Things have been a little wild after the Triple-i Initiative event (in case you missed it, a VOD can be found over on YouTube). Loads of you saw the new trailer and it was your first introduction to Dinolords, and a lot of you went to our steam page and pressed that blue wishlist button. So many in fact, that we have just reached 70.000 total wishlists!
To say we are humbled and honoured is an understatement. We are completely overwhelmed by the interest, your comments and reactions, and that there are so many who - like us - want a super rad RTS-ARPG hybrid with cool dinosaurs!
We were already working hard, but this incredible interest and interaction with you guys have been invigorating to the point where I have absolutely looked at if it'd be possible to open a real Dinosaur Park from cloned eggs, but so far my search for frozen ones under the ice caps on google maps have been less than fruitful.
We want to take this opportunity to say a huge 'Thank You' to every single one of you who have wishlisted Dinolords and are joining us on this journey to make an awesome game! Without you, this would not have been possible, and it is through your support that we will be able to continue working on the project after Early Access, where we plan to make some neat stuff!
So thank you, from the bottom of our Jurassic Hearts, you are all awesome!
Photo of (some of) the team at this years Danish Game Awards.
Reactions The Tripple-i event also lead to some great video comments and press coverage, and we want to share some highlights with you guys.
Youtube comments
@conandrake444 History channel at midnight.
@Gaskinmoo79 When are more developers going to understand that all games are better with Dinosaurs in them.
@Dan86130 never thought a stegosaurus with viking shields would go so hard
@corn582 Lore accurate denmark
Press
GameCentral at metro.co.uk "Don’t even get us started on the perverse lack of dinosaur-related video games, just let us be thankful that we have a new one, in the wonderfully bizarre Dinolords – which involves 11th century England being invaded by Vikings riding dinosaurs."
Robin Valentine at PCGamer "A warlord leaping into the fray on a feathered raptor mount. Siege weapon-bearing stegosaurus marching into battle in wooden armour that makes them look like upturned viking longships. Pikemen struggling to subdue a wild ankylosaur and steal its eggs. Honestly, it's the stuff dreams are made of."
Eddie Makuch & Steve Watts at GameSpot "Dinolords, a game with a cool concept–you're a knight who rides dinosaurs–is in the works for PC and got a new trailer during the showcase."
Andrew Webster at The Verge "At first blush, this doesn’t look all that different from other medieval-themed strategies. But then there are the dinosaurs."
Welcome to the first iteration of a new segment we are calling Dinolords Monthly! This is meant as a place where we can talk more in-depth about some of the technical and design related aspects of Dinolords and check in with you on a regular basis to give you the latest progress on the game.
As always, everything we share in these devlogs are subject to change.
But before we get into what we've been up to this past month, we have a brand new instalment of our behind-the-scenes video series, Unscaled, where we talk about the first milestone builds, UI & Networking.
We also joined our Publisher, Ghost Ship, on their Stream 'On The Horizon' to talk about the incredible reception we've gotten on our new Trailer and a bit about what we're currently working on. Always a pleasure. We've uploaded our conversation here.
All your base are belong to us
April has been a month of getting the foundation right for how building a settlement works in the game. We have been continuously designing and tweaking different elements of the systems as we are working hard on making base building interesting and engaging. We consider these intertwining systems one of the main pillars of gameplay in Dinolords, as this will be the supporting backbone of your army and is what will allow your reign to grow and ultimately defeat the danes and add those spicy dinosaurs to your command!
All of this is still subject to change, but as it looks right now your base has different areas of focus, and these can be balanced and skewed to cater towards the playstyle you want to play; e.g. do you want to build a strongly fortified castle with powerful defenses that can stand against even the mightiest dinosaur army, or do you want to go full glass cannon and beeline towards training powerful offensive units to rush your opponent.
The different systems in your base can all affect how you progress through a level, and readjusting focus can be key to champion the pesky invading danes. Let’s have a look at some of the different aspects of base building and how they work.
Food
Sometimes the Danish Vikings have a point: “Uden mad og drikke, duer helten ikke” (translates to: “without food and drink, the hero is useless”). Keeping your base supplied with nourishment is paramount for expansion and keeping the morale up. There are a variety of ways to do this, each with their own benefits and potential drawbacks.
The simplest way to keep the calories flowing is by foraging, the Foragers Hut have villagers scour the ground for mushrooms - simple and delicious. This is slow work, but provides a steady, predictable supply of simple food for your village.
The Fisherman’s Shack can be seen as the more calorie dense variant of foraging. The fish arrive in a steady stream (ba dum tss), and definitely offer a moment of tranquility to the villager tasked with catching the fish.
Next is the Hunters Lodge. Tracking down dynamic herds of deer across the land, this is more volatile than the others, but provides greater yields on a successful hunt, a deer provides a lot of food (ask any hunter how full their freezer is) at the cost of potential risk of it not being as stable as the alternatives.
And finally is a combination of farms, mills and bakeries. Growing crops, wheat being milled into flour, flour being baked to make bread, bread being delicious and hard to beat in terms of consistency and amount, but comes with an increased cost of more materials needed for the buildings and more workers are occupied along the chain.
Resources
Wood, stone, iron and others are crucial to both construction for expansion and production. Lumber Camp workers chop trees to create logs, Quarry workers hack away at the rocks to create stone, Mine workers extract iron ore from the ground.
These materials are both used to build new buildings, and also used in production of weapons where a smelter refines the iron ore to create iron ingots which are then forged by the Blacksmith to create powerful weapons for late game units.
This is where it would probably be really neat to have a giant flowchart or diagram to show what goes where, but details are still not completely set in stone (pun intended), so I promise we will rendezvous to this at a later date.
Military
Being in war with an invading army is no good if you don’t have units to help you fight said enemy! Military is one of the major outlets for resources, and depending on how big a priority your army is, this can come with big requirements for a supporting base to supply weapons and training for units.
A couple of supply chain examples are:
Trees are being chopped down for logs at the Lumber Camp > Logs are being used to create bows at the Fletcher > Bows are used at the Archery Range to create archers.
Iron Ore is being mined at the Mine > Iron Ore is used to make swords at the Blacksmith > Swords are being used to train soldiers at the Barracks.
Fortifications
A second outlet for resources is fortifications, walls made of either wood or stone, towers to provide a vantage point for your ranged units, and armaments that can be installed to give your defenses an edge - whew it’s nice to have a ballista when a Tyrannosaurus Rex comes charging at your gates!
One of the primary defenses are walls made from different materials from wood palisades to reinforced stone walls. Wood being an abundant early game resource and stone requiring more work at later game but offering much stronger defenses.
A lot of details are still in flux about specific details of wall building, but we are aiming to make a system that affords both ease of use and speed for building quickly in a pickle, but also allows for more detail-oriented work in regards to layout and addition of elements such as crenelations, bartizans, gates, traps, pikes and the like.
Back to basics
Thank you for checking out the first instalment of Dinolords Monthly! This first version was a little design-heavy but we hope to continue giving you monthly insights into the progress we're making on the game.
Have something you'd love for us to talk more in-depth about? You're welcome to leave comments here, on the forums or join our Discord.
The fourth installment of Dinolords Unscaled is out! Come along as we scramble to get ready for the big reveal on Ghost Ships livestream and set the steam page to public.
We also want to take a moment to thank every each one of you for wishlisting Dinolords, it means a lot to all of us and following the reception of the game we are working hard on has been overwhelming. We are all getting ready for Christmas where we are taking a little break before returning to work in January, and we can't imagine a better way than having just reached 15.000 wishlists! So thank you, sincerely! 🙏
As the end of the year rapidly approaches, it's difficult not to reflect on the journey we have been on over the last year. While this is not our first rodeo and we have several titles released on Nintendo Switch, PC, iOS and Android, it is the first time we are working together with a publisher. Michael and Ulrik pitched Dinolords to many different people, but in the end it was the first pitch that really stuck with both parties. The guys over at Ghost Ship have a great approach to making games that really resonates with us, and Deep Rock Galactic is clearly a labour of love which reassured us that we made the right choice. And we secretly hope to sneak in a little dinosaur bobblehead somewhere on the Space Rig 👀
2023 was also the year where we went to conventions and expos, Gamescom was a great experience and stealthily showing the game at Tokyo Game Show was a blast. And after working towards "the next showing" for months, announcing Dinolords also marked a switch to proper production. We have been busy at work for the last couple of months, focussing our efforts on combat and what we want that to involve; different units, dinosaurs, fortifications, skirmish scenarios, attack waves, wildlife, and a giant spreadsheet full of damage values, health points, block chances, weapon types, armor sets and much more.
We also made a lot of progress on the 3D models, textures and animations for units and buildings, putting a lot of care into making sure they are easily distinguishable and recognizable in a battlefield of dozens of units all hacking and slashing away at each other.
Finally, we will leave you with a little teaser of what's coming up next:
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and have a great New Year!
Michael and Ulrik goes to visit Kasra in Japan and show off an early demo at the Tokyo Game Show.
They also find a rare double rainbow 🌈 and manage to turn the entire demo into a lawn mowing simulator 🍃🔪 - you know, just another regular day at the office.
Come along for the third episode in our behind-the-scenes vidoc 📽
We are all completely overwhelmed by the incredible reception our announcement has received, both through media but also all the great comments and questions from you guys. Making a game we ourselves think is interesting and cool is one thing, but sharing that excitement more than doubles it, and that is because of all of you.
Get an early peek into how the idea came about, an introduction to the development so far, sprinkled with some class examples of dino related gamedev quirks!