Dabbling With… Ape Out

The fifth episode of a short series on games I discovered at EGX Rezzed 2019.

Confession: Sometimes I do not check out the stuff people say is definitely cool.

Soooo… I hadn’t even seen a trailer for Ape Out (Cuzzillo, Foddy & Boch, 2019) before seeing it out in the wilds of the Devolver Digital room.

Confession: I didn’t play it. But I wished I had.

In Ape Out, you’re an ape escaping from captivity, no doubt in line for some nasty experiments. Its closest cousin is probably Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games, 2012) in terms of being a hyper-violent game where you play a protagonist who can be killed easily so must kill or disable all enemies quickly. Hotline Miami is fast, requires memorisation, and a single mistake can end your run; Ape Out is procedurally generated so requires reaction not rehearsed dance and is, necessarily, a little more forgiving.

Ape Out, however, is a genius fusion of game feel, sound and visuals. Everything is silhouettes and jazz and the effect is best described as Saul Bass Title Sequence Simulator 2019. Paint the corridors red… until the game palette changes and then you could be painting in orange or purple.

Ape Out has been in development for five years; it was a runner up in the student category in the 2016 IGF and it had already been worked on for two years at that point. Jesus. I’m tempted to buy this right now and make it game shortcut #120 on my desktop.

From the Devolver page on Ape Out:

Ape Out is a wildly intense and colorfully stylized smash ‘em up about primal escape, rhythmic violence, and frenetic jazz. Build up nearly unstoppable momentum and use your captors as both weapons and shields to crush everyone on your procedurally generated path to freedom.

Ape Out is available on Switch and PC (Steam, GOG, Humble, itch.io).

Interested in other games I’ve dabbled with? Check out the series index!