It might be an eerie, unpleasant-looking survival horror game, but I'm strangely charmed by the new trailer for Animal Use Protocol, all thanks to its chatty sidekick.
Shown off during the Future Games Show, Animal Use Protocol casts you as Penn, a hyper-intelligent chimpanzee attempting to escape the rapidly-decaying test facility of Anchorage Station. You might be smart, but you're hunted at every turn through this dark, dingy place, and your foes seem much bigger, stronger, and angrier than you.
Thankfully, you have a couple of things that they don't. One of those is a 'gravity manipulation tool' that definitely wouldn't have felt out of place next to Half-Life 2's gravity gun, and is a delightful fit with Animal Use Protocol's grainy, CRT-style aesthetic. The other is Trip, who acts as your ray companion. Also impressively intelligent, he doesn't have the same powers of speech as Penn, but he makes up for that with a text-to-speech machine. He's also very sassy, so he adds a little spice to that speech with tone indicators - if you've ever come across Mass Effect's monotone Elcor race, you'll know what I mean.
On its way to us from the creators of Stasis and Bone Totem, Animal Use Protocol is still a little way away, but you can wishlist it on Steam now ahead of its planned 2026 release date.
If you’re looking for more excellent games from today's Future Games Show, have a look at our official Steam page.
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