by Michael MurphyHave you ever wondered what it would be like if you were in Jurassic Park? Well, The Lost Wild is looking to come pretty close to bringing that to life. Crafted by Great Ape Games and Annapurna, the game aims to emulate the evasion-style gameplay of Alien: Isolation. I was able to see a hands-off demo presentation for the title, and it’s looking rather promising.
The demo I saw consisted of around 20 minutes of gameplay, mainly going over the various systems and encounters you’ll face. Setting-wise, you are stuck in a dimly lit forest area, lush with trees and tall grass, interspersed with various facilities like outhouses. You play as Saskia, an investigative reporter who wakes up on a mysterious dinosaur-filled island. From what I could gather from the demo, there are others on the island, but aside from one, they all only speak Japanese. It wasn’t clear where the island is, but the mystery of it is certainly a fun one to ponder.
Of course, we saw some raw gameplay of The Lost Wild, and it immediately evokes Alien: Isolation with its evasion-centric gameplay. Dinosaurs in the game are regular animals, but they don’t take kindly to intruders. Keeping yourself hidden and using throwable items to distract them is key to not becoming a prehistoric snack. For our demo, Saskia used the abundant tall grass and a breakable bottle to avoid an Allosaurus. However, we did get a look at a game over, which was just as unsettling as you’d imagine if getting eaten by a dinosaur.
One of the more interesting points raised during the presentation was that Saskia will generally not be able to fight back at all. She can distract them and sometimes fend them off with a makeshift weapon, but she can’t kill any of them. It does add to the tension of gameplay, seeing as if you get caught, you’re screwed. Seeing as the techniques for distracting enemies are your typical ones from other games, I’m intrigued about how The Lost Wild will expand upon that.
Surprisingly, despite being an in-progress build, things looked and ran pretty smoothly. There wasn’t any major glitches or lag from what I could see and gather. In fact, the forest scenery and textures were highly detailed, furthering immersion. Plus, the audio design, as always in horror games, made it feel like even those not playing, like me, were with Saskia in the deadly forest.
In short, The Lost Wild looks to capture that evasion-focused gameplay hook that many caught with Alien: Isolation and Amnesia, just now with dinosaurs. While promising, I do hope that further showings of Great Ape’s jurassic juggernaut can showcase a broader scale for settings, story, and stealth gameplay. Considering Universal still has Jurassic Park Survival in the works, it’ll be interesting to see how the two differ and which will become the dominant predator and which will be the unfortunate scientist at the wrong place and time.
The Lost Wild
