At its core, Ape Out is a fairly simple and mundane concept, however, the gameplay is anything but. You’re an ape and are attempting to escape captivity by your monstrous captors. These captors are armed with a variety of weapons doing differing amounts of damage. Have no fear though as you’ll be able to smash your way through each of them with a lot of trial and error as well as a little bit of luck.
Your journey through Ape Out starts with a top down perspective of an ape in a cage. Nothing is clearly defined from this angle other than the roughly shaped outlines of a variety of enemies, obstacles, and your character – an ape. To begin, the ape crashes out of a cage and barrels into a laboratory full of both armed and unarmed enemies. Your goal is to bowl through each enemy and tear them limb from limb.
Gameplay and Controls
Ape Out is as much puzzle as it is strategy and speed. The controls are fairly simple and intuitive and become second nature as the levels progress. Each world (defined in-game as an album) allows you to experiment in new and different ways. The objective of each level/track is to run from one side of the map to the other and escape your prison.
Using only four keys*, you’ll be able run and turn as well as grab and throw enemies. Throwing an enemy against a wall will decimate them. And decimating an enemy has never felt so good as it does in Ape Out. You can run into a gun-wielding enemy and rocket them into a wall or even another enemy behind them. In other worlds, you’ll be able to use the environment to your advantage in a variety of ways including, but not limited to, launching them off the side of the map entirely.
You can also grab enemies. By doing so, they can be used as a human shield, preventing their friends from vanquishing your character as easily. When you grab an enemy and use them as a shield, you gain an advantage and put yourself at a disadvantage simultaneously. On the one hand, you’ll be able to deflect shots taken at you while the bullet sponge in front of you soaks them up. Grabbing an enemy also encourages them to fire their weapon, and you can use this advantage to take out other bad guys. When you grab an enemy, your character controls much more slowly. This allows for bad guys to sneak up behind you and put the ape down, ending your run. After you’ve had your fun, you can launch one enemy into another, or several others, obliterating them all in the process. Don’t worry though, this doesn’t end their usefulness. Spare body parts of your newly defeated foes can be tossed in order to eliminate others.
Your character is rather slow to start but, the longer you run in one direction or another, you’ll gain speed. This is as much a useful tool as it is a detriment at times. Running past enemies is easy if you haven’t yet mastered the controls. With a little practice, the gentle saunter of the ape quickly turns into an all-out assault on humanity as you speed forward to destroy each foe.
Levels are procedurally generated. This means it’s impossible to memorize the obstacles you’ll need to weave your way through. It also means you never know what enemy is behind the door in front of you. Ape Out has a unique way of making sure you never know what’s coming next. The concept of how the environment ahead is mostly hidden by the rest of the environment is nearly impossible to explain without one seeing or experiencing it.
In addition to the levels being procedurally generated, the enemy placements are as well. This means that you could conceivably run through each world without encountering an enemy, or at least managing to avoid them. In other runs of the same level, you may run into nearly every enemy on the map clustered in one location. While this makes things frustrating, both by being too easily defeated by your foes as well as easily defeating them, not knowing the fight you are about to enter keeps things interesting and challenging.
Maps and Environments
As mentioned previously, the game is procedurally generated. Each level has a different placement of enemies and obstacles. At the end of each run you’ll be presented with a map that shows you the path of your ape and exactly how far into the stage you’ve gone. Sometimes this is a blessing and you know exactly how far you’ve made it. Other times this is merely an aggravating indicator of just how close you were to escaping.
Just as each level is different, so is each set of levels. There are four sets of eight, each with a different theme. You begin in a multi-story lab and traverse through skyscrapers, forests, zoos, a ship, and more. Each set of levels introduces new concepts and ways to destroy your enemies. If you don’t care for the simple office setting, maybe you’ll prefer chucking a military level bad guy off the side of a tall building. Look out though, because snipers from a neighboring building will be targeting you through the glass.
The art style of Ape Out is rather striking and a major point of interest. Each level is arranged to be visually different and remain interesting at every turn. A level that is too light or too dark is represented by the varying nature of the textures around you. This feature shines in dark levels where your only way of identifying an enemy is by their flashlight. The game makes what was probably a very painstaking process of creating visual representations seem simple and straightforward.
Enemies and Weapons
Each enemy is distinct and instantly identifiable in the top-down view of the world Ape Out presents. Everything from scientists with pistols, to automatic weapon toting guards, bulky shotgun wielding bad guys, flamethrower firing douchebags, rocket launching military men, kamikaze cowards, and more will have you reassessing your strategy each time you encounter a new enemy type.
While all enemies can kill you eventually, some will do so much more quickly than others. It’s a blast working through each different type and finding the best way to avoid and destroy them. Also interesting is determining which enemies you can use to aid you in your quest to take out each other type of bad guy.
Some enemies can shoot you multiple times and you can keep on trucking. Others may hit you with a single attack and put you down, forcing you to restart the level. While we don’t want to give away too many secrets, letting yourself get caught on fire in order to scare away a ton of other bad guys long enough to escape or end them is a lot of fun.
Music and Sound
The soundtrack for Ape Out is unlike any we’ve ever heard before. It’s a jazz infused cacophony of drums and rhythm that can’t be described in any other way than exactly that. It perfectly fits the mood of the game and helps to emphasize its frantic nature. We found that eventually the drums can get a little annoying and even add to the anxiety you are probably feeling when struggling through each level. On the flip side, there’s nothing quite like having a soundtrack that perfectly displays the emotion you’re probably already experiencing during gameplay.
Sound effects are relatively simple in Ape Out. You’ll hear some guns firing and, of course, the sound of your ape pounding along. The real shining gem among these sounds is the effect heard when an enemy crushes against a wall at a rapid speed and splats to a point beyond repair. It’s satisfying in a kind of sadistic way.
It’s worth noting that the music is also somewhat generated based on your actions. While it has consistent undertones, the music also adjusts and changes based on your speed, actions, and the sense of peril that surrounds you. While it can still be grating at times, especially after one too many failed attempts, the changes in music and sound effects to reflect what your character is doing is a big plus.
Arcade Mode
After you unlock each album, a set of eight levels, you’ll unlock arcade mode. This mode is a similar concept to a speed run in which you’re racing against the clock. Going fast will net you a lot of points, but it won’t necessarily secure your spot on the leaderboards. You can also gain points for escaping a level unscathed and killing a bunch of enemies. Let your ape die or be captured and the run is over and your score will be totaled. This mode, combined with the procedurally generated worlds, make Ape Out the perfect game to come back to over and over for a variety of experiences.
Recommendation
It’s nearly impossible to talk about Ape Out without mentioning games like Hotline Miami, so we’re going to have to mention it here. If you liked Hotline Miami and don’t mind a less in-your-face story experience, Ape Out is everything you’ve been looking for. There are less weapons in your arsenal and arguably fewer enemy types, but it’s the same basic concept.
If you’ve never played Hotline Miami and still aren’t sure, all we can say is that if an ape barreling through a puzzly environment while simultaneously absolutely destroying bad guys appeals to you, you’ll like this game.
Ape Out is a raucous good time and we would recommend you give it a shot.
*Note that the developer recommends you use a gamepad/controller if playing on PC and, after experimenting with both a controller and a mouse and keyboard, we would wholeheartedly agree it is the optimal experience.
Ape Out was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion.
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
Ben Smith
Editor-In-Chief
You can follow Ben on Twitter @BenSmith2588
