Dinosaur Fossil Hunter: Prologue
This exceeded my expectations, and was very satisfying to play. For a free to play demo, I think this is great for a sim. A nice backstory, and a great taste of the full game. The idea of going from GPR to dig, encasing the fossils, shipping them, THEN cleaning the bones and building the displays was the entire spectrum, and it’s hands-on, not teleporting to the site. You have to drive there, set up the perimeter, and dig that stuff out yourself! Inspect what you dig, encase it in plaster, put it in the case, ship it, it’s the entire process, and that’s what I want in a sim. Also, you get achievements for a demo! One of them is still vexing me, but I’ll get it. Photos in the slideshow have images not in this prologue, but there is plenty here for an afternoon of fun, and I’m going to purchase day one. There’s a bit of noise about the lack of an avatar driving the car, but that is not an issue for me, and will likely be fixed in the full release of the game. Perhaps if/when gender and identity issues come up, but honestly there is no spoken dialogue, and gender-neutrality should be important in a game like this. Put tinted windows on the dang car, with a shadow, and it’s not an issue. There is enough depth and flexibility in gameplay for me.
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dinosaurs Building Games.
Nauseatingly bad.
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Don’t get me wrong, there’s a good idea for a young children’s game here. Visually it’s interesting and there’s an attempt at adding variety with mini-games.
Unfortunately everything about it is just done poorly. The controls are slippery with a terrible lag even after turning up mouse acceleration. The camera is nauseating and just kind of floats and drifts, not always in the direction you wanted to go. I can’t go more than a few minutes without a glitch either visually or functionally, with something getting stuck on something or something falling through something. I’ve seen amateur games with more polish and less problems.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game