One game I was particularly excited to see during my time at Summer Game Fest was The Lost Wild by Great Ape Games and Annapurna Interactive. Sure, we’ve had plenty of games involving either hunting dinosaurs or being hunted by dinosaurs, but something about The Lost Wild instantly captured my attention.

While we weren’t able to play a hands-on demo ourselves, we were able to watch a twenty minute demo played by one of the developers in real time, while another talked us through various aspects of the game. Everything I saw only further sold me on The Lost Wild being an incredible experience.

Peekaboo! I see you!

For those who might not be familiar with this game, The Lost Wild is a single-player, cinematic, evasion-based, survival horror game. In the demo we followed Saskia (the main character) right after she wakes up after crashing onto a mysterious island, with no idea where she is and everyone else in her party dead. She hears a deep animalistic growl and heavy footsteps, and manages to dive underneath a vehicle right as an Allosaurus bursts out through the bushes and tears apart a smaller dinosaur right next to the Jeep under which she’s hiding. The dev then had to use extreme caution to carefully slide her out from under the vehicle and escape undetected while the Allosaurus was distracted.

Being a stealth and evasion-based game, every movement and sound you make can alert the dinosaurs around you. There are no patches of tall grass that offer safety from threats: they only help to obscure you from the direct line of sight of the other predators, compared to the danger of being right out in the open. If the dinosaurs get right next to bushes you’re hiding in, they will sense you. If you move around while they’re close by, they will hear you. If you turn on your flashlight to navigate the dark jungle, they will be alerted to your location. The same goes for if you startle a flock of birds while creeping through the brush: if the birds fly away, the dinos will immediately come over to investigate.

Polly want a cracker?

The dinosaurs have all been programmed to have real animal behaviors, which is one of the most compelling parts of the game. Also, unlike so many other games where you try to hide from large, scary beasts, none of the dinosaurs are on set paths. This means there will be no success in trying to memorize their paths of movement to try to sneak by. The dinosaurs randomly spawn within a large area, which can be different after each time you die and restart at the last checkpoint.

This kind of randomization is what excites me the most, and will certainly have players constantly on their toes. As proof of this, though we had one of the developers playing the game for us, we were warned that even he had no idea what to expect, and that there was a chance that he might not make it to the intended checkpoint of the game. I thought that was an exaggeration to increase the drama of the presentation, but I was wrong. He got too close to the Allosaurus when he startled a flock of birds, which alerted it right to our location and he was promptly eaten.

I can almost promise there are more dinosaurs lurking in this monitoring station.

When he respawned at the checkpoint, the Allosaurus was further down the path and he was able to make it to a security office by a gate enclosing a scientific research facility. However, we still weren’t safe, as we hadn’t yet made it inside the actual facility. The dev collected an empty bottle and threw it out the far door of the small office we were in, as an attempt to distract the Allosaurus from where he thought it was. We were all treated to a nasty surprise when he opened the other door he thought was safe to exit from, only to be greeted with the shoulder of the Allosaur right in front of the doorway. Needless to say, this allowed the dino to get its jaws inside the door and almost devoured Saskia (we were all genuinely shocked it didn’t). He managed to run away and make it through the gate right as the Allosaurus was bearing down on Saskia, successfully escaping by the skin of the dinosaur’s teeth.

We also heard briefly from Daisuke (the second protagonist) over a radio as he desperately urged Saskia to come find him so he could get help. Aside from little moments like that, the developers have assured us that there are no exposition dumps, just storytelling told through exploration. I was also thrilled to find that Saskia doesn’t chatter to herself nonstop like so many other protagonists (looking at you Aloy). There’s tension filling every moment of The Lost Wild, and I can’t wait for its release on PC and PlayStation 5 next year!

*All assets were provided by the publisher.