It's a first-person horror video game featuring a super-smart, chimp-like rat and a super-smart chimp with a Tamagotchi in his ear leading a jailbreak of a lab animal.

After learning that the game was being developed by The Brotherhood I became intrigued.

The Brotherhood, an indie studio in South Africa, has released several isometric point and click adventures that are decidedly strange, and even a bit creepy. The Stasis series (and its free prequel, Cayne) is a straight-up horror affair, while Beautiful Desolation represents a departure, not so much in a bad way as just plain weird. The Brotherhood's first-person shooter was a great idea, but none of the games have been big hits.

Animal Use Protocol, a new game from The Brotherhood that has nothing to do with its previous work, does share one thing: it looks weird. You play as Penn, an intelligent chimpanzee with a "gravity manipulator" who is leading a jailbreak of lab animals. Your friend is not a mouse, but a rat called Trip. Trip may not be super-smart but it's clear that he wears a Tamagotchi around his a**. I could imagine this being used for communication.

Animal Use Protocol may sound like the basis of a cute Disney production, The Big Adventures of Bongo & Mr Nibbles, but it is not a Madagascarian remake. The game takes place in a "nightmarish laboratory" where everything has gone horribly wrong and "every corner conceals new terror." It turns out that not everyone wants to leave. As you search for freedom, you will be "relentlessly pursued by a monstrous of experiments gone terribly wrong."

It's an odd one, isn't it? Animal Use Protocol is due in 2026 on Steam and GOG. It's too far away to make any judgements about its quality. I'm also a tiny, tiny bit concerned that something terrible will happen to those baby penguins. Oh, I do hope not.

(Oh, for the record, Trip is definitely with a Tamagotchi in his arse.)