Dinoblade Is a Soulslike Where You Fight a Tyrannosaur Wielding an Ankylosaur as a Club
I've played a lot of soulslikes. Dark Souls. Elden Ring. The ones that clearly want to be those games. But I genuinely cannot think of one where I play as a Spinosaurus swinging a Great Sword with its mouth and the final boss is the extinction meteor. That's Dinoblade. It comes out July 23 on Steam, and yeah, I played the demo.
The Setup Is Actually Insane
Team Spino built something here that sounds like a joke pitch and somehow isn't. You're a Spinosaurus. The weapon is a Great Sword. The enemies are tyrannosaurs carrying battleaxes and halberds. Real weapons. Held with their tiny arms, presumably.
But here's the part that got me: the T-rexes can bite an ankylosaur and use it as a weapon. The ankylosaur becomes the club. I don't know how the ankylosaur feels about this. I assume not great. But from a game design standpoint, an enemy that picks up a second enemy and swings it at you is something I want to experience firsthand.
500,000 Wishlists Says I'm Not the Only One
Over half a million wishlists before launch. That's not nothing. That's the number you get when a trailer lands right and the internet decides something is worth tracking. For a soulslike with a niche premise from a studio I hadn't heard of before this week, that's a real signal.
Whether the game holds up is another question. The demo is live right now on Steam. I put some time into it. The movement feels deliberate in the way soulslikes should feel deliberate, not clunky-deliberate. Landing a Great Sword swing as a dinosaur has weight to it. Whether the full game maintains that across a complete run, I can't say yet.
Fighting the Meteor
This is the part I keep coming back to. The extinction event. The actual meteor that ended the Cretaceous period. There's a boss fight against it.
I have questions. Is it a dodge-and-punish fight? Do you parry a space rock? Does winning mean you prevented the extinction, which would be a wild alternate history to unlock? I don't know. The demo doesn't go that far. But the fact that Team Spino looked at soulslike boss design and said "the meteor" is a creative decision I respect on principle.
Worth Trying the Demo Before Thursday
It launches July 23. The demo is free. If you've ever looked at a soulslike and thought "this needs more prehistoric megafauna and improvised ankylosaur weapons," this is a direct response to that. Worst case you spend twenty minutes on it and bounce. Best case you're day one.
I'll have more once I've put real hours into the full release.
Source: Pcgamer