I only got to play Ape Out for about 10 minutes at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference, but those 10 minutes were packed with such a raw fury that for a few brief moments, it felt like time was standing still.

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“ Dynamic and unpredictable.

In Ape Out, you control a gorilla gone absolutely berserk for reasons that aren’t and don’t really need to be explained. Any questions I had about the “what” and “why” were immediately dashed — like an unsuspecting guard against a wall — once I broke out of my glass encasement and began my rampage throughout its first procedurally generated level.Ape Out was pure intensity from that moment on. With movements so fast and fluid it almost looks rotoscoped, I barreled through corridors, grabbing baddies and hurling them against walls, propelling them with the sheer force of my punches to their off-screen demise, or using them as human shields before launching them like a bowling ball towards a pair of hostiles around the corner. Every bloody splat was accompanied by an explosive cymbal crash, a musical punctuation to my violence against the frenetic beat of its drum-heavy soundtrack.There didn’t seem to be a huge demand for strategy in my rampage, but it’s hard to say having only spent a few minutes in its abstract, silhouetted world — which is visually compelling beyond mere level design. My favorite part about its approach to the top-down perspective is the way its towering walls and doorways blend and overlap each other, obscuring and revealing pathways as you charge through. It granted a dynamism and unpredictability to its sharply minimal environments, which forced me to keep moving no matter what.My very brief time with Ape Out has left me curious about what this stylish, top-down smash ‘em up has in store. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one!There's also a playable demo of Ape Out now on Steam

Chloi Rad is an Associate Editor for IGN. Follow her on Twitter at @_chloi