The Lost Wild brings back memories of monster movies with its predator-versus-prey premise. Instead of depicting dinosaurs as enemies to mow through with weapons, Great Ape Games aims to portray them as animals first and foremost. In The Lost Wild, dinosaurs are like they are in Jurassic Park: wild, uncontrollable, and often dangerous creatures. I got to see how the evasive “cat and mouse” gameplay effectively reflected that vision during Summer Game Fest.
The story begins with Saskia, who is involved in a car accident and awakens on an island full of dinosaurs. In the 30-minute hands-off demo led by the development team, we witnessed a chilling opening where Saskia first enters the dark, overgrown jungle setting. When she eventually meets another person, a predator immediately snaps them up and bites them in half. Saskia hides underneath the belly of a car, shuddering as the blood spills out from the stranger’s corpse.
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
This is the kind of fear instilled in us from the very beginning–to run and hide from dinosaurs if we wish to survive. And you very well may die a couple of times before reaching the next objective point. That stealth-first mindset differs from games like Tomb Raider, where Lara Croft shoots at velociraptors and T. rex with the kind of power and confidence you’d expect from a superhero rather than just your average woman. Saskia doesn’t have that kind of luxury.
Environmental features and stealth are the keys to success in The Lost Wild.
The Lost Wild encourages players to use the environment to their advantage. In one scenario, Saskia must fight for survival while trapped in an office as an Allosaurus prowls outside. There, Saskia finds an office mug to toss into the greenery to escape from the door of the office, only to run into another predator immediately after exiting.
Thankfully, the representative driving our demo found a brick in the woods to use as an additional distraction. Crouching in the overgrown grass to hide themselves also helped them find the brick when the office ran out of supplies.
Great Ape Games also showcased the stealth mechanics used in The Lost Wild, such as visual cues when Saskia is visible to predators. An eye icon at the top of the screen depicts Saskia’s current visibility. When closed, Saskia is hidden from view. When opened but greyed out, it means that a predator can potentially see Saskia if she makes the wrong move. When opened and bright yellow, it means she has been spotted and needs to escape immediately.
The Lost Wild sets up an engaging mystery to unravel.
Watching the demo alone is enough to inspire a sense of tension. The props seem plentiful enough for even a newbie to recover from a fumble, so long as they keep their cool by carefully traversing the map. These types of mechanics should be familiar to long-time fans of the stealth genre, but seeing them properly displayed in a polished demo helps ground faith in its quality. It gives the impression of being simple to understand but difficult to master. Not revolutionary, but sensible.
Another selling point of The Lost Wild is its story. One of Saskia’s initial findings has to do with a Japanese company with offices across the island and whiteboard diagrams depicting the kind of research that was conducted on the island. By the end of the demo, Saskia discovers another person, Daisuke, by speaking to him via radio. At this point, it’s unclear if Saskia and Daisuke will both be playable characters or if Daisuke will act as more of a driving point of the story than a playable ally.
The Lost Wild sets up an intriguing mystery with solid stealth mechanics that encourage players to think strategically to evade predators. That said, we’ll have to wait (or actually get a couple of hours into the story) to see if the mystery and gameplay will be enough to set it apart from competitors like Jurassic Park: Survival.
The Lost Wild is set to launch in 2027 for PlayStation 5 and PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store).
