Dino Topia Is the Ultimate Prehistoric Disappointment-Here’s Why
Hello everyone. Let’s have a little heart-to-heart about “Dino Topia,” scheduled to stomp its way into Early Access in August 2025. Yes, 2025 – clearly the devs are giving you plenty of time to knit a sweater, hydrate, and prepare your patience reserves. What we have here is a prehistoric cocktail of survival, farming, and base-building, stirred with some roguelite combat and topped off with cute yet allegedly deadly dinosaur companions. Think Ark: Survival Evolved meets Harvest Moon… but if they were both still in beta and clinging desperately to “player feedback” like a lifeline.
Early Access: The Perpetual Beta Club
Right out of the gate, they’re telling you this is a “mostly complete” game entering Early Access to “gather feedback.” Translation: “We’ve got something that looks like a game, plays like half a game, and we’d really love you to pay us to test it.” This is the gaming equivalent of a chef serving you raw chicken and saying, “We just want your thoughts on the seasoning.”
They expect it to be in Early Access for about 12 months. Sure, and I expect to finally beat Dark Souls without dying – technically possible, but don’t hold your breath. We’ve all seen “12 months” turn into “Why is this still in Early Access in 2030?” This, my friends, is how digital time dilation works: one year in developer-speak often equals three to four years in real-world time.
Features: The Jurassic Wishlist
- 40 pets, each with unique abilities – so basically Pokémon with a prehistoric filter slapped on.
- 40 buildings – because evidently, it’s not enough to survive; you must have matching furniture.
- 4 levels and 60 bosses – which sounds impressive until you realize “boss” could mean “angry lizard with more health and a colour swap.”
The roadmap promises “competitive battles” and “fishing” in the full version. Competitive battles I can understand – after all, nothing says bonding with your reptilian companion like forcing it into gladiatorial combat. But fishing? Because when I imagine a dangerous jungle teeming with dinosaurs, my first thought is, “Let’s get a rod and bait.”
Gameplay: The Mixed-DNA Formula
From what’s described, it’s your typical survival-loop blended with pet taming, base expansion, farming, and combat. The premise isn’t bad. In fact, it’s a genetic hybrid of genres so ambitious it’s almost suspicious – like a game designer fed every survival and farming game into a blender and poured out a suspiciously smooth dinosaur smoothie. Which, as any experienced gamer/doctor will tell you, can either be delicious… or make you violently ill.
You tame “dangerous yet helpful companions” to fight enemies, farm land, and expand settlements. Reading this, I’m picturing you building a fruit orchard while your velociraptor BFF patrols the perimeter chomping hostile wildlife. Nice. But my concern is pacing – games like these can often turn into either a massive grind fest or a soulless checklist. As Dr. Su (unlicensed in prehistoric medicine) would say, “The patient is stable, but the gameplay loop is at risk of chronic tedium.”
Base Building and Farming: Sim City, Cretaceous Edition
One thing they emphasize is the ability to craft farms, place beds for your companions, and adorn your settlement with decorations. Sounds lovely – until you remember dinosaur AI in most games tends to oscillate between “ferociously competent” and “walking into walls for ten minutes.” Your dream farm may instead become Jurassic Park but with more lettuce.
System Specs: The Modest Appetite
Surprisingly, the system requirements are quite forgiving. Even a decent mid-range PC could run it according to their specs. That’s refreshing – a dinosaur game that doesn’t require NASA-level hardware. Though given we’re a year from launch, brace yourself for “optimizations” that balloon the requirements faster than a loot crate controversy.
Final Diagnosis
There’s potential here, absolutely – if they can deliver on the variety of creatures, keep the gameplay loop engaging, and actually stick to their 12-month Early Access timeline. But so far, much like a UFO sighting or a promised No Man’s Sky feature list, I’ll believe it when I see it. At present, it reads less like a polished game and more like a Kickstarter pitch with working code.
My prescription: wait until we see the dino’s teeth, not just the skeleton. And maybe keep your wallet in your inventory, not the dev’s loot chest, until they’ve proven they can actually deliver what they’re promising.
Overall impression? Cautiously skeptical, with a side of prehistoric déjà vu. This could be a fun, replayable sandbox… or another Early Access fossil buried under its own ambition.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.
Article Source: Dino Topia, https://store.steampowered.com/app/3336520/Dino_Topia/
