This past weekend marked over half a decade since we officially launched way back in 2015, and today we're kicking off a bunch of festivities to celebrate. But first, let's look back at 6 years of Extinction...
Evolving the Dino Shooter
Recreating the Primal Carnage experience with Extinction was a difficult task for the scrappy bunch of modders and indie devs who came together after Lukewarm Media disbanded all those years ago.
The team tried hard to differentiate the game from its predecessor by introducing concepts such as sub-classes, adding new weapons and maps, and tried out a bunch of exciting new gameplay features during early access. Production realities unfortunately meant we couldn't do everything we'd planned and Extinction's launch didn't go as well as we might have hoped.
Since then, most of the development crew have moved on to other projects, and we have attempted other ventures such as exploring VR combat with Primal Carnage: Onslaught. However, some of us felt there was still a lot more potential in Extinction. In late 2019, after managing to work out a sustainable development plan, we returned with a massive update to the game.
Since then we have continued overhauling and improving the experience tenfold. Over the past year we've tightened up numerous mechanics, rewritten weapon hit detection, introduced countless new features, and even added a brand new dinosaur class.
We've finally been able to achieve some of our original plans we had for Extinction years ago, and the response from the community after coming back has been a delight to see. Our crew has grown from three to seven people since returning, and we're not slowing down yet! We're committed to making Extinction all it can be and have big plans for 2021 on Steam and beyond.
A Dedicated Community
We're continually humbled and impressed by our dedicated fan community.
Even when the game suffered a drought of updates, we saw new Primal Carnage art being created and people posting their ideas for the future. Hell, some of you even kept playing in that time (!).
The creativity you guys have shown is astounding.
Since opening the Steam Workshop for Extinction we've accepted hundreds upon hundreds of unique skin designs and cosmetic items, fan-made maps and more.
Community initiatives to rework the dinosaur models led us to introducing the concept of Mutations to the game, and eventually hiring artists from the player-base to help create massive new updates such as bringing the Ceratosaurus to life in Primal Carnage: Extinction.
We're continually excited to see what new creations people come up with, and are thrilled that all these years later there is still a dedicated and growing community who get a kick out of our little dinosaur game. We wouldn't be here without the support you guys have shown us over the years.
From everyone on the team, thankyou for playing!
Alright, alright.
Enough of the love fest. Let's get onto the festivities...
Christmas in April!
Some people say "Spring forward!" but we're digging into our past with today's store event. Every classic gift we've ever added is back for a limited time, and they're available at less than half price!
Maybe you're in a summer mood, maybe you missed out last Christmas, well now's your chance.
This flash sale will only be available for the next couple of days!
And with Easter still in people's minds, we've brought back last year's selection to the store with a discount, check the Specials section for some returning retro items at a low price.
Community Scavenger Hunt
Like last year, we're going to be running another community scavenger hunt soon. The event will start with the launch of the next major update, and will last for just under 3 weeks.
Players must work together to find clues in-game, which they must decipher the meaning of. Each clue leads to a fragment of a special item code, piece enough fragments together and you have a key to redeem in the store.
There are 25 items to uncover, and the rewards shall remain a mystery until they are found..
That's only Phase One of the scavenger hunt though. Phase Two will take place out of game with clues found online, and will lead to even more exciting surprises that will be coming in future updates. We're really looking forward to this and hope people have fun puzzling their way through this year's gauntlet!
Arriving Soon:
The (Fashionably Late) Easter Update
The next major update is a shipment of eggs that were delayed in customs. Yes, it's the Easter update.
We hoped to have launched this a little earlier, but this omelette needs a little more time in the oven.
You can expect the next major update later this week.
Key features will include:
- Capture the Egg BETA - completely reworked game mode
- Newly overhauled Forgotten Outpost map
- Large-scale gameplay rebalance
- Free 6th Anniversary Celebration items
We've spent several weeks refining a new, more streamlined version of Capture the Egg that we think will be a lot more fun to play. In addition to using the entirety of the map (with special reworking of Forgotten Outpost in particular) the win conditions are much clearer.
Dinosaurs will take a much more active role, by actually being able to beat the humans. Current CTE is basically taking turns to see "who is the best human team?" with the dinosaurs not having much to do. The new version will allow dinosaurs to return eggs to the nests they were stolen from, and they can win the game by eliminating all humans before they have captured the egg(s).
We'll be launching this newly updated version of Capture the Egg in BETA form, with several new config parameters that server owners can tweak. These include settings such as how much of a head start the humans have, whether you can shoot while holding an egg, how many eggs can spawn, and so on.
Much time and effort has been put into reworking CTE, so we hope you'll give it a try when it launches! We're eager to see the response and which flavour of the mode ends up being most popular!
Happy Hunting!
We should be back later this week with the next major update for Extinction.
You can keep up with all the latest news on the game via Facebook, Twitter, or join our Discord server...
