with it ever again.

Now, when you encounter an enemy, that is when things get interesting.
The eye will become a vivid yellow.

Another immediate consequence of this is that your movement speed on the ground becomes noticeably faster. Obviously at this stage it is to help you leg it like the panicky little coward you are up the nearest tree. Later on in the game, when you're a supreme alpha specimen, you'll be able to chase down your prey faster in Alert mood too.

So in case that wasn't crystal clear, in terms of moods from slowest to fastest:

Vigilant (white eye) < Calm (grey eye) < Alert (yellow eye)

NOW... once you evolve into Millennium Man, and ever after that point, you gain the amazing ability to CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS... which is something most modern humans are completely incapable of doing by their own admission excuse.

Calm mood becomes your default everywhere.
You activate Vigilant with the Left Trigger (or Ctrl), and Alert with the Right Trigger (or Shift). Now, so far as I'm aware there is literally NO reason to ever be in Vigilant mode ever again. If you need to be more aware of your surroundings, actually look and listen yourself. Just stick with Calm when you're not impatient and go straight to YELLOW ALERT when you gotta pump those feet.

Oh boy. This is where it gets fun.
Now, you might have noticed, but modern humans stand upright and walk on two legs. And since this is a game about evolving into humans (or at least into cavemen), you should eventually gain the ability to rise above the ground crawler level and join the glorious bipedal master race.
NOT ONLY THAT but as the game progresses, assuming you're following the natural path of the game, you're going to be progressing out of the densely packed jungle into steadily more open areas where you can't just get about by leaping from tree to tree.
SO you're going to want to practice standing upright.
By that I mean when you're in any of the sensory modes, press A (or whatever the keyboard alternative was) to stand up. The camera will zoom out a bit (take note of this) and you'll be able to sense things further away. You'll stay roughly uprightish until you start to move, at which point you will go back into your crappy monke-trundle on four legs again.

Naturally, the way to achieve bipedalism is a long path (there is an achievement for it), and it involves a lot of practice, unlocking a lot of neurons, and quite a few mutations too.
Look, I'll show you:

That entire branch of the tree (circled in yellow) revolves around motion, so expect it to be the most relevant to this guide. The stuff on the left side of it mostly involves carrying things and climbing, the stuff on the right mostly relates to movement in water, but the central path is what makes us better at walking and running.
I should also add that the mutations are the real stars here. Normal white neurons lower down involve being able to stay upright longer and later on they make everything more energy-efficient. The yellow mutant neurons, however, are what make everything FASTER... which is my #1 motivation behind everything in every game I play, because I'm a Speed Freak.

SO... to achieve bipedalism and, in turn, FASTER ground movement, you'll need to do the following diligently:

• Stand Up at every given opportunity. Do not Smell / Listen / Analyse the world in a lazy monkey-crouch. Stretch your legs. Anything you can do upright, do upright.
  
• Make sure to always keep at least one baby monke on your back at all times. Preferably bring more along. Latching them onto followers also works, as long as they're nearby. The more baby monkes, the more neuronal energy you get (though it doesn't help neurons mature any faster).
  
• Learn how mutations work. Try to breed baby monkes with Motricity mutations, Generation-skip them to Adults, then Evolve to activate the mutations. They are necessary conditions for maturing other white neurons.

Do all that and you'll get that awesome Bipedalism neuron in no time.


I got it unlocked while I was still at Millennium Man (2nd evolution). I STILL haven't unlocked Omnivore and I'm getting dangerously close to end-game. But whatever. I'm as fast as I can be on the ground, which was my #1 priority all along.

This is going to be something you'll be doing a LOT of, at least for the first hefty chunk of the game. The later parts of the game world have far fewer trees, so climbing will be largely limited to foraging for fruits or scaling cliffs later on. But at least at the start, you're going to spend more time in the trees than on the ground. That IS what "return to monke" is all about, right?...

... At least if you discount the amount of time you spend in the air. Falling.

Okay, so, maybe you'd think climbing would be the same regardless of the surface, but you'd be wrong. There are three basic sets of rules depending on where you're climbing and you really need to internalise them or your monke will end up injured or dead.
Best start with the easiest: Trees.


The easiest of the easy. There will be a lot of this where you normally start around Hidden Waterfall Oasis.
The same rules apply for pretty much anything made of wood, whether it is treetrunks, branches or roots (you'll find them in caves and hanging over cliffs), whether alive or dead. Wood is the easiest thing to climb on because your monke will automatically stick to it if they touch it, and not destick easily. Anything wooden and wider than a twig, you can probably climb up.



Honestly you'll almost certainly figure this part out really easily.
If you simply walk towards the base of a tree or wooden structure in contact with the ground, your monke will automatically leap onto it and you'll be in climb mode. Similarly you can manually leap from anywhere towards a wooden structure and you will automatically adhere the moment you touch it.
From there it is just like walking, except in the vertical plane instead of the horizontal. Up (or W) to go up, Down (or S) to go down. Left and Right (A and D) to move around the trunk / across branches.

So maybe I should get to the less intuitive parts.

Firstly, for most wood, your adherence to it is absolute unless you choose to detach from it. And while you can't exactly climb on the underside of horizontal branches, you can get pretty close and leave yourself hanging by just your fingertips. Very useful when you've got a lot of followers and need to get down the tree past them.


Items in your hands make NO difference when climbing. You have full mobility even when carrying a coconut or wad of meat in each hand. Obviously you can't climb while carrying a pile or thorn-bush (i.e. two-handed carrying), but for normal separate-items-in-each-hand, it doesn't influence climbing at all.

You can also hold down A / Space to climb faster. As far as I can tell this doesn't seem to be influenced by Mood, and there are neurons to enhance it right up near the top of the Motoricity tree (which you'll probably unlock once you don't really need them any more). There are definitely some points in the game where you'll spend ages just climbing up a single surface though, so it pays to be able to go a bit quicker. Just for the love of monke do NOT do it when climbing downwards. I'll get to why shortly.

When you're on horizontal branches you'll go into a carefully balancing version of walk mode, and yes you can "sprint" in these situations without falling off. And that even includes the ridiculously thin branches at the tops of trees. They won't even bend. Just keep your ears primed for the sound of Bataleur Eagles (they seem less inclined to attack a group than a single monke, but sometimes they'll still go for you). And yes, you can "stand up" on branches to see further, just like you can on the ground.




A little warning before we continue: This whole rule about not auto-detaching from wooden surfaces does have rare exceptions. You won't find them at the tops of trees, but some dead trees jutting horizontally out from clifftops and the like will have loose ends. That is to say if you keep pushing forwards at the end of the dead wood outcrop, you will just walk right off. This isn't consistent though. Just be careful when climbing dead horizontal trees.
Well, plus if you're already at the bottom of a tree and keep pressing down, you'll transition back into walk mode, but you probably already figured that out.

Okay now. There are two guaranteed ways to detach from a tree: Jump or Drop.
That is to say either you press in a direction, and use that sprint / jump button to throw yourself bodily OFF the tree, or the elusive control the game doesn't tell you about: You press the button normally used for items in your right hand and simply let go of the tree (RB for controllers, C for keyboard).


Jumping, understandably, will fling you into open air, so I STRONGLY recommend making sure you're aiming for another branch / trunk when you do so, or aren't too high off the ground.


Whether you're aiming for a tree-trunk or not, YOU CAN MISS. I absolutely guarantee you will screw up and witness a broken leg or a dead monke at some point not too far into the game. So there is an important habit to get into when playing Tarzan: When you let go of that jump button, immediately press it again and hold it down. Got that? Always HOLD A / SPACE when jumping about in trees. It will be fully explained shortly.

Now this little note will be unintuitive if you have any kind of grasp of the laws of physics, but remember I told you that clinging to wood is automatic...
If you make a LONG jump out of a tree, and find yourself hurtling towards the ground at terminal velocity, always aim for a tree-trunk. Specifically any vertical wood section. As long as you touch that wood, you will skid to a stop on the trunk and be safe, no matter how high you jumped from and no matter how fast you were going.


This also applies to the sides of branches, but for the love of monke be careful. If you're going fast enough and far enough and touch the TOP of a horizontal branch section, i.e. where you'd normally do the balancing walk (that includes the tiny branches at the tops of trees, assuming there are any below you), you can trigger the instant death.



Jumping into any water deep enough to wade in will also break your fall. Once again we're completely ignoring the concept of water tension.
Just don't... y'know... miss the water, or land in the shallows, or land on a rock in the middle of the river:

(continued)


I've seen someone ask around here: "How do you get down from trees?". Well, there is a simple answer to that though the game doesn't bother to mention it. If you hold RB / C (your right-hand item button) while attached to wood, it will temporarily deactivate that precious wood-cling mechanic. You will drop under the influence of gravity.

Similarly if you're standing on a branch and press forwards and tap RB / C, you will drop off the branch into a hanging position. If you're holding an item, dropping into a hanging position will take priority over dropping the item... but only if you're actually pushing towards the edge. Be mindful of what you are and aren't pressing when doing this.

Also keep in mind the difference between tapping the Drop button and holding it down. Tapping it simply descends you a little. Holding it is as good as saying "I want a one-way trip to the ground with no stops along the way". This applies whether dropping off a branch or letting go of the trunk equally. If you're actually TRYING to suicide your monke, jumping from a high place while holding down RB / C is one of the best ways to do it.

Simply put, when in freefall, the Drop button is the opposite of the Jump button. And that is a fine place to segue into the next segment:



Vines are a whole different game compared to anything explicitly wooden. And while I say "vines" this also mostly applies to clumps of leaves / random foliage jutting out about the place. If it is more leaf / creeper than tree-branch, you need to be holding that jump button to grab hold of it.

By that I mean you won't auto-cling to it. You can't even touch it if you aren't holding a button. You'll pass right through it as though it weren't there.
BUT if you happen to be holding (you guessed it) A / Space when you touch the leaves / vine, then you'll grab hold of them. And as long as you hold down that button, you'll remain there. You can even swing about in any direction by pushing that way (just keep hold of that button).


The only difference between leaves and vines are that you can let go of the button and still cling to tree leaves, whereas you can't with vines.
You don't need to press the drop button with vines. Simply letting go of the jump button will do it. If you've got enough momentum and let go soon after grabbing hold, you can swing yourself and let go in a particular direction to control which way you fall. If you lose your momentum you will probably fall downward...

BUT there is another feature.
If you let go of A / Space while clinging to a vine WITHOUT pressing in any direction, you will throw yourself upwards. In fact there are actually special vines littered throughout the game that are explicitly meant to be used as ladders to climb upward. They have large orangey red leaves on them in bunches. You've probably seen them. They look like this:


... And for the record, you can't specifically interact with those huge orangey red leaves. I've tried. They're just decorative markers so you know where the ladder vines are. Unfortunately the devs made them look tasty, so I'm disappointed we can't eat them. But whatever.

The trick to ascending these ladders is simple once you get the hang of it, but is probably the main reason I decided to write this guide.
See, once you get your first grip on the vine with A / Space, without inputting any movement with the Left Stick / WASD, you just release A / Space and then immediately press and hold it again. You'll fling yourself upward and grab hold again at a higher point. So hold, release, hold, release quickly to get up the vine.


Once you reach the top there might be a tree branch there (which you'll automatically cling to, enabling you to proceed as normal), or there might not, in which case you'll fling yourself into the air and have to press in some direction or other to grab hold of another handhold.


The things you have to be careful of while climbing ladder vines are NOT to leave that jump / cling button unpressed for more than the shortest instant (or you'll fall down), and not to press any direction while ascending (or you'll throw yourself outwards instead of upwards).

Another thing that can and will happen a lot at the top of ladder vines is that you'll throw yourself up over the top and then... grab hold of another clump of leaves that doesn't seem to be attached to anything ABOVE the landing branch. That is fine. Just throw yourself upwards again by letting go of the button and instead of pressing it again, just press towards the wood (or other surface) to cling to it as normal.


Okay... so I've shown you the ladder vines. Thing is, they don't only exist on trees. They can also be given as alternative ways of scaling awkward cliffs, or getting out of deep pits in the Caves section. BUT that isn't always necessary...
Let's get to the third separate ruleset when it comes to climbing...

Righteo. This is the part that is going to be most relevant later in the game.
It is every bit as likely to get you horribly killed if you screw it up as the trees. Moreso, in fact.


That is to say surfaces made of stone. That includes boulders too, but it isn't like they're super difficult to climb. Just awkward in places.

The rule with stone surfaces is about halfway between that of trees and vines. You WILL auto-cling to stone, but only if you push towards it first. You can't expect to simply brush stone like you do wood and grab hold of it. You have to gently nudge your Left Stick or push the W-key towards the stone for half a second or so. This shouldn't even be an issue most of the time.
You'll find like with trees that if you walk up to a cliff on ground level, you'll do a little hopping motion and transition into climb mode.


Now climbing up rock isn't much different to climbing up trees. You can hold A / Space to climb faster. Items in your hands don't matter. It doesn't even matter if the rock is wet (you can climb up a waterfall as easily as a dry cliff).
BUT cliffs tend to be very uneven surfaces. There are overhangs and boulders jutting out, and they will stop you ascending. You quite simply can't climb up over them...


... SO you have to go around. Find a flat section of cliff nearby and move across to it, then continue your ascent.

NOTE however that almost the entire area of the game is bordered by insurmountable cliffs with overhangs at the top DELIBERATELY to stop you climbing outside the game area. As an additional immersion-destroyer, sometimes you reach the limit before even getting to the overhang, and just find your attempts to ascend failing to progress.
I have not found a way past these. I wouldn't recommend trying either, as they're VERY high up and if you screw up and fall, you will almost certainly die.


If you really want to investigate the top of the border-walls more closely though, you can climb up quite easily above the Jungle Cascade Oasis. It is even higher than the top of the Father Tree, and the view is quite spectacular there (I won't show you this one).



So anyway, what do you do when you've reached the top of the world?

... That's right. You have to come down.
Descending a cliff is where things get troublesome. See, unlike with the tops of trees, if you're just standing on the edge of a cliff, there is no invisible guard-railing keeping you from just walking off the edge. Let your guard down at the top of a cliff, and you're gonna have a bad time. There is no drop-to-hang motion either. The RB / C does nothing from a standing position at the top of a cliff.

As I see it, there are two ways of descending a cliff.
The first option, which is fine if the cliff isn't all that high or you can see ledges jutting out not far below, is to simply walk off the cliff and hope for the best. You might survive the fall. You might get a broken leg. It is risky, but sometimes you can manage it.


If you're careful you might even be able to turn around mid-drop, push towards the wall and get a grip on it to slow your descent.

The OTHER way, which is by far my preferred way when the option is available, is to find another vertical section of cliff adjacent to your position, walk up to it to put you into climb-mode, then go around the corner of the cliff and descend.


Doing this takes the element of risk out of getting down somewhat. But only somewhat.
Cliffs are still dangerous. Sometimes you can accidentally drop off an overhang or get dislodged by the uneven rock surface while climbing down, so keep the camera turned downwards and be ready to push towards the rock at a moment's notice.
Contrary to reality, the best kinds of cliffs for climbing in this game are sheer vertical drops, whether you're ascending or descending.

If you're looking to descend a cliff more quickly, using the RB / C to let go of climb mode still works, though not exactly the same as with tree trunks. With a tree trunk, you have to hold the button down to avoid re-sticking to the trunk. However you don't auto-cling to cliffs unless you're pushing against them (i.e. up), which you're normally not doing when descending (i.e. going down).
As such the preferred way to descend a cliff quickly, and ONLY if you're confident, is to tap RB / C and quickly press forward to re-attach to the cliff lower down.


If done correctly, you'll go back into climb mode with a little puff of rock-dust and a few pebbles coming from your hands.
And if you're REALLY confident, you can judge the distance before pressing against the cliff to accelerate a little in freefall then grind to a stop. Doing this repeatedly will get you rapidly from the top to the bottom of a cliff IF you practice it, but the risk level is high. Only do it where you can see the entire path downward and there are NO overhangs.


So to summarise...

Trees: Touch to cling, move to climb, right hand button to drop. Invisible guard-railing on branches.
Vines: Hold jump-button to cling, release in neutral to climb, release in direction to drop.
Cliffs: Push towards to cling, move to climb, right hand button to drop. No guard-railing.

Most of the game is covered by the two previous sections, but there is one last thing to cover...



The first thing you need to know about moving in water is... DON'T GO IN THE FŪCKING WATER.
Your monke's distant ancestors spent millions of years crawling out of the water and adapting to land so you wouldn't have to go back to living in it. This is return to monke, not return to fishe. You are an austrilopithecus on your way to becoming human, not a pakicetus on your way to becoming dolphin. THE WATER IS NO PLACE FOR YOU.

That said, sometimes you have to go in the water.
Sometimes you have to cross a river, or Discover the Great Lake location for an Evolution Feat. Or sometimes you're falling to your doom and there is a body of water below you (without a little rock in the middle, hopefully). Or sometimes you just absolutely have to attack a crocodile in the middle of the swamp with a rock to prove how fūcking alpha you are.


... Ahem.
Anyway.
Point is that at the start, your monke is about as much good in water as a fish is on land, and it doesn't exactly get a lot better later in the game.
We can classify water into 3 basic depths and 3 basic safety categories.
Depths:

• Shallow - i.e. might as well not be there. You can just run through it.
  
• Waist-Deep - i.e. you wade slowly through the water on two legs with your arms in the air like you just don't care.
  
• Deep - i.e. Your feet don't touch the bottom. You're swimming... or drowning.

And the basic categories:

• Oasis Pond - Fundamentally the only water completely safe to go into.
  
• Running Water - No risk of predators. High risk of being swept downstream, over a waterfall and into...
  
• Still Water - Includes swamps and lakes. If the water ain't moving and ain't in an oasis, there are predators in it. Guaranteed.

If the water is shallow, it doesn't matter. Run through it.

If the water is waist-deep, don't expect to be able to run away through it.
You can still defend yourself though. Swamps are risky, but you can survive crossing one. If you don't have a big stick (and aren't alpha enough to just use a rock), I'd suggest sticking to the dead trees normally found in swamps and staying OUT of the water. Crocs will start following you and lurking below you once they're aware of your presence. Good thing about the big dead trees in the swamp is that some of them HAVE sticks for you to use (though no real means of improving them).
(By the way, don't drink swamp-water).
Waist-deep river water is fine too. As long as your feet touch the bottom, you won't be dragged away...


... but the moment your feet can no longer touch the bottom of a moving river, it will start dragging you away. I was surprised and horrified at just how fast it is the first time it happened to me.


And while you unlock the ability to swim to a limited extent later, all it helps you do is cross the river somewhere downstream of where you entered it.

I'll state now because I really should state it somewhere, once you DO unlock the ability to swim in deep water, it uses the same input as most other movement-related things: A / Space.
i.e. Press it periodically to propel yourself forwards as if you were jumping in the water.
BE WARNED though, it chews through stamina like nobody's business.
Also there are neurons relating to both wading in waist-deep water AND swimming in deep water, so you'll have to do it a little...

BUT as far as crossing rivers goes, in general terms, I'd strongly recommend jumping to rocks in the river if you can manage it instead...
... OTHERWISE, you might end up being washed into crocodile-infested waters, or at least into an unknown area where your monke starts freaking out...

And on the off-chance you do get washed all the way to the big lake in the middle of the jungle area (not the "Great Lake", since that is actually upstream to the northwest), DO NOT go exploring in the deep water. There are crocodiles, hippos and giant otters about.
I may have mentioned earlier in the guide that jumping from a great height with RB / C held down is one of the fastest ways to commit suicide in this game. Well, trying to confront crocodiles or hippos in deep water is one of the fastest ways to suicide your entire monke party in rapid succession. Don't even try it.
(And no, I'm not going to screengrab this one for you).

... Okay. So I hope this can be useful to someone.
And I hope people learn to combine all these various techniques together and don't botch them.

So remember, at least with a controller:
Hold A to go faster in almost all contexts.
Vigilant < Calm < Alert (while running)
Let go of A with a direction held to jump.
Auto-cling to wood, push towards rock, hold A to cling to vines.
Hold RB to drop down from a climb.
Repeatedly hold and release A without pressing any direction to climb up ladder vines.
And DO NOT PURSUE LU BU GO IN THE WATER.

Substitute the Space bar for A if you're a keyboard-jockey.

Now godspeed, you crazy monkes!