I Mother Stretches for Fundamental Human Questions and Provides Humdrum Video Game Answers

By Grace Benfell | October 27, 2025 | 2:30pm

Video Games Reviews I Mother

I Mother Stretches for Fundamental Human Questions and Provides Humdrum Video Game Answers

At the core of I Mother are ideas which rattle around human consciousness. The exact origins of language, of sapience itself, are fuzzy and indistinct. Scientists and lay people debate and analyze how and whether dolphins speak. The evolutionary leap from animal communities to what we might controversially call civilization is still unclear. Our prejudices concerning prehistory showcase our biases about humanity now. In depicting the daily life of an ancient Neanderthal woman, I Mother’s ambitions span the whole of human consciousness. It aspires to be like the hand print on the cave wall, an intimate, human span which still underlines the differences between our lives. But its design is burdened with all-too-modern conventions and contrivances. L. P. Hartley once said, “The past is a foreign country.” Yet I Mother feels as bland as an undecorated apartment kitchen.

Still, let’s start with what makes I Mother’s premise so intriguing. It’s an action-adventure game based on the earliest period of human history, where you play a Neanderthal trying to make her way back to her fledgling community. Beyond an introductory note, the game features no language at all. Its protagonist speaks in grunts, cries, and gestures. Its UI is carved with glyphs and symbols, the immediate meaning of which are not apparent. In concept, I Mother tosses you into a profound wilderness without even the haven of language to hide your self in. In its best moments, it asks you to both interpret and embody.

Yet, consider how many games rely on sets of symbols. The sigils on door in Hades represent the awards that await you in the next room. Endless icons, often unique to a particular game, populate open world maps. Video games have their own internal speak, which players either know from other games or which they must learn alongside the rules of play. So the mere inclusion of these symbols doesn’t equate to a meaningful or provocative design. I Mother doesn’t so much place the player in a foreign time and place, so much as it drapes that ancient world over a conventional video game structure.

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I Mother

I Mother’s principal influences are not other games which deal in language, like Heaven’s Vault or First Land, but cinematic, prestige games like Hellblade and God of War. It borrows their sweeping camera work with single takes and seamless transitions back into play. Your tools start lean and the game introduces its systems (and the relevant symbols) at a careful pace. You grow more powerful and there are systems for losing progress in any permanent way. Its survival subsystems are lightweight, a subsystem which wrinkles, not subverts, its otherwise conventional adventure puzzles. The protagonist scrambles over rocks and climbs across cliff-sides, but in the same manner as Nathan Drake, with forward paths clearly marked with yellow vines.

There are, of course, moments of bewilderment and confusion. I Mother has an objective screen, but it is filled out with icons, some totally context-less at first sight. You will wander the wilderness unsure of where next to go or what exactly to do. But I Mother seems almost afraid of its wildness. Its protagonist will point at objectives. The camera scans locations to give you a lay of the land before you will ever interact with it. Some of I Mother’s symbols have unclear meaning, taken directly from still-beguiling cave paintings. But many more are obvious. (Gee, I wonder what this chicken leg and water drop could mean?) That is not a problem in and of itself, but it is hard to build a game around such easy visual ideas. You can tap a button to see where food, water, and campfires can be found. It feels like I Mother is afraid of you getting lost, or perhaps discovering that a set of shallow systems lurk under its dynamite idea. Of course all wilderness in video games is artificial. It cannot be any other way. But you can use a designer’s tools to make something that feels strange and outside of your control. A game like Rain World depicts a more potent and confusing wilderness.

The game’s visuals reach for cel-shaded bliss, but grasp something more muddled. The skyboxes have a painterly grandeur, dramatic sunsets and far-off moons. But the rest of the game is pastel and garish, rather than grand. The game’s frequent dream sequences are a visual highlight, but also a source of I Mother’s most bizarre idiosyncrasies. Does a game like this really need boss battles? By the time you fight a gigantic rabbit, you could conclude that this is a little unserious.

I Mother’s tone is fixated on profundity. It’s admirable in a way. This is a game that wants to explore some of the most fundamental questions of human experience, which goes to their ancient roots at the beginning of our collective evolutionary history. Yet, it feels that this sort of experience is accessible with the easy-to-understand tools of the conventional video game. A game doesn’t need formal experimentation to be profound, but it needs more than rote routine. At its base, that’s what I Mother has to offer.

I Mother was developed by HellYeah! and published by indie.io. It’s available for PC.

Grace Benfell is a queer woman, critic, and aspiring fan fiction author. She writes on her blog Grace in the Machine and can be found @gracemachine on BlueSky.