Ride A Dinosaur In The Stomping Land Later This Month

You might think that taming and riding a nine-metre Carnotaurus would make you cock of the walk and king of the hill in a multiplayer dinosaur-hunting survival sandbox, but in The Stomping Land it merely gives you a shot at surviving encounters with the real predators. It's a weird and fascinating sandbox, more towards the cruel DayZ end of the spectrum than the fluffy Minecraft side, and soon we'll get to give it a go.

It'll launch through Steam Early Access on May 30 at $24.99, developers SuperCrit have announced (and VG247 spotted). Come see a bit in a new trailer showing off hunting, crafting, warring, and dino-riding.

The Stomping Land is ultimately about trying to get a good meal by feasting upon really big dinosaurs. Your route to this delicious dino dinner will probably take you through joining a tribe, foraging, crafting, setting up camps, spearfishing, tracking, hunting, taming and riding dinos, and warring with other tribes. Dino-warring. Riding dinosaurs into battle, and using dinosaurs as weapons by luring them towards your foes. The big dinosaurs, the ones you really want to eat, will find, fight and kill each other, and your tribe wants to be the one scavenging the loser's corpse.

It looks like a weird game filled with weird systems, in a good (but weird) way. You make your own camouflage by artfully arranging foliage about your person. Special whistling arrows can lure dinosaurs, and paint arrows will stop players from sneaking unseen. Tribes need totems to tame dinosaurs, and you can swipe them from other tribes. Rain will wash away paint and the footprints used to track dinosaurs. Healing herbs can only be foraged from pitch-black caves. You can snare players with bolas and drag them about. Stars in the night sky lead the way to the giant dinosaurs. If this post reads a bit odd and unfocused, well, that's my head trying to make sense of it all. Hopefully these sorts of weird bits will interact in interesting and unexpected ways to create the delightful stories that can come out of sandbox games.

The initial Early Access release will only have a handful of dinosaur types and one small island to play on. SuperCrit say they'll "move forward with updates based on a mix of accuracy and entertainment value."

Here's the new trailer: