Dinolords Release Date

10 Aug 2026Developer post

Dinolords monthly - July

July is always a bit of a weird one, especially here in Denmark, as we have a lot of summer vacations taking place during this month. As a result, the monthly is a little different this time round, as we look at a new trailer and a minidoc that was released recently! But I don't

July is always a bit of a weird one, especially here in Denmark, as we have a lot of summer vacations taking place during this month. As a result, the monthly is a little different this time round, as we look at a new trailer and a minidoc that was released recently!

But I don't want anyone feeling like they are missing out on the regular schedule, so there's a segment with some new art and stuff at the end.

Let's get started!

On the trail of radness!

July was a month with a lot of different things going on, a lot of the team has been taking some well-deserved summer vacation, and of course aside from that, we have been busy working on the game as usual.

But, despite that, we still found time to get some super cool recordings done of some of the gameplay we are trying to make and put it all together in a cool new trailer.

Have a look here:

Watch on YouTube

Explaining everything that is going on in Dinolords is a fairly big task. Trying to merge two big genres with each their own traditions; RTS and ARPG/hack'n'slash, into something that feels like its own thing I dubbed hack'n'strat, is an even bigger task. And explaining and showing all that in the duration of a trailer felt like it was almost impossible to achieve, but we hope you guys like the trailer and that it shows what you can expect of Dinolords once it's ready.

Along with the awesome new trailer came some new screenshots as well:

One new pair of britches, and cleanup on isle 5, please..!

Strategize, mobilize, finalize!

Just imagine how fast you can build when you got a huge sauropod helping out!?

Behind the Scenes

While these monthly posts, combined with our weekly friday showcases (which you can check out over on reddit and on our discord), we strongly believe in being open and honest in our communication about developing this game.

We talk about when things are great, when cool things are made, when things are difficult, when Unity throws a curve-ball and the game bugs out (of course impossibly any fault of our own!) and everything in between. And on top of that, we love reading and replying to all your questions and comments on the steam discussion board and everywhere else.

But sometimes, there is one medium that is just better at showing exactly how something feels, and that's video.

So, when we did our last big playtest at the beginning of the year, we had a little 'behind the scenes' minidoc put together about it, and it is finally ready for prime-time:

Watch on YouTube

Art and stuff

Finding just the right colour palette for all the dinosaurs is in the safe hands of our artist Lina, who did this incredible study in different ways to gave our Jurassic friends some 'pop', have a look:

Your lord needs some hefty armor to have even the slightest chance against big dinosaurs, here is the latest and greatest fit from the Medieval Department Store:

And lastly, a little teaser, our 3D department has been watching a lot of Godzilla and working on building destruction. We will have a much more in-depth look at this at a later point, but for now here's a still from one of the buildings feeling a little less optimal. Surely, a landlord-special makeover with a layer of paint will fix this right up?

Wrapping Up

That was all for July! I hope you all have a great summer, remember to drink water and apply sunscreen.

Catch you in the next one!

-panxter

Original post

06 Jul 2026Developer post

Dinolords Monthly - June

Woah, June came and went faster than a Epidexipteryx can eat a Cerambycinus beetle. We are just in the tail end of a big heatwave here in Denmark, and it seems most of Europe has been feeling pretty hot over the last week - I hope everyone is doing all right and remember to drink

Woah, June came and went faster than a Epidexipteryx can eat a Cerambycinus beetle. We are just in the tail end of a big heatwave here in Denmark, and it seems most of Europe has been feeling pretty hot over the last week - I hope everyone is doing all right and remember to drink water.

This month, we are talking about a certain kind of fog, and looking at some of the new things that have made their way into the game, so strap in and let's go!

Fogging up the place

Okay, it's time for one of the big ones: Fog of War! And how it works in Dinolords!

Since pretty early on, we knew we would eventually have to tackle this one, since fog of war is such a ubiquitous part of RTS and ARPG games, but with so many different specifics in various implementations, it would also be yet another area where we would have to do some exploring to figure out exactly how it works in the hybrid space between the two genres.

For Dinolords, fog of war will have 3 different states: unexplored, explored and visible. Starting a map, the entire thing is unexplored. This is shown by both the minimap and in-world being darkened significantly and you are not able to see what lies within that darkness.

As you move around, the area surrounding you, your town hall, or your Wingsight, will be actively visible and change whatever you pass through from unexplored to explored. An area being explored is reflected on the minimap and in-world by being less dark than unexplored, but units are not visible, and buildings and structures are visible but not updated - that means you can not see if a base is expanded or destroyed on the other side of the map, if that area is explored, unless you get active vision on that area again.

As you move out of an area and it leaves your field of view, it goes from being part of your active vision and back to being just explored space. As you can see in the gif above, dense tree lines, cliffs and other structures can act as blockers for your vision, making an area inactive even though it is still on your screen. We found that this hugely affect the vibes of a map as you move around, you never know what lies around a corner, and it allows for some great surprises if the enemy manages to sneak up on your blind spot. And inversely, chopping your way through a forest like a Trojan lumberjack allows you to quickly funnel in from outside the enemy's awareness, and who doesn't love a well executed surprise attack? Well, come to think of it, I guess the Trojans didn't..

Furthermore, Wingsight can be used as a spotlight you can move around relatively swiftly, turning inactive, explored areas into active vision - but with the caveat that it cannot be used to explore the unexplored. This strikes a cool balance where Wingsight is a powerful and effective tool that helps you gain a quick overview of the land, but without it becoming a crutch you stay in, and without it becoming a mandatory fly-over the entire map every time you start a level which would be pretty boring.

And lastly, units or certain structures may provide active vision to the surrounding area, allowing for strategic deployment and a way to set up a sort of warning-system where you can see if enemies are approaching from a certain direction if you have an outpost there. Lighting the beacons of Gondor, anyone?

Catching the vibe

Martin and Elisa have been busy at work really honing in on making the levels feel alive and exploring how the environment can help tell a story. The result is that the levels have really taken a massive step up in terms of decoration and all sorts of things you can come across as you are out exploring.

Here are a few before-and-after examples of how that looks, starting out with a small fishing settlement:

"This used to be such a lovely neighborhood!"

Really upping the dial for density, this small fishing village now also has a story to tell of when the Vikings arrived and probably did some polite pillaging. I am sure they were completely level-headed and reasonable in their approach!

Something as simple as a split in a river can become much more interesting once elements like a watermill are added. It looks so serene now, would be a shame if someone was to wade a T-rex through there.

From another angle, the old ruins of a former castle, I wonder what grand war-plans were laid in here that lead to it ending up in that state?

Deinonychus indeed do choose the darndest locations for their nests. I hope the villagers that used to live here moved out before their arrival, although the bloodstains tell a different story.

Concept Art

For the final section of this Monthly, I have something quite special. Our concept artist Lina has been busy exploring how animal husbandry might look in a world where dinosaurs are present.

How does everyday life look for a viking who has a herd of compsognathus (a herd? that doesn't sound quite right. Maybe a flock? Or a murder of compsognathus? Let me know what your best bet is for what a group of compsognathus would be called!), or how does travel look like with an ankylosaurus?

The result are these super atmospheric sketches, have a look:

That's a wrap!

That was all for this month's edition of Dinolords Monthly.

As always, thank you for following the development, we truly appreciate all the interactions and feedback we get from all of you, and I am always excited to share new things in this format.

Catch you all in the next one!

-panxter

Original post

04 Jun 2026Developer post

Dinolords Monthly - May

One day eats the next, and before you know it, it's time for a new edition of Dinolords Monthly! Fresh off the press (or, well, my keyboard I guess), this time we will be talking about construction and destruction of buildings, some cool tech in Entities/DOTS, and ending with som

One day eats the next, and before you know it, it's time for a new edition of Dinolords Monthly!

Fresh off the press (or, well, my keyboard I guess), this time we will be talking about construction and destruction of buildings, some cool tech in Entities/DOTS, and ending with some concept art and new models.

So strap in and lets set sails on this Viking ship of updates!

To construct or destruct, that is the question!

By now it is getting pretty clear to us that you will be building, and you will end up building quite a lot. So making the act of constructing various structures and building satisfying and cool looking has been among the tasks in the safe hands of Jesper, our 3D wizard. (You might know him from our weekly show-and-tell posts on discord and reddit).

Part of that is making sure that buildings are constructed and don't just appear out of thin air as if by magic:

As the Danish song goes: "med min hakke min skovl og min spade"

Another part of that is paying attention to small details and really make the construction animations go above and beyond. One of those small details is small dust particles as shown in editor-footage here:

But building stuff is one thing, since you have a mighty enemy there is a pretty real risk of your buildings also being destroyed. Having buildings show their damage state before collapsing in glorious rubble is one of the ongoing tasks right now, and while smoke, particles and even fire can do a lot to help convey this, the building model itself also needs to mirror this.

Intact, damaged, and critical states for one of the buildings.

And ultimately, the entire thing crumbles and falls apart when it is destroyed, leaving just a bunch of rubble and embers.

It's really nice to get more of these kinds of details and visual effects into the game as it really makes it feel much more tangible and real. We definitely set the bar high for ourselves but we choose to make videogames not because it is easy, but because it is hard!

MORE DOTS!

Second on the schedule for this Monthly, we are talking about some substantial changes to the underlying code of Dinolords, as we have been (and are still in progress of) switching the game systems over from using unity's MonoBehaviour to using Entities & DOTS, with all the burst and jobs and bells and whistles that follows that transition.

This segment is going to be a little technical, and a bunch of it requires more wrinkles than my brain has to comprehend fully but I will do my best to summarize and hopefully explain it in a way that makes sense to those of us who are not deep in the coding soup. So to set off, let's look at one of the main reasons for us to do this switch: performance.

MonoBehaviour is neat, it's fairly straightforward and easy to get going real fast. You write MonoBehaviour scripts with all the game logic you want and you don't have to think too much about what goes on "under the hood" (in the CPU, that is). But that comes with a trade-off, and that is performance. MonoBehaviour has limited support for multithreading, and that means as the project grows and more and more stuff needs to happen, all the things needs to stand in line and wait their turn on the main thread (this is somewhat a simplification, but I had to draw the line somewhere as to how deep this segment goes). If you imagine a hundred units on a battlefield, they all have a bunch of things each they want to do, you quickly end up with thousands of things that lines up to be done by the CPU that only does one at a time, in order, in a neat line, and each of the things asking to be done can be very pretty abstract from a processors point of view, so it also spends longer on each task as it needs more time to translate what needs to be done into calculations it can do well.

Now, DOTS uses a data-oriented approach, and what does that mean? To crudely simplify; if you imagine how abstract the object-oriented approach of MonoBehaviour is for the CPU, this is sort of the proportionate inverse but for humans; it is a more abstract way for us to think about what the systems do, but it is much closer to how the CPU thinks about things, so it needs to spend a lot less time translating and can spend a lot more time just doing the math it's so good at. On top of that, it uses a different compiler called Burst, and you write your code using the so called Job System that chops all the things the processor needs to do into highly optimized bite sizes that can then be spread out across multiple cores a lot easier, so it is sort of like a double-whammy in a sense, instead of having one Deinonychus eat an entire Brontodon, we carve it out and chuck a nice bite to each of 4, 8, 10, or more Deinonychus - I am sure you can also imagine that being eaten a lot faster this way!

The result of all this is a pretty substantial performance gain for Dinolords, and the benefits of this are plethora, but to highlight a few:

Much better and more stable performance as the total unit count in a level increases into the triple-digits.
Game can run a lot better on weaker and more varied hardware
Better utilization of modern hardware like new multicore CPU's with modern instruction sets and large cache sizes.

Now, for the nerds who have laughed at my crude simplifications but are still curious, a lot more detailed and in-depth descriptions of the general DOTS system can be found over on Unity's website.

Art art art!

Okay, phew, after that technical lingo, let's have a nice palate cleanser in the form of some great concept art and some of the models our artists and 3D-people are working on.

Various different sketches for different looking units with different armor and different appearances.

Some concept art for new buildings, some of which are for environment, some potentially for players.

Icons for upgrading different things via research.

New environmental models, some new Viking encampments and an abandoned watermill.

Wrapping up

That was all for this months edition of Dinolords Monthly.

If you just can't get enough of the techy stuff, don't hesitate to ask any question you might have either as a comment below, in a discussion thread, or over on our discord. If I can't answer, I will make sure to pass it along to someone who can, and I know all our datamancers are already experts in the whole Entity/DOTS thing!

Catch you all in the next one!

-panxter

Original post

01 May 2026Developer post

Dinolords Monthly - April

Welcome to the April edition of Dinolords Monthly! This time we are going to talk a little in-depth about level design and what considerations are important for making a good map for Dinolords, and a quick look at two of the newly updated Dinosaur models that are making their way

Welcome to the April edition of Dinolords Monthly!

This time we are going to talk a little in-depth about level design and what considerations are important for making a good map for Dinolords, and a quick look at two of the newly updated Dinosaur models that are making their way into the game.

Let's start with venturing into the wilds and see how a level is designed!

Leveling up Levels

Lately we have been exploring the level design of Dinolords and what it takes to make a level that is interesting to navigate and play, but still fair regardless of spawning position without just being a complete copy+paste mirror of each spawn point.

There are many considerations when creating a level because we can't have one spawn point have any considerable advantage compared to another. That being said, spawn points can have different advantages as long as the perceived sum of them evens out. Think in the line of: one might have slightly better access to a specific resource, but that would then have to be countered by having slightly worse natural defenses or some other disadvantage.

An example could be the two layouts above where rivers and lakes are used to provide natural chokepoints that function as obvious points of focus for defensive structures.

In the left example, bridges are placed so that your main focus are the enemies to your right and left, while the one directly opposite of you needs to deal with their right or left opponent before they can comfortably reach you.

On the right example, bridges makes it so that the spawn points to the south and east have a less open way to attack each other, but the downside might be their access to certain resources are not as abundant as the spawn points closer to the mountains to the north and west.

We have also experimented with having levels that are more open in layout, but encourage players in different ways to engage in certain manners. In the two above examples, points that can really give you and advantage or an edge over your opponents are in the center of the level, and remaining in control of these can accelerate your progress ahead of your opponents.

That becomes an interesting decision whether to dare venture out and challenge the point and leave your base more vulnerable, or stay back and hold fast while risking your opponents getting the benefits.

Furthermore we want levels to feel different, water is a good and easy-to-read blockade you can't navigate across, but there needs to be different vibes so everything does not end up feeling like the same river delta. the two above examples have cliffs and mountains as well as deep chasms that functionally serve a similar purpose but provides a very different feeling to the levels.

So a lot of new experiments are happening with level design, this also ties in with the CPU controlled opponents we looked at in the February edition of Dinolords Monthly, and having a "skirmish" style play-mode where you select a level, set up opponents and teams and play just the one level until only one reigns victorious.

Dangerous Dinosaurs

The T-rex got some Viking garbs and barding and it looks so spiffy it's definitely ready for a great raid on some poor unsuspecting village!

The Brachiosaurus has also gotten some color and texturing, the gobble-gobble is strong in this amazing chungosaurus, it has definitely made it's way up there as a strong contender for the title of my favourite dinosaur in Dinolords.

Can't wait to see it with all the siege-breaking gear on!

That's All Folks

Thank you for following along the development of Dinolords and all the messages and interactions we get from you guys. As always, the interest and excitement you share with us is humbling and so incredibly motivating to make the best game we can, so thank you to each and every one of you.

Catch you in the next one.

-panxter

Original post

01 Apr 2026Developer post

Dinolords Monthly - March

It is once again time for a new edition of Dinolords Monthly where we check in with development of the game and what has been going on behind the scenes since last time. This time round, we are having a look at the new and updated T-rex, we are frolicking in the forest, and we ar

It is once again time for a new edition of Dinolords Monthly where we check in with development of the game and what has been going on behind the scenes since last time.

This time round, we are having a look at the new and updated T-rex, we are frolicking in the forest, and we are looking at some of the new stuff that is currently being worked on so strap in, arms and legs inside the ride at all times, and let's go!

Glow-up for the T-rex

This has been on our to-do list for a long while now. Our old T-rex was made in a different suite of 3D software than we use now, so to be able to do some of the new cool things we want to do, it had to be redone. It could also do wit ha bit of a visual update to bring it further in-line with the rest of the newer units in the game, so without further ado, here is the new T-rex with british barding:

Is that a seat? IS THAT A SEAT?!?!

So that probably also answers a question we have seen asked a lot; yes, you will be able to ride a T-rex. And not only that, it also comes with some super cool abilities for combat! Being able to eat and throw enemy units, hurling them towards an untimely demise. Viking bowling, anyone?

Strike! I wonder if they had those deranged bowling alley animations in medieval times and how would they look..?

Just when I thought it couldn't get any cooler, a lord riding a T-rex shows up!

Seeing the forest for the trees

Until now, trees have been just that, trees. Barely in your way, a resource to be felled and used to expand your position. But that is soon coming to an end, or at least it's going to change slightly, because we are introducing more trees to the trees, turning it into an actual forest!

And that probably needs some explanation as to why that is exciting, so I will first explain what has changed, and then try to elaborate a little on how that affects gameplay.

Impassable forest with undergrowth and different ground texture.

Trees are part of a system that checks how close trees are standing. And if they are close enough, undergrowth is added and they act like a blockade you can't run through. Very similar to how other RTS games have done before, with the added exception that any tree that stands too far away from other trees will continue to behave just like it has up until now.

Now, this might sound like a minor change, but the implications are much bigger than that. Suddenly, forests effectively acts like dynamic barriers that will change over the course of a level. As you cut down trees, you are opening up new points of attack, but this also go the other way; you are able to carve a way through the forest into enemy territory where they might have thought they were safe.

Additionally, this helped with another factor with was navigating a level. Paths, rivers and mountains only do so much, and becoming disoriented can cost critical time when the enemy is knocking down your gates. Somehow, having these areas of dense forest helps provide some navigational points of reference, and it is now much more intuitive to move around a level.

Show & Tell

In case you havn't seen them yet, my colleague Jesper is posting a summary of highlights from our weekly internal show & tell, you can find the posts over on reddit and on our discord. Every week there's a bunch of new goodies to feast your eyes upon and I definitely recommend heading over and taking a look.

But even though we now have those great weekly updates, I have still picked a few highlights to show off here, so let's dive in!

First up of cool things added to the game is something called Triplanar Projection. Gone are the days of stretched out textures on steep or vertical terrain surfaces, and in are super clean looking textures that wrap seamlessly around bends and curves. This has drastically improves how levels appear!

Before (left) and after (right)

And speaking of levels, Martin has been busy trying out different ways to make variation across levels in an attempt to both create visually interesting and distinct areas but also to help with navigation, here are a couple of screenshots of two very different looking zones:

It is so great seeing how drastically some different terrain, rocks and lighting can change the feel of a level, it is indeed very dramatic looking but I assume it would be, meeting a T-rex out in the wild like that.

Future Additions

We are going to be adding a bunch of new units to the game, and here I have tried my best to highlight how they will work and what they do in the game, so let's have a look:

Thesaurus - a super fibrous unit packed with words, has a permanent area-of-effect buff that increases the literacy stats of all nearby units. Will always win in an argument and never backs down.

Cupidon - small, youthful flying unit that shoots arrows that charms enemy units. Wears a cute wreath but otherwise refuses to wear clothes. Awkward.

Adaptor - incredibly versatile unit that can straight up merge into any role and fit into every regiment.

Countertops - absolutely solid unit that provides a great platform that serves as a working surface for other units, provides +10 cooking skills while in use, known for its stews and baked goods.

We absolutely can't wait to see these units in the game, but we don't expect them to be ready before this exact same date in exactly one year because to us, it is a very special date.

Wrapping up

That was all for this edition of Dinolords Monthly.

Thank you for following along and for all the support towards the project, it truly means a lot to all of us.

See you in the next one!

-panxter

Original post

05 Mar 2026Developer post

Dinolords Monthly - February

Whew, February was over so quickly I almost missed it. But that doesn't mean anyone has to miss this edition of Dinolords Monthly! This time, we are looking back at a big convention, some clever CPU shenanigans, and how to make the world of Dinolords feel real and tangible! Copen

Whew, February was over so quickly I almost missed it.

But that doesn't mean anyone has to miss this edition of Dinolords Monthly!

This time, we are looking back at a big convention, some clever CPU shenanigans, and how to make the world of Dinolords feel real and tangible!

Copenhagen Gaming Week

The biggest Danish event for all kinds of gaming and play was held at Bella Center in Copenhagen, and similarly to the last two years, we participated as parts of the TAGS ("Tomorrows Awesome Games Showcase") booths where a lot of Danish-made games, big and small, are shown off with playable demos for the crowd.

Our booth when I arrived wednesday evening to set up the computer, cameo traffic cone because safety first!

We had a busy couple of days where the demo was being played constantly - I don't think I saw the seat empty for more than half a minute before a new player rose to the challenge. And it was great to see so many people, both young and less young, being curious and excited about what we are making.

The event was completely sold out, with more than 10.000 people attending per day, we had our hands full tending the booth and showing off Dinolords, and we are thankful to everyone who dropped by and said hi.

Spilprisen 2026

Friday evening, as an addendum to Copenhagen Gaming Week, Spilprisen (the Danish Game Awards) was held at Bella Center. It was scheduled to start 1 hour after the convention closed, so we did what is most appropriate answer rushed out to grab a quick pizza before rushing back, ready for the show!

Speedrunning a pizza dinner with a good chunk of the team.

This year we had an extra reason to pay attention to the show because our programmer Lukas was called on stage as part of the Talents of the Year segment. It is a celebration of distinguished talent that are new to the industry, and we are super proud and happy that Lukas was selected to be part of it.

It was a lot of fun to celebrate all the cool things that are happening in the Danish video games industry, and also a great way to have a party with fellow gamedevs you don't get to see everyday. While the Danish video game industry can sometimes seem small compared to other countries and even our neighbors, it is great to see how much is happening all over the country, and a huge congratulations to all the winners!

You and the CPU

Now, back to Dinolords! We (and by "we" I mean the colloquial "we", as this has very much been Lukas' brainchild) have been looking at different gamemodes for Dinolords. Some of you have tried our Campaign idea during the playtests, which is still under development but can be summarized as a dynamic map of different levels with changing circumstances that you play through as a string of pearls, unlocking units and trying to rid the map of the pesky invading Vikings. Between levels you use Amber to unlock upgrades and changes to how you play the game to become stronger and do more cool stuff.

And while we think that gamemode is great, we also acknowledge the need for a more one-off style of playing where you select a level and just play once. This serves multiple purposes, and some we hope to share more information on soon, but for now, I would like to talk a little bit about what we have chosen to call Skirmish.

Skirmish is, in essence, a more traditional RTS-esque way of playing Dinolords. You open a level-select screen where you can choose what map you want, difficulty, and other modifiers, and you then load in to a map where you play against a CPU-controlled opponent that is playing in a similar way to you, meaning: A dinolord runs around, explores, constructs a base, trains units, unlocks research and upgrades, contests points and eventually the victor is crowned via elimination.

Sped up in-editor footage of a CPU dinolord expanding their base.

Creating a CPU-controlled enemy that has the ability to dynamically change strategies and prioritize what to do next, sort of helps solve a couple of challenges for us:

Firstly, it creates a great experience playing against the computer because you are both going through similar movements; you decide what to focus on building your base, what units to train, where to expand your operations on the map, and how to get ahead.

Secondly, it helps us test how it feels playing against something that is more-or-less a mirror of yourself as a player in what you can do in the game, unlike the more objective-oriented levels we are making for the Campaign mode.

And finally, it forces us to look at the British and the Vikings more like two factions; how are they similar, how do they differ. Like in other RTS games, picking one faction over another is always a choice of sacrifice vs payoff in how they differ from each other, and we keep finding ways that the Vikings surprise us.

We are very excited about this new way of playing the game, and can't wait to see how it fares once it reaches a playtest!

Scaping a Land

We touched on this before, but that was a long time ago and there is a lot happening when it comes to making the levels feel like real, "lived in" places where you can imagine different threads of life has happened. So let's have a look at some of the new things that have been added that helps achieve this goal, starting out with a bunch of ruins, the "newest" in terms of how old they are in-lore first:

An abandoned small village or settlement, who knows what caused the to leave the place becuase one can almost imagine it to be pretty cosy when it was active. But those are barely even ruins, they are brand new! How about something older? Like old Roman ruins:

What an aqueduct that must have been when it served to supply water to a town at some point, beautiful! But we must go older! Way older!

Now we are talking, prehistoric megalithic structures, now that's got some age to it!

It's all coming together, and while it's clear that total and complete historical accuracy has been a hallmark from the beginning, it is still nice to be able to trace some of the major turning points through the environment of the levels as you play the game.

That's all this February

Thank you for coming along on this edition of Dinolords Monthly, I hope you found it interesting!

There is a bunch of stuff going all as always so these posts only reflect aspects of what is happening with the project, but we love the ability to invite you inside the engine-room and see what it's like making a game like Dinolords.

And as always, you are most welcome to join us over on the Dinolords Discord where we hang out and chat a little more informally and you can ask us whatever questions you might have about the game, or what our favourite dinosaur is!

If you can't get enough of stuff like this, my colleague Jesper does a weekly summary of our friday show-and-tell that he posts on the official Dinolords subreddit and on Discord, go have a look!

Catch you in the next one.

-panxter

Original post

06 Feb 2026Developer post

Dinolords Monthly - January

Two Dilophosaurus go round the outside, round the outside, round the outside. Guess who's back, back again? Monthly's back, tell a friend! It's been a while! Christmas and new years happened, and with Michael's big new years post, we decided to skip the regularly scheduled Monthl

Two Dilophosaurus go round the outside,
round the outside, round the outside.
Guess who's back, back again?
Monthly's back, tell a friend!

It's been a while! Christmas and new years happened, and with Michael's big new years post, we decided to skip the regularly scheduled Monthly, but that means that this edition is just that more meaty! So saddle up your Utah Raptor and let's dive straight in, starting with a look at a new feature!

Wingsight

This is a pretty big one, and some of you might have already tried it during the latest alpha or seen it on livestreams and videos, but we also wanted to show it off and highlight some of the things this new toggle allows for everyone. First, let's dig into what issues we are trying to solve and then look at the solution we came up with.

Dinolords is a genre hybrid, we are trying to mix RTS and strategy gameplay with ARPG elements, and in that, we have a main player character to whom the camera is locked and you move around with WASD. So far so good!

BUT, we also understand that this is very foreign for players coming from more traditional RTS games with a completely free camera and mouse controls.

So we have added, and are experimenting with, a feature called Wingsight (internally also affectionally known as "Bird-mode" even though it's a Dimorphodon and not a bird at all!).

Entering Wingsight, adding my ranged units to a control group and sending them across the bridge.

We believe strongly in the fantasy of playing as a character in the middle of the battlefield, and we also find the restrictions of having a following camera to afford some interesting gameplay and suspense about what is going on outside of the screen. But Wingsight serves to alleviate the players longing for more traditional RTS-style free camera, without completely negating the fantasy and gameplay we think is part of what makes DInolords great.

So how does Wingsight work? It is an alternate camera mode you can toggle in and out of via the tab-key. When you press it, the Lord sends out a Dimorphodon that flies high up into the air and the camera zooms out further than normal, giving you a larger, more top-down view than the regular view. You can then move the ~~bird~~ Dimorphodon around much faster than the lord is able to run, but there is a range limitation around the Lord where it slows down drastically.

Furthermore, you have additional zones around your Town Hall, and you are able to place down "Outpost" buildings, allowing you to quickly Wingsight to them and remote control production, or unit movement, even with the Lord not directly present. You can also jump quickly to these points via the minimap, offering an experience that is more akin to more traditional RTS, while keeping some of the interesting elements of the camera limitations intact.

Using Wingsight in combination with control groups adds some pretty cool levels of strategic control to the battlefield, and the ability to micromanage your units a lot more than before, while remaining a feature that can be optional, for those who would like a simpler experience.

A display of my strategic genius, letting my ranged units act as meat shields, selecting my melee control group and sending them in after the battle has ended. A true battlefield mastermind, I am!

We are still working on the specifics of Wingsight and everything mentioned is of course subject to change, but so far it feels very right for the game, and we are really looking forward to getting this in the hands of more players in future alpha tests!

Seasons

You might have caught wind of this if you follow our twitter, we are working on adding seasons to our levels. For now, we have summer everywhere, and we want some more ways to really make levels stand out and look different, so in addition to our plan of adding biomes with different vegetation and appearance, we are looking to make them all work in different seasonal attire.

"Let it snooooow, let it snooooow, let it SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!"

To start out, we are adding winter, which feels very topical as the outside temperature has been in the negative °C for weeks here in Denmark. There really is nothing like coming inside after being out in a freezing, windy January morning to plop down at your desk, warm coffee or tea ready, and load up a vista of freezing, windy, snowy landscapes!

But, I must say, it does look great, and it looks much more interesting "live", as the snow is shimmering and snowflakes are slowly falling from the skies, screenshots or gif's compressed to hecc can't show it as good as the video over on Twitter.

Playtest

Starting the day I went on a vacation, we opened up for another round of playtesting, and 1000 of you got an email and installed the Alpha! First of all, we want to express our gratitude to all of you who dedicated your time to play the alpha and filled out the feedback form. It helps us out tremendously and it is so incredibly exciting to see the streams and videos that come out during the playtest, as well as reading all the messages, ideas and feedback over on the Discord. So a big Thank you to all of you.

You guys played 4814 levels and trained 155,755 units! That's almost 4 times as many units as there are people on Monaco! Wild!

Of those 155,755, almost 30,000 were dinosaurs, with the most trained being the Compsognathus with 11,995 units. A little upset there wasn't just 5 more for a clean even 12,000. But imagine twelve thousand compsognathus, and the absolute nightmarish cacophony of screeching that would cause (I promise, there's a fix to the compy screech frequency coming soon!).

You also constructed 48,417 buildings, which is a lot. It's 7 times as many as there are skyscrapers in the world. Some proper entrepreneurs you are!

And to support all that construction and training, you gathered so many resources!

Food: 734,976
Gold: 130,660
Wood: 984,132
Stone: 249,611
Eggs: 134,767
Amber: 1,415,652

Those are some absolutely huge numbers!

Artistic Art

Before we wrap up this absolute unit of a Monthly, let's look at some of the new assets that are being worked on for the game. And why not start out with a unit, feels topical somewhat:

Protoceratops is really causing a rift in the team, some thing it's the ugliest thing (not the 3D model, that's gorgeous as always, but the dinosaur itself), and some of us think it's a sassy little diva that is going to live it's best life, thriving, in it's lane.

Next up is a bunch of new environment assets. Sometimes it can be easy to forget just how many things are needed to make a world feel real and "lived in". They all make the maps feel much more tangible, and it takes a lot more than just adding a tree and a bush. So here are some of the new things that has made their way into the game:

If you, like me, can't get enough of seeing all the new things that are added to the project in these art- and content showcases, our 3D wizard Jesper has started compiling some of the stuff from our weekly internal show-and-tell and putting it up on Reddit and Discord! Go have a look, and we do out best to reply and interact with everyone!

That's all

That was all for this edition of Dinolords Monthly.

Thank you everyone for following along on this wild journey we are on, thank you for reading our monthly news, thank you for playing the Alpha if you did, thank you for engaging with us and for wishlisting the game. It is all very humbling to feel the overwhelming support from all of you, and we promise to do our best to make Dinolords the best game it can be!

Catch you all in the next one, and until then, happy ~~Valentines~~ Velociraptines Day!

-panxter

Original post

29 Dec 2025Developer post

End of Year 2025

Hello everyone, Michael here. I’m the CEO of Northplay and Game Director on Dinolords. Frederik/panxter usually writes our Steam updates and he is a much wittier writer than me, but most of the team is taking a well deserved holiday after an eventful year. This, however, gives me

Hello everyone,

Michael here. I’m the CEO of Northplay and Game Director on Dinolords. Frederik/panxter usually writes our Steam updates and he is a much wittier writer than me, but most of the team is taking a well deserved holiday after an eventful year. This, however, gives me an excellent opportunity to share a small end-of-year update from me personally.

I’m used to talking about the ‘We’ in Northplay as a company. But I wanted to take a moment to thank you for enabling me, Michael, to work on this game. If it wasn’t for your support I wouldn’t be able to build this amazing team and work on this absolute dream project. Your wishlists, comments, feedback, and words of encouragement make this journey possible.

At Gamescom earlier this year.

I have been making games since I was a kid growing up in the 90s. And while a good part of my career has been dedicated to graphic design, I always gravitated towards games. I made an imaginary game company when I was 10. Most people probably think that studio CEOs are these businessy types, but I’m really just a graphic designer. Or at least I started as one, and have had to learn all the other stuff along the way.

Northplay is turning ten in May and it’s been ten long years building a studio the hard way. We have worked on more than 20 games across mobile, console and PC. Some of our own games have done reasonably well. Some failed horribly. When we weren’t making games for ourselves, we made them for others to help fund our next experiments.

In comparison, these past 3 years working on Dinolords have been a surreal experience. It’s been challenging but in very different ways. We now have financial support to focus all of our efforts on one game. We’ve had to grow the team and organise our work in new ways. We’ve fought battles and elbowed our way into places to give ourselves the best possible shot at making this game.

Some of the Northplay team on a company trip this year.

A new kind of RTS

And Dinolords is no ordinary game. I know most people probably feel that way about their projects, but I have made ordinary games and this isn’t one. We’re attempting a genre hybrid that is mostly unexplored. A player-controlled hack-and-slash protagonist in a real-time strategy setting with base building and unit control. Or Hack’n’Strat as Frederik much more succinctly coined it.

We’ve spent this past year working through what that really means and how you make one. It’s been fraught with dead ends and hypotheses we’ve had to prove or disprove.

Making something new is hard. Explaining it clearly to players is often even harder.

I fully expect some people to pick up our game and be disappointed that it isn’t simply Age of Empires with dinosaurs. I’m sorry if reading this disappoints you. But that’s not the game we wanted to make.

I love RTS. Like many of you I grew up playing this genre of video games. I still enjoy them regularly. But I also feel like we’ve been remaking the same games for the past 20 years, rarely reaching the heights of the great titles from the late 90s. Strategy games have splintered into many sub-genres, but by and large RTS have stayed mostly the same.

We want to add something, not because we dislike what is, but because we think it can do more.

And that vision is much sharper here at the end of 2025 than it has ever been.

The aftermath of a Dinolords brainstorm session.

We’re putting players into the action as the main protagonist in a real-time strategy game. We’re bringing WASD to RTS.

You’ll balance your attention between building up your castle, defending it, exploring the land and raiding your opponent. All through the perspective of controlling the lord and commanding your army from a fixed camera. To long-time RTS veterans, this will feel foreign at first. But we’re confident that there’s a game here that deserves your attention.

We’ve found this formula makes some meaningful trade-offs compared to more traditional RTS games:

Playing a character in the world embodies what was always the most important resource in any strategy game: the player’s attention. It anchors much of the abstraction and takes away the competitive requirements of high actions-per-minute gameplay.

Because the camera almost always follows the lord, Dinolords have a spatial continuity that creates much stronger player narratives. It also makes the game streamer-friendly.

Most RTS games resolve in who-has-the-biggest army, but in Dinolords your character is a real force to be reckoned with and how you play on the battlefield can turn the tide of any encounter. Manoeuvring, dodging, and using abilities borrow everything that makes action RPGs so much fun. The player can express skill and win against overwhelming forces in battles that feel much more immersive than watching two blobs of units go up against each other.

We’ve tried to find all the places where Action RPG and RTS have synergies and amplified those to create fun and engaging systems. Dinolords also feature mechanics and metaprogression that’s inspired by modern roguelikes.

If we succeed in bringing in even some of these ideas to the genre, my hope is that it’ll open up a new type of game. One that still scratches that real-time strategy itch, but in a way that feels fresh, approachable and above all, fun.

Wrangling a production schedule at Düsseldorf Airport on our way back from Gamescom.

Make it Dino

This year was also the year our dinosaur game got a hell of a lot more dinosaurs.

Through all of our experiments, it’s been clear that dinosaurs in medieval times are the energy that carry this whole venture. As long as there’s dinosaurs on screen, most other faults are easily forgiven. At least, that’s been our experience.

At our office we have a giant poster with our key-art and when we’re in doubt about some design decision, we often point to it, to remind us how we want the player to feel when playing our game.

This past year, we more than doubled the amount of dinosaurs in the game and introduced a whole slew of dinosaur-powered upgraded buildings for players to unlock. From the Triceratops uprooting trees in your lumber camp to the Atrociraptor helping you hunt rabbits. Systems around these have solidified, and we now have a clear understanding of where we want to go.

As the year is coming to a close, I look back at another 12 months of working with some amazing humans on a childhood dream project.

2025 has been the year where we truly figured out what a Hack’n’Strat game should look like. We crossed 100,000 wishlists and got on the cover of PC Gamer(!) We’ve run three playtests with an increasing number of players and already received a huge amount of valuable feedback. We did a little video to celebrate some of these milestones.

Watch on YouTube

We still have a lot of work ahead of us and next year is going to be a make or break moment for both our game and ultimately my company. We are taking a chance here, but it’s a chance that I’m proud to be taking. If you’ve been following along, playtesting, commenting, or just quietly wishlisting from the sidelines, thank you. You’re the reason we get to take these risks at all.

We’ll be back in the new year with more updates. Until then, take care of yourselves, and enjoy the holidays.

Sincerely,

Michael

Original post

03 Dec 2025Developer post

Dinolords Monthly - November

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! And that means the page of the calendar has turned and it's time for a Dinolords Monthly! We were so busy with the big test that we skipped last months edition, so hopefully we can share some cool stuff in this one to make up for it. A

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! And that means the page of the calendar has turned and it's time for a Dinolords Monthly!

We were so busy with the big test that we skipped last months edition, so hopefully we can share some cool stuff in this one to make up for it.

Alpha Test

The big thing for us was the closed Alpha test here on Steam. We had an overwhelming amount of interest to try out the latest test build of the game, and 1200 players ended up instaling and trying out what is currently there to play.

Since this was our first test done via Steam, we had to put a cap on how many players we let in, which also means we only let in a fraction of all those of you who signed up. We had an overwhelming amount of people sign up for the alpha, way more than we could feasibly handle. That means that a lot of you did not get any exciting emails with invitations to the test, unfortunately. But there will be plenty more opportunities as we will be doing more playtests in the future, and sooner than you might think so stay tuned.

We have some fun numbers to share with all of you, so without further ado, here goes:

4407 levels were won
136 levels were lost
312 levels were restarted
163 levels were quit

Y'all need to up the difficulty, you are too good!

137178 units total were trained for combat

Swordsmen and Archers were the most popular choices, but there was still a lot of dinosaurs trained too:

20579 Deinonychus
16478 Compysognathus
3917 Utah Raptors
3668 Dilophosaurus
1272 Scutosaurus
1032 Ankylosaurus
636 Pachycephalosaurus

You all rid the lands of resources, absolutely no tree-loving to be found here, in total you guys collected:

925795 Wood
772313 Food
320100 Stone
81151 Gold

And you collected a total of 586427 amber and unlocked 7909 nodes on the amber charter!

A lot of buildings were constructed as well, land developers would be so proud of us for gentrifying so many neighborhoods. In total, 55824 buildings were constructed!

7597 Houses
5634 Palisade Walls
5442 Hunters Lodges
3747 Barracks
3230 Dino Pens
3150 Lumber Camps

It has been great reading all your comments, thoughts, and replies to our survey, and we are being very thorough dissecting it and condensing it into concrete designs that help shape the future development of the game.

We absolutely loved seeing all the content you all put up while testing, whether it be livestreams, youtube videos, reels or screenshots, and I think we have watched it all - If you think we havn't seen your video or something else, send us a link and I'll make sure to share it with the team. There were some hilariously galaxy-brained strategies being tried, including Compy-Rush with more than a thousand Compys completely covering the screen (poor poor CPU trying to handle that many units!), and also some very creative ones trying to break the systems of the game like the Infinite Gold Militia strategy. The creativity of you all is so great, keep it up!

And lastly, if you missed out on this closed alpha, don't fret. There will be more tests coming in the future (more detailed are tba), and as always you are more than welcome over on our discord server, where you can chat with all of us in a more informal setting, as well as reading what some of the testers have experienced.

Behind the Curtain

So even though we all have been super curious following the test, we have still been hard at work on the game, adding, tweaking, changing, implementing a bunch of stuff. And as per usual we would like to offer a peek behind the scenes on some of the stuff that is currently being worked on.

Starting out with the more visual stuff, there's a couple new creatures finding their way into the game. First up, the T-rex is getting a bit of a glow-up. It was needing a rework because the old rig had some limitations, and in that process, it is being redone to fit in better with the visual direction the game is moving in. Here is a screenshot from Philip of how the high-poly version looks:

Next up, we are aiming to have a dino-related upgrade to a lot of the buildings in the game. We have already shown the Lumberyard with a Triceratops and the Stockpile with a Jobaria to aid in construction, and currently in the works is a menacing addition to the Fisherman's shack, the Siamosaurus. I am not sure how they managed to avoid it just straight up eating all the fish, because it sure looks hungry:

And lastly, on the creature-side is a... hound? While it seems a little left-field, we have had a vision about the world of Dinolords still including animals that we know from our own timeline, which is also why there's deer, hares and horses. So adding a big doggo seemed like the perfect addition! Here's a textured high poly render, such a good boy:

Moving along, we have some new buildings, upgrades to current ones, and some that will be dino-fied with some cool scaly friends to help production:

Gamedev is easy

... and other lies we tell ourselves. As with most lines of work, things can go wrong. I guess the difference being that in gamedev we get funny screenshots to laugh at when it does.

So it has been a while since last time we did this, I feel like it's time to see some of the good ones:

T-rex? More like T-rextra! We meant it when we said a glow-up!

Don't know why exactly, but the horse has been horsing around and been the subject of many great moments.

Man or mouse? Or I guess more accurately, Deinonychus or mouse?

These guys were ready for Christmas with enough ham to feed several small villages. Stonks going through the roof, literally!

Until next time

That's all folks!

Now, there will be some news coming later this month, so stay tuned on this page.

Until then, we hope you all have a great December, and catch you in the next one!

-panxter

Original post

31 Oct 2025Developer post

Dinolords Closed Alpha Begins!

We’re thrilled to finally open the gates to the Dinolords Closed Alpha! The response to our latest trailer has been incredible. Nearly 20,000 people have signed up to help us test the game, which is far more than we can accommodate at once. We’ll be inviting players in waves , so

08 Oct 2025Developer post

Announcing the Dinolords Closed Alpha!

Many of you have asked, and we are super excited to share that we have something ready for you to try, as we are officially announcing the Dinolords Closed Alpha! To celebrate, we have a brand new trailer you can watch above. We have been hard at work making a playable slice of w

03 Oct 2025Developer post

Dinolords Monthly - September

"Waaaaake me uuuup, wheeeen September ends" Feels like it only just begun, but yet here we are, and it's now time for the September edition of Dinolords Monthly! It has been a month of progress at what feels like a staggering pace, as more and more parts of the game crystalizes a

"Waaaaake me uuuup, wheeeen September ends"

Feels like it only just begun, but yet here we are, and it's now time for the September edition of Dinolords Monthly!

It has been a month of progress at what feels like a staggering pace, as more and more parts of the game crystalizes and becomes locked in, we are able to focus more and more on making content; levels, buildings, units, improving graphics and visual effects, UI is mid overhaul, and all the while something pretty big is brewing but that will not surface for a few days still. Can not say what it is, other that stay tuned!

Campaign

One of the major things going into the game is a new way to play a series of levels. Current name is 'Campaign', but that is like everything else subject to change.

The base idea sprung from a desire to create a progression through different levels, but it had to be purposeful and be interesting to interact with. We envisioned levels as a series of pearls on a string, with one or multiple ways to modify or manipulate how a level would play out as you make your way through them.

Introducing the campaign map screen:

The screenshot is of a campaign in-progress, the blue regions are ones the player has conquered and two with red fill are the ones available to choose from to make their next step through the series of levels.

Each of the available regions have unique unlocks in the form of new units etc., and reward amber on completion. When you select a region you get some info on what type of level it is (what game-mode and objectives, along with a letter from the King about what the level is about).

Amber is a resource used to make unlocks for the active campaign, similar to talent- or tech-trees one might be familiar with from other games. How specific details work in terms of permanency vs a more rogue-lite approach is yet to be determined from testing.

This is also where some of the cool building upgrades and unit changes live, along with additional abilities for the player. A Triceratops Lumberyard, a Jobaria Stockpile, an Atrociraptor Hunters Guild and Pterosaur Towers are among the building upgrades that can be unlocked through the Amber Charger.

As we get more and more content added to the game, we also discover new and interesting things that the Amber Charter can be used to unlock.

UI, You and I

Another cool thing is the UI is getting a fresh coat of paint, which has both functional and visual implications. Pablo, one of our awesome artists, have been busy making UI elements that fit the fantasy of medieval dinosaurs way more, and so far we got a new minimap and health/ability bar implemented which you can see here:

The minimap has become square and now shows the entire levels (the map itself is a functional placeholder, we are experimenting with having more artistic maps that need to strike a balance between fitting into the aesthetic while remaining deeply functional).

UI is such an integral part of the experience, as it is the one thing that will be present all the time, and the stone-relief and carved dinosaur motifs really help set the tone for how this world feels. While also being, of course, 110% historically accurate!

Dinosaurs!

We've added more dinosaurs to the game! After all, with a title like Dinolords, we got to have as many dinosaurs as possible!

One of the ways we are introducing more dinos is by having an upgraded tier of some buildings, which adds a Jurassic helper to increase production substantially!

Before wrapping up this monthly, let's have a look at three of them, one of which was shown before but is now more polished.

Triceratops Lumberyard

It still feels juuuuust right, the mighty triceratops able to yoink trees right out of the ground and bring them back to be processed at the Lumberyard. What can we say, it just makes sense!

Atrociraptor Hunter

We like to imagine the training that went ahead of the Atrociraptors being able to be hunting companions must have been pretty intense and probably have caused some prey to ~~get eaten~~ go lost. But seeing these magnificent creatures hunt down prey is so satisfying! And they are a lot more efficient than a human hunter!

Jobaria Stockpile

Carrying materials to construction sites is heavy work, and requires a heavy unit! So the Jobaria seemed like a perfect fit! The fact that it has a long neck that could maybe work as a ladder seems like a handy addition to an already cool function. And having the big sauropod walk around the base is so cool.

I'm sure it's up for some scritches!

Spooktober!

That was all for this edition of Dinolords Monthly. It is now October, aka Spooktober, and there's some exciting stuff in the pipelines, ready to be announced very soon so stay tuned!

Until then, hope you all have a nice transition to fall (or spring, depending on your hemispherical alignment).

Catch you in the next one!

-panxter

Original post

29 Aug 2025Developer post

Dinolords Monthly - August

With fall rapidly approaching, September has arrived, and with that another edition of Dinolords Monthly is ready. In this one, we talk a little about Gamescom, how to command and control units, and look at some new assets that have made their way into the game. Gamescom 2025 Jus

With fall rapidly approaching, September has arrived, and with that another edition of Dinolords Monthly is ready.

In this one, we talk a little about Gamescom, how to command and control units, and look at some new assets that have made their way into the game.

Gamescom 2025

Just like last year, Michael, Ulrik and Kasra went to Gamescom in Cologne to represent the Jurassic age and show off DInolords in the business area.

We heard there was Kölsch, which we were very jealous of, but also that there was an exciting interview with Robin Valentine from PCGamer who, among many great thoughts, wrote this:

"All along the way, there are dinosaur delights. Far more than just another class of units to recruit, dinos are baked right into the game's DNA, and even just in 30 minutes I felt like I was constantly experiencing child-like joy at finding some new way they click into the formula."

The full article can be read here:

Dinolords blends action RPG combat and RTS battles in a medieval England overrun with dinosaurs, and surprisingly it's even cooler than that sounds

It never ceases to amaze us how Dinolords resonates with so many people, and it is both humbling and also a little nerve wrecking that so many of you find our project as cool as we do. We want Dinolords to be the best it can, and we will continue to work hard on doing our very best to achieve that.

That aside, they also saw a bunch of cool games, every year especially the indie area shines with awesome ideas and we can't wait until it is our turn to show Dinolords to all of you. Until then, let's move this monthly along with a look at unit controls.

Unit commands and controls

This segment is going to touch upon areas of the game that are still in-the-works and not completely crystalized yet, so here is the obligatory "this is all subject to change" disclosure before we dive in.

With that being said, we have been spending some time really digging into how we want controlling both the player character and units to feel, and furthermore how we can achieve that with only 10 fingers, 2 hands, a mouse, and a keyboard.

The way you interact with units have already been through many iterations, all trying to strike a balance in fidelity - how fine-grained is it viable to expect one to be able to manage while also dealing with the other aspects of the game, and as the pendulum has swung back and forth, we are now honing in on that goal.

As we are chipping away at the rough stone to find the gem, one if the issues we have had was simply that there is only two buttons you can viably use for primary functions on the mouse; left and right click. And with a hero-character you always control who has to attack, buildings you have to select and manage, various elements you might have to click, having the mouse do double duty to also select units and issue commands seemed like an impossibility. So we are experimenting with making that possible via a dynamic switch between two modes ("modes" being a bit of a misnomer here, because they have a substantial overlap in functionality still), where in one of them you play on a lord-oriented way, and the other offering a more strategic overview both in terms of the actual viewport of the battlefield, but also when it comes to what the cursor and mouse buttons do.

The former works similarly to how the game has worked so far; you move via WASD, you right click to attack, and you left click to select/interact with units, buildings etc.

The latter works slightly differently: you still move via WASD, you left click to select units, but right click is now used to issue different move commands to your unit selection. This view also provides additional UI elements to help you manage your army and fine-tune your strategic placement of units.

Shared between both is one important reintroduction as many might be happy to hear: traditional box-selection is back!

There are still details to be figured out and kinks to be ironed out, but so far this is proving a lot more solid than previous iterations, and the pendulum feels like it's landing in a solid spot where you can really feel some deep heritage from two huge genres while still being fresh and intuitive.

Dinosaurs!

Since last time, some cool new dinosaurs have made their way into the game as well.

Firstly, an upgrade to the lumbercamp to increase the manpower, or rather, dinopower and really up the wood production:

Absolutely love to watch the Triceratops just yoink the trees straight out of the ground. It's so cool!

Secondly, the Pterodon tower shown in the last monthly, is functional!

Disregard streams of pee from the soldiers. Although, who wouldn't have done that if they got lifted off the ground by a massive flying dinosaur only to be yeeted towards the ground at breakneck speeds. Can't really blame them.

Screenshot Showcase

We got some new screenshots from gameplay hot of the press, have a look here:

Until next time

That's all for the August edition of Dinolords Monthly. As always, thank you to everyone who is following along, and to everyone who has wishlisted Dinolords here on Steam.

Catch you all in the next one.

-panxter

Original post

07 Aug 2025Developer post

Dinolords Monthly - July

It's summer, the sun is out for the three days of summer we get in Denmark, and a bunch of different things are happening in Dinolords. This month we are revisiting and expanding a little on the subject of basebuilding, we are looking at some more cool art, and then we are scratc

It's summer, the sun is out for the three days of summer we get in Denmark, and a bunch of different things are happening in Dinolords.

This month we are revisiting and expanding a little on the subject of basebuilding, we are looking at some more cool art, and then we are scratching the surface on defensive gameplay and what elements are going to have a big impact on the battlefield.

So get comfy, maybe have a mug of mead, and come along in this edition of Dinolords Monthly.

Expanding Basebuilding

A couple episodes ago, we looked at how basebuilding got streamlined and made a lot more direct than it initially was, by removing intermediary steps and opaque resource refinement that made it unclear where your resources had gone when you wanted to use them on something else.

And that really worked; we discovered a core set of buildings that makes for a basic base, sort of "jack of all trades master of none". And now we are about to start opening up how that can then be specialized and made more interesting by upgrades and alterations to that core set.

We always wanted to infuse more dinosaur-energy into the project as we do believe it is very much a case of "more is more". We also like to think that having, or at least attempting to, domesticate dinosaurs would influence many facets of the world, just like how the livestock of our timeline has affected us. And one of those would be improved/upgraded versions of some of the buildings in the game, starting out with the lumbercamp!

I am not quite sure if it's all because of the 90s "Dinosaurs" sitcom tv-show, but almost universally everyone has an idea about the Triceratops being the perfect beast to help with lumberyard work. So we are currently working on the first dinosaur-infused building, which is an upgraded lumbercamp with a great Triceratops pulling out trees by the root and bringing them back to camp, accompanied by a rider sitting on a special saddle with logging-truck-esque accoutrements to help lug the logs.

And how would a hunter work if they got assisted by an apex predator - I imagine the biggest challenge would be to avoid the dinosaur eating the prey before you get to it yourself. Or maybe a Sauropod or Plateosaurus could assist farmers in reaching and picking fruit from trees with some sort of clever saddle-contraption!

It's so quick to form ideas and images of how this could look, and we hope we can bring it all to life, at least in a digital version.

Art Showcase

We have done it before and we will keep doing it because the art is just too cool to keep internal. So here is a showcase of some of the assets currently making their way into the project!

Different footprints for different dinosaurs!

Some new dinosaur-inspired buildings, blacksmith, armorsmith and fletcher now all looking absolutely amazing!

Defenses

This is a big subject for us, and it is ever-developing as we discover and explore new ideas, but one thing was set from the beginning: We want the act of defending your base to be interesting and engaging.

Working towards that goal has led us far and wide in search of things we could add to the game that would contribute towards making defenses more than just palisades and walls, and in this segment we are going to have a look at some of the ideas we have been toying with. Do note that this is not finalized, and not a guarantee that these will be in the game and if they are, they might not be implemented in the exact way described, but they are indicative of some of the overarching thoughts we are putting into defensive gameplay.

Starting out with arguably the coolest of the bunch; the Ptero-tower! A tower that houses one or more flying dinosaurs that fly out and attack enemy units. We are playing around with them having the ability to pick up units and drop them from high up, causing damage but also potentially dropping them into dangerous territory (maybe this can work with some of the other structures outlined below, who knows?). A potential upgrade could be having the dinosaurs drop exploding clay pot bombs for ultimate carnage on the battlefield!

Next up is a net-throwing tower, with the ability to immobilize even the fastest units at range, allowing for your other units to get in a good hit! Generally, controlling movement of the enemy (aka Crowd Control) is super powerful in a game where a lot of the combat is oriented towards positional advantage and dodging strikes left and right. It could be some sort of big ballista where the bolts are a sort of bola-esque net, prioritizing big and fast units.

We are also playing around with the idea of allowing better control of the ground itself around your base, one of them is an upgrade for buildings that lays down cobblestone around them, increasing movement speed within your walls. And perhaps this could be upgraded further, making it impossible for certain dinosaurs to dig underneath, thereby protecting your base from nasty surprises.

Going further than that, moats around your walls would put a hard stop to heavy armored units that would just sink and drown, or even some hidden spike pit traps. Those might be a great place for a flying dinosaur to drop an enemy into, come to think of it.

Some of these are still at early idea-stages, but some of them are returning favourites that keep popping up at regular intervals in the form of "hey, wouldn't it be cool if you could place moats?". And yeah, that would be pretty cool, we think!

That's all, folks

And just like that, we have reached the end of this edition of Dinolords Monthly!

As always, a big thank you to everyone following along.

Catch you next month!

-panxter

Original post

Updates & announcements

Northplay is joining The Big Break!

On the trail of radness!

Behind the Scenes

Art and stuff

Wrapping Up

Fogging up the place

Catching the vibe

Concept Art

That's a wrap!

To construct or destruct, that is the question!

MORE DOTS!

Art art art!

Wrapping up

Leveling up Levels

Dangerous Dinosaurs

That's All Folks

Glow-up for the T-rex

Seeing the forest for the trees

Show & Tell

Future Additions

Wrapping up

Copenhagen Gaming Week

Spilprisen 2026

You and the CPU

Scaping a Land

That's all this February

Wingsight

Seasons

Playtest

Artistic Art

That's all

A new kind of RTS

Make it Dino

Alpha Test

Behind the Curtain

Gamedev is easy

Until next time

Limited Access for This First Test

Watch the New Explainer

Join the Community

View game pageWhy a Closed Alpha?

What is in the Alpha?

Closing comments

Screenshots

Campaign

UI, You and I

Dinosaurs!

Triceratops Lumberyard

Atrociraptor Hunter

Jobaria Stockpile

Spooktober!

Gamescom 2025

Unit commands and controls

Dinosaurs!

Screenshot Showcase

Until next time

Expanding Basebuilding

Art Showcase

Defenses

That's all, folks