Undoubtefly a failure, not a scam If it was a scam, every dev would've been scummy, but no, it was just one vile dude who stole from an indie project and its blood boiling to me
Not only did he run away with the funds, they didn't pursue any legal action against him. They just removed him from the team. They should've pursued him legally because he deserved jail time or at least community service for that, if it wasn't possible for him to repay them (which I am sure it wasn't because he undoubtedly spent the money). They could, maybe, run another Kickstarter, but after letting the embezzler off the hook, not sure I'd support them. Another problem is that, while I appreciate their dedication to making the game realistic, they've focused more on small details like the flora than they have on the gameplay and getting all the dinosaurs implemented. Most games work on the big picture first, then the details get narrowed down. So what they should be doing is going ahead and putting in their last few dinosaurs, then gradually implementing work on the smaller stuff. And yet another blow to their game is that in the last couple years, the existence of Dakotaraptor has come into question because the fossil was determined to have been chimerical. While there is evidence of a large theropod in the region around that time period, and Dakotaraptor has not officially been debunked, it's likely to have been a significantly different animal from what we see in the game. No doubt the team has heard of this and may have been disheartened by it after all their other setbacks.
I was an original backer of saurian, I got my parents to donate for me when I was younger because I just wanted to be able to experience something like that and its really sad to see whats become of it
Saurian's situation makes me incredibly sad. I have a desperate need for a single player dinosaur survival game, and Saurian was shaping up to be that until one complete asshole ruined it for everybody. We were on the cusp of greatness, it was *right there.*
Path of Titans is your next best chance at that when they inevitably add dinosaur AI in the future. Currently it's just multi-player with critters who can't fight back, but starting with Dynamosuchus, AI will start to fight back.
@@Justmonika6969 Yeah, I play Path of Titans some, it just doesn't really scratch the itch though y'know? It's more of an MMO with some basic survival elements than an actual survival game.
Keep an eye on The Great Before, it is being developed by the same creatores of The Great Circle, both I believe are hyper-realistic single-player games. The Great Circle has a demo on Steam that you can play, so you might feel what the dinossaur version could be
Too bad the dev stole the money the game has prolly the best designs in the genre they had an art book for this game that showed all the hell creek creatures and I saw the Dino guy who I believe is a paleontologist considers it one of the best dinosaur paleo books
@@Justaguy-rp4wvthey literally say the previous manager. Granted, they might not be a dev, but chances are they are one. Honestly, its just stup!d. Had they not stolen money, they couldve made a lot more than what they stole by just finishing the game. Many were waiting for it to develop a little more to buy, myself included. Had it gotten more developed, id have bought it by now, and so would have many, many others.
They had the absolute best designs of any game. Although I fear that would've ruined the game in itself because they updated the T. rex which is COOL, but it sets a bad precedent- it means if the game was able to keep going, they would've spent their time and money updating the creatures every time they became too outdated rather than accept that their game will never be fully accurate in an ever-changing field.
@@catpoke9557 if the previous manager had not stolen the money then this game would’ve likely become something great but if I were a dev I would prolly upgrade how the Dino’s look every 5 years for the game to the current paleo understanding of how they looked so that they’re not having to spend money every week redesigning the spino to be up to current standards
@@viral4983 Trying to be totally Paleo Accurate is overly ambitious to me. Despite your financial situation or not, you will never have a fully accurate dinosaur game.
@@DocumentarianWeady ofc theres obvious limitations- its a game afterall- but saurian was making good progress in making a fully accurate, realistic game that was still fun to play. They weren't being overly ambitious, especially since they knew what they were doing and their limits.
@@mtimpson4183 Considering what they stated, they wanted a fully paleo accurate game and that is impossible. They did damn well with what they had, but with the amount of information that can come in just a year for a single species, it would be too time consuming.
@@viral4983 That project head siphoned $75k out of roughly $200k of kickstarter funds, not even close to 1 million dollars. Even if they had all than money back, that would be nowhere near enough to complete Saurian as promised in the kickstarter pitch.
Not a scam, just a failure, which is just as sad because it happened due to the DEVELOPERS being conned by someone on the team. The devs themselves got scammed.
@@abdulazizrex I really am that old now huh? Let's just say there's been more at play than evrima, PoT, and BoB over the decade of this pathetic generation of dinosaur games' existence.
It really does suck how many dinosaur survival games either failed or became bad to play. I haven’t bought the isle yet because I was hoping a better dinosaur survival game would come, it didn’t. And now I have to decide if I should buy the isle or just hope one day something good comes
The isle is a bit of a hit or miss depending, legacy is sorta good and sorta bad all the time and evrima either really sucks sometimes or is the most badass dino game ever and it depends, they both have glitches and there own goods and bads but imo if u like grinding, or your ok with grinding then u can play the isle with out much pain, it's fun but now fun at the same time
@@malekat8539its a matter of it depends on you yourself. To me, i love it. But there are times i dont play because something breaks in the updates, or the devs make changes that makes it almost impossible for some playables to even survive. (Im looking at you, ptera, and that crappy stam gain it used to have!) However, atm, if you were to purchase now, in my opinion, it would be a good choice. Everything for the most part seems to be working right, so now its more about skill issue. There are some bugs, like always, and a few glitches. But overall, it can be a fun experience. It is brutal, though. Theres a lot of cannibalism and constant pvp. If you can remember its a game with real life people playing, and that sometimes...real life people suck for no reason, it will be a fun experience. The way i look at it is like a choice between the Isle and PoT. The Isle is more realistic both in looks and gameplay, while PoT gives a lot more playables, as well as quests, of a sort. So to me, its a choice between realism and not.
I feel like that was the whole point, though. It had plenty of conceptually fun ideas and a decent gameplay loop. But a lot of dinosaur games seem to struggle with being much more than walking “look at the pretty animal” sims.
Just in case of Saurian I'll have to disagree because Saurian exists for the sake of most-plausibly-accurate-deciption-of-Hell-Creek. Even though it turns out Dakotaraptor didn't even exist, its mechanics could've been just tossed to Acheroraptor... Realism alone doesn't ruin something because it can also be a source if inspiration for genuinely fun game design, because nature is awesome and has cool exciting stuff happen in it. If that's the goal, OK. With other dinosaur games where realism nor educational value isn't the whole point anyways, "realism" is often just an excuse to not even try to make those games properly fun. (coughs The Isle, literally some of the most horrible game design choices in it have been defended by "realism" even if it makes no sense even.) (I do think BoB and PoT are a lot more fun because they are taking more freedoms for the sake of game mechanics.)
I think they needed to pick one playable and stick to it. No dinosaur game so far has had the guts to do it, but they NEED to do it. It's the only way to make actually good, meaningful, balanced gameplay in a survival game.
It's definitely not a decade year old scam, it's 6 years old and it's not the fault of the rest of the team for one bad apple It actually keeps getting updated, even if slowly. I'm happy to finally be able to play the game ever since I saw Markiplier play it, even if it's considered a failure to some
The updates are about to die. It's only a matter of time before the next dev blog comes, and it is honestly all too likely that dev blog will just be saying the game is abandoned.
@@Stothehighestpath of titans? You mean the furry game with all the weird modded fursonas like the novi and such. Nah man. Path of titans is bunk, trash game fulla mix packers and furry roleplayers. Hell even the official servers are clogged with that stupid uwu nonsense. Nah man. There are no good dinosaur games. People have ruined them. We need more singleplayer dino games
I am honestly surprised u mentioned Wolfquest, tho its... pretty much different than saurian, bc this game is still continued and i bought it LMAO. Nah but fr, having a dinosaur quest version of wolfquest would be A FUCKING MAZING.
Agreed, the comparison made me realize just what we missed out on with saurian because dinosaur wolfquest would have been so sick! It IS very different though, because in wolfquest you play as one creature and they nailed the gameplay loop for that one creature because of that. With so many different creatures to play as, it would get a lot more complicated and costly, I imagine.
I need me an Allosaurus Quest....... also I played WQ since its first release a decade and a half ago. wild how far it's come. though. would be great to have separate Health and Hunger bars finally.....
1. Nesting was added a loooong time ago. Yes, it is way too simple, yes courtship is a joke (press a single button once to pair up). But it is there. Better make sure you do proper research, unless you want to lose credibility. 2. The downfall of Saurian was sped up by their desire to keep things accurate. Instead of saying: "Okay, players, this game will be made with the X year of accuracy. If something changes, we will not implement it. The game is a snapshot." a) They messed it up when they ordered the new rex. It must have cost them quite a chunk to make and i say they had no more funding left after. The feathery rex was fine. b) The plants. Oh, the plants. Nobody cares about plants and how accurate they are. We are playing dinos and we will not even observe plants. We dont care. Nobody cares. Yet they were working on a plant update before rex. I feel Saurian might have a chance and a niche (since it IS a niche game no other developers tried yet) if they would get their priorities right. Implement gameplay, playables, work on smarter, more interactive AI, more interactive social interactions, interactive courtship. Once the core stuff is done, THEN you can work on the plants. Because efffff plants.
i hope anyone who makes a game that focuses on accuracy and realism realizes what the Saurian devs seemingly didn't and its that first a game has to be a game, it has to be entertaining to play, focus on core mechanics so that you can continue to get funding from newer players and returning players then you can focus on maybe focus on perfecting the realism
I know a nerd on youtube who actually cares about plants a lot, but yeah, they need to pick and choose where they put their effort. Unfortunately while there ARE people who do care about plants, plants are still the least important part of the game.
@@emimartinic yes, IIRC that was one thing stated by members on the discord of being a current thing that needs to be worked on. Do not expect anything soon though.
I remember Saurian was the first game I bought on steam. To me it seems the devs were keen on creating a successful piece of art and science communication, but tripped at making it into a fun to play videogame.
I wish the WolfQuest team could have given them some pointers on that. WQ is a realistic/educational game but it's also enough OF a game to be fun. They'd also know a thing or two about slow but steady dev cycles.
i believe it failed because of dondi siphoning time and money from it, i mean dead ass he was "joking" about getting saurian bucks from one of the devs that worked on the game that also works on the isle
The fact that dakotaraptor, one of the main playables, couldve not even existed, just shows how you cant rely on accuracy in dino games or atleast not keep updating it to the latest view of dinos
That's more of a case of "listening to a bad advisor" (something even the original WWD suffered in regards to sauropod locomotion and neck position), considering even back when it was described Dakotaraptor was already met with a lot of skepticism from the wider palaeontological community, and the lead author who described it (Robert DePalma) turned out to be an iffy researcher at best, a really shady dude who stole work from anothe researcher just to beat her to the punch at publishing on something at worst (see: the Tanis fiasco).
@@juanyusee8197 no, it literally is just a waste of time. They should've stuck to a status quo for the research they were using. They could've said "were using research up to 2016" and finished the game like that, then if they wanted to change things later to account for new studies, then they could've done so once the game was complete. Instead, they chose to waste time and resources to make unnecessary changes for the sake of "accuracy" every other month.
It also didn't help that some off the developers and artists involved in the project came off as extremely arrogant and would constantly badmouth every other project featuring dinosaur as an attempt to prop up their project, while going out of their way to harass and insult people who were either involved with those other projects or were fans of them.
I’m happy you mentioned this RJ Palmer is probably he biggest example and yet it seems to go under the radar that some of the people working on Saurian are a**holes .
@@SasquaDash Yep I have a whole comment elsewhere on this page that more or less gives my unfiltered thoughts on the game (Well unfiltered as possible since UA-cams comment section has been ruined by snowflakes but I digress) it’s truly crazy how the signs were alway there when you dig into the farms history and look at it under the surface.
It was humorous in hindsight to watch devs from Saurian, Dinosaur Battlegrounds and Mesozoica badmouthing each other and call each other scammers only for the lead devs of all 3 projects to run off with the money.
@@Ozraptor4 Yep almost reminds me of politicians in a way😂 bad mouthing each other and making us pick sides all while they run off and count the money but lemme stop before I turn this thread too political😂.
I think you hit the nail on the head; it’s a proof of concept, not an actual game. I backed the project in 2016, and the game functions nearly identically since it launched without many significant updates or developments. I really wish this game succeed, I would have spent countless hours immersing myself.
I actually had a lot of fun playing this game. I made a triceratops and lost my herd to a trex as a young adult. As I wandered alone, chasing down another herd of young triceratops I had glimpsed, I encountered the trex in the forest. After a fierce battle, I managed to kill it. Afterwards, I was accepted into a new herd and became their protector. I’m optimistic that the team can recover and achieve their goal, even if they don’t, I’ll continue to enjoy the things I love about this game.
I hope saurian gets a spiritaul successor, the concept has so much potential for other formations. I mean theres so many good formations that could be used the morrison kem kem etc. I am sad saurian died but the concept has been shown to be doable with time.
There's an upcoming game called Ecos: La Brea which takes place in Southern California (where I'm from) at the end of the Pleistocene. You may never be able to play as a T. rex, But Smilodon is definitely the next best thing. Still don't know why they chose horse as a playable rather than Columbian Mammoth tho.
@@ariboehm115I would think a full grown mammoth might be difficult to balance. If all the playables are of similar size, it does make it easier. A mammoth may still be in the works.
Saurian isnt over, i asked in their discord and it turns out they are still working on the game just not releasing monthly devlogs and focusing on t rex
I regret backing this game. When I see it in my game library I can’t help but feel sad and frustrated. I remember the pure joy of watching the AI and pouncing demos and wondering what it could become in the future. And finally being able to play it was the greatest thing ever to me. Then it got super repetitive real quick after the initial joy faded a bit. I used to come home and check the game for any new dev logs to see how it was progressing, but after several years it felt stagnant. Somewhere deep down I hope that the game makes a spontaneous comeback.
I always kind of knew Saurian would never make it despite loving the idea. From the beginning their scope was too ambitious, and the 'feather craze' was exactly why I had my doubts for their success. The science was and still is new and ever-changing. Making changes to your proof of concept before even making progress in your development is disastrous.
For the past 5 years, I have been telling people Saurian would be a failure. No one wanted to lessen, and once again I am ahead of the curb when it comes to the paleo community.
I don't think it's been officially declared as invalid, but I'm not a paleontoligist so I don't know that I'd have heard if it had been. It just seems likely that it is invalid due to inclusion of turtle bones, possible acheroraptor parts, and possible juvenile T. rex parts. However, it does also seem to include some remnants of a similar-sized theropod. Those could indicate there was a therizinosaurid present at the time, or they could be from a raptor-type dino, though it may not have been much like the lean, speedy creature Dakotaraptor was supposed to be. As far as I know, the guy who owns the fossil and discovered it has refused to allow it to be peer reviewed for validity since the original paper describing Dakotaraptor. Of course it seems fishy not to allow other experts to look at it, so it very likely is a scam/chimerical creation and he knows it. But we won't know for sure until he allows someone with expertise to access it and verify--which he probably isn't going to do. I have heard there's evidence of a large predatory theropod that wasn't T. rex in the region at the time, but not clear on what that evidence was. Maybe fossil footprints or copralites, or maybe there have been small bits like teeth found that aren't enough to declare a species but do prove that something existed. But even if it turns out an animal exactly like Dakotaraptor existed, once the fossil is invalidated, the name Dakotaraptor can't be used anymore. It's also worth mentioning that there are hundreds or even thousands of species that either weren't ever fossilized or whose fossils we have not discovered and may never discover. Some were rare, some lived in regions where fossilization wasn't likely, and some might've lived in areas where fossilization was common but somehow managed to avoid those conditions by luck or by being clever enough to avoid death traps.
It's a great shame, especially given it was the first time I donated to a project, ever. I was so immensely excited for it, and it's tragic it's turned out the way it has. At least other games like Prehistoric Kingdom have been doing so well at least. Nice to come across a new channel too, pretty nice content :)
I don’t miss the feather craze, or the “making spino’s quadrupedal water Pokémon “ those were dark times to be a dinosaur follower. I never played this game simply because the t-Rex looked like giant bloated chickens with stubby appendages.
Ngl the idea of a single player open world dino game where u ty and survive as a dino against ai dinos is acctualy a cool concept but it wasnt ment to be. Might be controversial but path of titains haveing it for the singleplayer mode simmilar to sonora would be really cool. They are already developing ai and i feel like useing that code to make the single player a customisable open world thing where u get hatched would be really fun and would make the hame last even longer since you wouldnt necessarily need to even join multiplayer. Tho im not a dev so im not sure how well it would really work😅
PoT has a way better chance of succeeding where Saurian failed because they actually made a fun dino fighting game first and then started improving its plant accuracy AFTER. Saurian did it the other way around and look where that got them.
@@Justmonika6969 yee path being an already asteblished game they wouldnt need to start from scratch just sone code adjustments and a single player open world is feasable for path. And of u dont like it comunity and offical servers are an option so its sole perpous isnt just a one trick pony
It feels like a “Too little, too late” kinda thing. It was promising, but developed far too slowly too keep up with The Isle, Beasts of Bermuda, and the juggernaut Path of Titans. If it just picked a specific year of accuracy (say 2016) and only had the most accurate models of 2016, it would have developed faster, and possibly been able to over take The Isle. It’s alarming to see The Isle fall into slow development like Saurian did, history repeats itself, and The Isle seems to be dying. Hope is all we can have.
I remember begging my mom to back this game for me because I so wanted to be apart of the game’s progression. Always saddens me when I remember the game and see much hasnt changed 😢❤
I hope one day a competent dev team will make a saurian successor and we’ll finally have the dino survival we always wanted, however that dream is thin and our chances are low
At this point Saurian devs should sell their project to real dev team because... This is sad. I was waiting for this game even before it was released, - and its been 8 YEARS since. Saurian is old enough to go to school, but still super raw and unfinished. 8 years of waiting for t-rex, goddamn... And you know whats sad? Its the only solo dinosaur simulator.
I'm still very thankful for saurian, as it got me into dinosaur survival games and I really liked it as a child :) I even found the rare mosa corpse once!
The Saurian devs I interacted with may have turned out to be stuck up, arrogant know it alls in areas even outside paleontology who would treat you like dung if you dared to disagree with them (I still remember how they said how it was "cute" when people thought they knew something they didn't when it came to the "Edmontosaurus or Anatosaurus" controversy), such project didn't deserve such fate. The community could have benefitted a lot from the idea and implementation of a dinosaur survival game set in an actual, real life formation with accurately represented flora and fauna. From what you said, it's apparent doom was that it's good idea was badly implemented. At least I am glad we may be able to simulate a formation's flora and fauna in Path of Titans by carefully selecting maps and which dinosaurs will be playable on a server.
I'm a backer for Saurian, and I'm very annoyed about that one person who ran off with a huge chunk of their money. The game had potential, but since that whole fiasco, they've never recovered. It's unfortunate.
No doubt the situation demoralized them too. They should've pursued legal action against the embezzler, but they opted not to. Now he can go embezzle more money from some other company where he works because he didn't get punished the first time. And while they wouldn't have recovered the money from suing him, because he most likely spent it all, perhaps they ought to have done at least that. The game could've been finished, and it could've been bringing in revenue for the whole team.
I personally not followed the game and there are like another 8-10 similar dinosurvival game beyond the 3 major but this game could have been a great one if they choose to add multiplayer, focusing on gameplay, wisely choosing peoples in positions. If someone gets money sometimes they forget they get that money for making something in return. One of the saddest stories was an rpg game where a rich anonymos supporter gave a lot of money directly to a developer to make his dream game then he basically purchased crypto currencies and squandered the money what meant to be for pay salaries and extras. Kira Tv made a video about this a year or two ago not sure when this was but not too long ago. Developing a game like this requires 1.5-5 million dollars to get a Isle size team and finance the development. Major studios or publishers does not tries to make a game like Saurian, Isle, PoT, Bob. They do not see potential on this side genre because the playerbase for this is fragmented. Enough to mention the cenozoic era, where a small developer team tried to make a creature survival on the cenozoic era. Most of the playerbase left because they were more about the person than about the game so they basically ended to try. If I have had spare millions I would consider to give them money but expecting them to develop the game and add ideas what can improve the game.
Saurian was planned to eventually have a multiplayer mode, but after their money got embezzled by a manager/developer, I imagine that plan got scrapped. At this point they will be lucky if they can get the time and resources to develop the game to completion. Short of another, more successful Kickstarter, I don't see it happening.
Saurian is a huge disapointment, and I feel people give Saurian too much leniency at this point. Some people defending the game as being still in development... look at what the game is after so many years. I bought it around 8 years ago ffs, this is not normal game development and it shouldnt be just accepted or defended, even from a small dev. The story of the dev stealing from the team is sad, but that is if it's actually the whole truth. People just seem to goble up whatever devs say, and that thief didnt steal for 8 years, the team just never had any idea on how to develop a game. And they still don't. I used to come back and check on updates and most of the time all I saw after MONTHS was trees and foliage being chanaged while the game mechanics and features remained barebones and untouched. Crazy. One of the many failures of Kickstarter for giving a bunch of idea-men money with no one to actually demand a finished game/product. Producers have their role and failures like Saurian show it pretty clearly. We'll never get a good dinosaur game that's not a park manager and it makes me really sad.
To be completely fair, we don't know if the artists are also coders/gameplay devs. If not, then the question is less "why are they working on plants so hard?" and more "why are the coders and designers responsible for gameplay not doing more that they can tell us about?" But I agree that far more focus was put on the plants than the dinosaurs in the updates. The dinosaurs should've been the primary focus, as well as the gameplay and making it fun. Realism can be improved once the gameplay and dinosaurs are implemented and playable.
i truly hope that Saurian can recover in some way, genuinly it had such a cool promise and actually had a GOAL, not just wander around aimlessly but simulate life, the educational value of this game could have been insane, and it's tragic to see things happened the way they did
saurian always had the wish I always wanted of a fun singleplayer dinosaur game, but alas we are stuck with online only games with annoying grievances, piss long growth times and not much to do besides hide in a bush for 4 hours and then proceed to die and do it again. I love path but the grindy nature of these games make it tiring
All I know about this game before watching this video was that the artist behind it was kinda mean I do love the plants, and all the small animals shows a really dedicated attempt to be a solid world
I'm really hoping attention and life can be brought back to this game. It had so much potential, and I believe that it still does. I plan to have my own mini series featuring the game on my small channel next month. I don't know if Saurian is dead, but I believe that there is hope for it.
A fundamental problem with dinosaur survival games like The Isle, Path of Titans, Beasts of Bermuda and Saurian is that the gameplay is generally pretty boring when youre not playing with friends. Its a fun idea on paper. Playing as a dinosaur, and fighting for your life and constantly on the fine line of predator or prey? Sounds exciting until you hop in and quickly find that 90% of your gameplay is just Dinosaur Walking Simulator because you can go for many straight hours without seeing another person. Saurian is probably the biggest offender of this since its singleplayer.
To add, i still remember buying it and opening... The magic of that intro screen, the menu and the music, than the first game experience as the Raptor baby. It was nice. But yeah i recon the money. the AI was pretty bad indeed. xD
I still find the game fun to play, it's actually challenging, and I especially really enjoyed growing up with my siblings and eventually splitting off to make my own herd.
i think the video is way too sad, the game did have triceratops in 2020 and after this we had yearly updates in 2023 we had major performance improvement too...for me the game is not dead until the devs themselves say that they cant work on it anymore it might have hard times sure but that doesnt mean it stopped forever, in me hope is thriving more than sadness and giving up it doesnt matter to me that the game is not as famous as it was mainly since its singleplayer and nothing really changes if its famous or not gameplay wise, the only thing that changed is the end of the monthly devlogs, i feel like the video focuses only on the negatives...where are the positive things like the 1 update per year we had since triceratops (not crazy yeah but there existed longer periods of time with no update before that) what about the nesting update, major performance improvement, environment changes like fauna rarity pectinodon and daytime/nighttime creature seperate spawning...finally even with the devlogs updates were sudden and unexpected i was literally bored of my life having nothing to do and suddenly nesting update dropped next update is tyrannosaurus...it only makes sense that it lates so much it introduces new model, new animations, new growth where you dont need to sleep, new mechanics and all that in a small passion project this is the last message of a dev in the discord server: "We're still working on the T. rex, it's just going slowly as expected since our available work time is very limited. If we weren't still working on the game, we would say so publicly. Sorry for your unease, though fwiw I've worked on this game completely unpaid for several years now and have no incentive to be dishonest" what we objectively need is hope not sadness, sure the lack of money impacted the game but it didnt finish it off at all...again as long as the devs work on it hope exists if not for a finished game then for sure trex and pachycephalosaurus as well as the second part of the environment overhaul with the addition of old plants back and so a more completed environment look
I truly believe their extreme commitment to accuracy was their downfall. It felt like every other devlog, they were announcing some major change caused entirely by newly published research. They should have seen the writing on the wall and stuck to whatever status quo they were at. They still would've been the most accurate dinosaur game, and could've changed things to fit new research after they completed the game. But instead, they unfortunately wasted time and resources making unnecessary changes instead of just finishing the game.
I wish the market for a singleplayer dinosaur survival game was tapped into more, because there is definitely potential to be had there, but to really succeed in making such a game, I feel like immense funding would be needed, as well as a good dev team that doesn’t end up eating said funding (ha ha ha, as if new dinosaur survival games ever have that)
the community was also pretty toxic, but you know most of these dinosaur games have their communities. I witnessed a lot of bullying from that community that was just swept under the rug.
I still remember that time they proudly announced they spent 300 hours completely overhauling the design of their T. rex to be featherless instead of, you know, fixing any of the actual issues with the game...
this along with the FNAF fan game Chomper's are sad stories on how a miss lead in development wither it's the creator being a bad person or just people losing interest in the project could lead to it all crashing down. even if a few fans come together to remake it like in the cash with Chomper's it's still unfortunate that a few bad things could lead to a game, or any other projects cancellation.
As we can all agree that Saurian sadly is dead, I think there is a lot the other games can learn from it. Just a basic thing is the little lizards running around, as I find it often hard to find food as a baby juvie in the Isle, if you go for AI it's way to easy. These lizards and other small AI are the perfect Solution, they are challanging but not impossible to catch and provide entertaiment through basically a minigame aswell as the recource you need (food). Overall the AI in this game is miles ahead, especially all the little critters like lizards mammals and even birds roaming around, aswell as small dinosaurs, but also the large Triceratops and Edmontodsaurus heards, these provide an immersion the other games lack thus far imo.
it’s sad because i feel like if it would have been successful maybe they could have been asked to make a late jurassic period game, with allosaurs torvosaurs and stegosaurs. it is what it is though im glad there’s at least something cause i’ve had moments where it’s actually cool but it will take many years to finish
I am still waiting for Path of titans to add bots and an actual offline mode to scratch that itch that Saurian left me so many years ago. That game is the last hope unless a big studio decides to make a game of this kind.
In dinosaur genre, there can only be one, made the best of the others. There always be only one being the best but the worst at the same time (HEY HEY THE ISLE EVRIMA AM TALKIN BOUT YO!)
From what I've heard, there's work toward redoing the whole code, but we haven't had an update in over a year. It may not be completely dead, but I'm not expecting much at this point, either.
So about 6 yrs ago, i got some extra money, and wanted to buy a new pc game. My choice was between this...and the Isle. Im soooo glad i picked the Isle, then. I picked it because it had a lot more to offer, and figured id get this when it was more completed, or at least added more. It never did.
5k sub vid is coming soon, dw. Also, join the discord! discord.com/invite/TaytAWQ5
Don't get desperate with pitching your sell, mate.
@@TheMightyN huh
@@TheMightyN what is bro on about
Saurian has added nesting two years ago.
Undoubtefly a failure, not a scam
If it was a scam, every dev would've been scummy, but no, it was just one vile dude who stole from an indie project and its blood boiling to me
Still failed to bring their promises so it is not a scam it wasn't doing any better before that part
@@AKayani559youre
Literally just proving my point
what is truly heart breaking is that they keep trying to dev the game the best they can with no funds
for something to be a scam there has to be some deliberate and premeditated deception happening
Not only did he run away with the funds, they didn't pursue any legal action against him. They just removed him from the team. They should've pursued him legally because he deserved jail time or at least community service for that, if it wasn't possible for him to repay them (which I am sure it wasn't because he undoubtedly spent the money).
They could, maybe, run another Kickstarter, but after letting the embezzler off the hook, not sure I'd support them.
Another problem is that, while I appreciate their dedication to making the game realistic, they've focused more on small details like the flora than they have on the gameplay and getting all the dinosaurs implemented. Most games work on the big picture first, then the details get narrowed down. So what they should be doing is going ahead and putting in their last few dinosaurs, then gradually implementing work on the smaller stuff.
And yet another blow to their game is that in the last couple years, the existence of Dakotaraptor has come into question because the fossil was determined to have been chimerical. While there is evidence of a large theropod in the region around that time period, and Dakotaraptor has not officially been debunked, it's likely to have been a significantly different animal from what we see in the game. No doubt the team has heard of this and may have been disheartened by it after all their other setbacks.
I was an original backer of saurian, I got my parents to donate for me when I was younger because I just wanted to be able to experience something like that and its really sad to see whats become of it
same dude
Same
That sucks man 😔
I feel bad for your parents. Wasted their money on you backing Saurian
@@malekat8539 I feel bad for you thinking that the value of his parents gift was monetary, you're missing out on a lot
Saurian's situation makes me incredibly sad. I have a desperate need for a single player dinosaur survival game, and Saurian was shaping up to be that until one complete asshole ruined it for everybody.
We were on the cusp of greatness, it was *right there.*
Path of Titans is your next best chance at that when they inevitably add dinosaur AI in the future. Currently it's just multi-player with critters who can't fight back, but starting with Dynamosuchus, AI will start to fight back.
@@Justmonika6969 Yeah, I play Path of Titans some, it just doesn't really scratch the itch though y'know? It's more of an MMO with some basic survival elements than an actual survival game.
Keep an eye on The Great Before, it is being developed by the same creatores of The Great Circle, both I believe are hyper-realistic single-player games. The Great Circle has a demo on Steam that you can play, so you might feel what the dinossaur version could be
@@guiiomapper Ooo, very interesting. I'll keep an eye out for it, thanks!
Too bad the dev stole the money the game has prolly the best designs in the genre they had an art book for this game that showed all the hell creek creatures and I saw the Dino guy who I believe is a paleontologist considers it one of the best dinosaur paleo books
The dev didn’t steal the money, someone else stole it from what I’ve seen.
@@Justaguy-rp4wvthey literally say the previous manager. Granted, they might not be a dev, but chances are they are one.
Honestly, its just stup!d. Had they not stolen money, they couldve made a lot more than what they stole by just finishing the game. Many were waiting for it to develop a little more to buy, myself included. Had it gotten more developed, id have bought it by now, and so would have many, many others.
@@Rhaenarys oh
They had the absolute best designs of any game. Although I fear that would've ruined the game in itself because they updated the T. rex which is COOL, but it sets a bad precedent- it means if the game was able to keep going, they would've spent their time and money updating the creatures every time they became too outdated rather than accept that their game will never be fully accurate in an ever-changing field.
@@catpoke9557 if the previous manager had not stolen the money then this game would’ve likely become something great but if I were a dev I would prolly upgrade how the Dino’s look every 5 years for the game to the current paleo understanding of how they looked so that they’re not having to spend money every week redesigning the spino to be up to current standards
Saurian is a sad tale, a tale of trying not to be overly ambitious with your games
It wasnt overly ambitious…before the one dev stole a million dollars
@@viral4983 Trying to be totally Paleo Accurate is overly ambitious to me. Despite your financial situation or not, you will never have a fully accurate dinosaur game.
@@DocumentarianWeady ofc theres obvious limitations- its a game afterall- but saurian was making good progress in making a fully accurate, realistic game that was still fun to play. They weren't being overly ambitious, especially since they knew what they were doing and their limits.
@@mtimpson4183 Considering what they stated, they wanted a fully paleo accurate game and that is impossible. They did damn well with what they had, but with the amount of information that can come in just a year for a single species, it would be too time consuming.
@@viral4983 That project head siphoned $75k out of roughly $200k of kickstarter funds, not even close to 1 million dollars. Even if they had all than money back, that would be nowhere near enough to complete Saurian as promised in the kickstarter pitch.
Not a scam, just a failure, which is just as sad because it happened due to the DEVELOPERS being conned by someone on the team. The devs themselves got scammed.
Im one of those people who prefer the more action packed and stylized dinosaur games but even I was looking forward to Saurian
it's interesting how Prehistoric Kingdom is the sole survivor on the "Project Crynosaur" era
Project what?
@@abdulazizrex I really am that old now huh? Let's just say there's been more at play than evrima, PoT, and BoB over the decade of this pathetic generation of dinosaur games' existence.
What even happened to project Crynosaur
@@Idkwhodis it sorta split into Saurian, Primordial Battleground, and Collision Course.
İ wish we existed in a universe where this actually was a sucsess
same
its a sad sight when one of the most famous examples of your genre is a 10 year old roblox game
Prior Extinction?
@@andrewb6194Yes it’s 10 years old since Retro
@@andrewb6194im an og to that shi bro 😞
The remade version was good till they did all that roleplay survival division
i quit pe when remade came out cause i didnt get my dynamotitan from the old pass and it was wayyyy more grindy
It really does suck how many dinosaur survival games either failed or became bad to play. I haven’t bought the isle yet because I was hoping a better dinosaur survival game would come, it didn’t. And now I have to decide if I should buy the isle or just hope one day something good comes
For your own sanity, I recommend you do not. There's a bunch of these sorts of games that are completely free.
The isle is a bit of a hit or miss depending, legacy is sorta good and sorta bad all the time and evrima either really sucks sometimes or is the most badass dino game ever and it depends, they both have glitches and there own goods and bads but imo if u like grinding, or your ok with grinding then u can play the isle with out much pain, it's fun but now fun at the same time
@@DNation652 They are releasing the rex by the end of the year
@@DNation652
Your comment oʻs fighting itself on western those games are good or not. Make up your mind and stop staying on the middle line
@@malekat8539its a matter of it depends on you yourself. To me, i love it. But there are times i dont play because something breaks in the updates, or the devs make changes that makes it almost impossible for some playables to even survive. (Im looking at you, ptera, and that crappy stam gain it used to have!)
However, atm, if you were to purchase now, in my opinion, it would be a good choice. Everything for the most part seems to be working right, so now its more about skill issue. There are some bugs, like always, and a few glitches. But overall, it can be a fun experience.
It is brutal, though. Theres a lot of cannibalism and constant pvp. If you can remember its a game with real life people playing, and that sometimes...real life people suck for no reason, it will be a fun experience.
The way i look at it is like a choice between the Isle and PoT. The Isle is more realistic both in looks and gameplay, while PoT gives a lot more playables, as well as quests, of a sort. So to me, its a choice between realism and not.
it seems like they focused too much on art style and paleo accuracy instead of making a game
If they put these assets into something like the isle it would of been amazing
That's basically what I think too.
I feel like that was the whole point, though. It had plenty of conceptually fun ideas and a decent gameplay loop. But a lot of dinosaur games seem to struggle with being much more than walking “look at the pretty animal” sims.
Just in case of Saurian I'll have to disagree because Saurian exists for the sake of most-plausibly-accurate-deciption-of-Hell-Creek. Even though it turns out Dakotaraptor didn't even exist, its mechanics could've been just tossed to Acheroraptor...
Realism alone doesn't ruin something because it can also be a source if inspiration for genuinely fun game design, because nature is awesome and has cool exciting stuff happen in it.
If that's the goal, OK. With other dinosaur games where realism nor educational value isn't the whole point anyways, "realism" is often just an excuse to not even try to make those games properly fun. (coughs The Isle, literally some of the most horrible game design choices in it have been defended by "realism" even if it makes no sense even.)
(I do think BoB and PoT are a lot more fun because they are taking more freedoms for the sake of game mechanics.)
I think they needed to pick one playable and stick to it. No dinosaur game so far has had the guts to do it, but they NEED to do it. It's the only way to make actually good, meaningful, balanced gameplay in a survival game.
It's definitely not a decade year old scam, it's 6 years old and it's not the fault of the rest of the team for one bad apple
It actually keeps getting updated, even if slowly. I'm happy to finally be able to play the game ever since I saw Markiplier play it, even if it's considered a failure to some
Remember the rest of that quote,
One bad apple *spoils the barrel*.
But yeah, Saurian's slowed down and PoT sorta has it beat at the moment.
Project is 10 years old. Founding devs came together on the Primal Carnage forums in early 2013. First cinematic demo was released in August 2013.
The updates are about to die. It's only a matter of time before the next dev blog comes, and it is honestly all too likely that dev blog will just be saying the game is abandoned.
@@Stothehighestpath of titans? You mean the furry game with all the weird modded fursonas like the novi and such. Nah man. Path of titans is bunk, trash game fulla mix packers and furry roleplayers. Hell even the official servers are clogged with that stupid uwu nonsense. Nah man. There are no good dinosaur games. People have ruined them. We need more singleplayer dino games
@@michaelwalker7860 Play on a semi realism server then?
I am honestly surprised u mentioned Wolfquest, tho its... pretty much different than saurian, bc this game is still continued and i bought it LMAO. Nah but fr, having a dinosaur quest version of wolfquest would be A FUCKING MAZING.
Agreed, the comparison made me realize just what we missed out on with saurian because dinosaur wolfquest would have been so sick! It IS very different though, because in wolfquest you play as one creature and they nailed the gameplay loop for that one creature because of that. With so many different creatures to play as, it would get a lot more complicated and costly, I imagine.
@@Tinycat000 I bet so, making each 20 different creatures with each different quest and life cycle would take 15 years for a such small team to make.
I need me an Allosaurus Quest.......
also I played WQ since its first release a decade and a half ago. wild how far it's come.
though.
would be great to have separate Health and Hunger bars finally.....
@@Tinycat000 imagine a wolfquest where you can play as EVERY. SINGLE. ANIMAL. From rabbits and songbirds, to wolves and bison!
Without it being like a copy and paste survival game like wild craft and such..
1. Nesting was added a loooong time ago. Yes, it is way too simple, yes courtship is a joke (press a single button once to pair up). But it is there. Better make sure you do proper research, unless you want to lose credibility.
2. The downfall of Saurian was sped up by their desire to keep things accurate. Instead of saying: "Okay, players, this game will be made with the X year of accuracy. If something changes, we will not implement it. The game is a snapshot."
a) They messed it up when they ordered the new rex. It must have cost them quite a chunk to make and i say they had no more funding left after. The feathery rex was fine.
b) The plants. Oh, the plants. Nobody cares about plants and how accurate they are. We are playing dinos and we will not even observe plants. We dont care. Nobody cares. Yet they were working on a plant update before rex.
I feel Saurian might have a chance and a niche (since it IS a niche game no other developers tried yet) if they would get their priorities right. Implement gameplay, playables, work on smarter, more interactive AI, more interactive social interactions, interactive courtship. Once the core stuff is done, THEN you can work on the plants. Because efffff plants.
i hope anyone who makes a game that focuses on accuracy and realism realizes what the Saurian devs seemingly didn't and its that first a game has to be a game, it has to be entertaining to play, focus on core mechanics so that you can continue to get funding from newer players and returning players then you can focus on maybe focus on perfecting the realism
Currently, the game is going through a big rework IIRC to make it much easier to work on.
I know a nerd on youtube who actually cares about plants a lot, but yeah, they need to pick and choose where they put their effort. Unfortunately while there ARE people who do care about plants, plants are still the least important part of the game.
@@Krona-fb4dnreally??😮😮
@@emimartinic yes, IIRC that was one thing stated by members on the discord of being a current thing that needs to be worked on.
Do not expect anything soon though.
I remember Saurian was the first game I bought on steam. To me it seems the devs were keen on creating a successful piece of art and science communication, but tripped at making it into a fun to play videogame.
I wish the WolfQuest team could have given them some pointers on that. WQ is a realistic/educational game but it's also enough OF a game to be fun. They'd also know a thing or two about slow but steady dev cycles.
Not a scam at all, just mismanaged and had skewed priorities
"Pretty much always a miss" is so true
Lord einosaur :0
i believe it failed because of dondi siphoning time and money from it, i mean dead ass he was "joking" about getting saurian bucks from one of the devs that worked on the game that also works on the isle
this is made worse by how bad the isle is.. x__x total waste!
I'd fully believe it, Dondi is a scumbag and has openly stated that he likes to sabotage other projects.
Dude, I just had a epiphany.
What if that was the same dev that stole all the money!
They gave it all to Dondi!
Scumbags, both of ‘em.
@@knarme5160Agreed. And sadly, people defend that game!! Absolutely insane.
The Isle Evrima and The Isle itself seem like solid games by all accounts... Especially with some of the more organised servers. @@knarme5160
The fact that dakotaraptor, one of the main playables, couldve not even existed, just shows how you cant rely on accuracy in dino games or atleast not keep updating it to the latest view of dinos
That's more of a case of "listening to a bad advisor" (something even the original WWD suffered in regards to sauropod locomotion and neck position), considering even back when it was described Dakotaraptor was already met with a lot of skepticism from the wider palaeontological community, and the lead author who described it (Robert DePalma) turned out to be an iffy researcher at best, a really shady dude who stole work from anothe researcher just to beat her to the punch at publishing on something at worst (see: the Tanis fiasco).
What but it's my favourite dinosaur!!
@@juanyusee8197 no, it literally is just a waste of time. They should've stuck to a status quo for the research they were using. They could've said "were using research up to 2016" and finished the game like that, then if they wanted to change things later to account for new studies, then they could've done so once the game was complete. Instead, they chose to waste time and resources to make unnecessary changes for the sake of "accuracy" every other month.
It also didn't help that some off the developers and artists involved in the project came off as extremely arrogant and would constantly badmouth every other project featuring dinosaur as an attempt to prop up their project, while going out of their way to harass and insult people who were either involved with those other projects or were fans of them.
I’m happy you mentioned this RJ Palmer is probably he biggest example and yet it seems to go under the radar that some of the people working on Saurian are a**holes .
@@bennettfender9927 Yeah, their attitudes and the way they've treated others really destroyed any interest I had in the game.
@@SasquaDash Yep I have a whole comment elsewhere on this page that more or less gives my unfiltered thoughts on the game (Well unfiltered as possible since UA-cams comment section has been ruined by snowflakes but I digress) it’s truly crazy how the signs were alway there when you dig into the farms history and look at it under the surface.
It was humorous in hindsight to watch devs from Saurian, Dinosaur Battlegrounds and Mesozoica badmouthing each other and call each other scammers only for the lead devs of all 3 projects to run off with the money.
@@Ozraptor4 Yep almost reminds me of politicians in a way😂 bad mouthing each other and making us pick sides all while they run off and count the money but lemme stop before I turn this thread too political😂.
I think you hit the nail on the head; it’s a proof of concept, not an actual game. I backed the project in 2016, and the game functions nearly identically since it launched without many significant updates or developments. I really wish this game succeed, I would have spent countless hours immersing myself.
I'd say the trike is a significant update. Unfortunately that's really the only one unless you count the nesting as significant.
I actually had a lot of fun playing this game. I made a triceratops and lost my herd to a trex as a young adult. As I wandered alone, chasing down another herd of young triceratops I had glimpsed, I encountered the trex in the forest. After a fierce battle, I managed to kill it. Afterwards, I was accepted into a new herd and became their protector.
I’m optimistic that the team can recover and achieve their goal, even if they don’t, I’ll continue to enjoy the things I love about this game.
I hope saurian gets a spiritaul successor, the concept has so much potential for other formations. I mean theres so many good formations that could be used the morrison kem kem etc. I am sad saurian died but the concept has been shown to be doable with time.
There's an upcoming game called Ecos: La Brea which takes place in Southern California (where I'm from) at the end of the Pleistocene. You may never be able to play as a T. rex, But Smilodon is definitely the next best thing. Still don't know why they chose horse as a playable rather than Columbian Mammoth tho.
@@ariboehm115I would think a full grown mammoth might be difficult to balance. If all the playables are of similar size, it does make it easier. A mammoth may still be in the works.
Saurian isnt over, i asked in their discord and it turns out they are still working on the game just not releasing monthly devlogs and focusing on t rex
I regret backing this game. When I see it in my game library I can’t help but feel sad and frustrated. I remember the pure joy of watching the AI and pouncing demos and wondering what it could become in the future. And finally being able to play it was the greatest thing ever to me. Then it got super repetitive real quick after the initial joy faded a bit. I used to come home and check the game for any new dev logs to see how it was progressing, but after several years it felt stagnant. Somewhere deep down I hope that the game makes a spontaneous comeback.
I always kind of knew Saurian would never make it despite loving the idea. From the beginning their scope was too ambitious, and the 'feather craze' was exactly why I had my doubts for their success. The science was and still is new and ever-changing. Making changes to your proof of concept before even making progress in your development is disastrous.
For the past 5 years, I have been telling people Saurian would be a failure. No one wanted to lessen, and once again I am ahead of the curb when it comes to the paleo community.
Also apparently Dakotaraptor isn't a valid species anymore.
I don't think it's been officially declared as invalid, but I'm not a paleontoligist so I don't know that I'd have heard if it had been. It just seems likely that it is invalid due to inclusion of turtle bones, possible acheroraptor parts, and possible juvenile T. rex parts. However, it does also seem to include some remnants of a similar-sized theropod. Those could indicate there was a therizinosaurid present at the time, or they could be from a raptor-type dino, though it may not have been much like the lean, speedy creature Dakotaraptor was supposed to be. As far as I know, the guy who owns the fossil and discovered it has refused to allow it to be peer reviewed for validity since the original paper describing Dakotaraptor. Of course it seems fishy not to allow other experts to look at it, so it very likely is a scam/chimerical creation and he knows it. But we won't know for sure until he allows someone with expertise to access it and verify--which he probably isn't going to do.
I have heard there's evidence of a large predatory theropod that wasn't T. rex in the region at the time, but not clear on what that evidence was. Maybe fossil footprints or copralites, or maybe there have been small bits like teeth found that aren't enough to declare a species but do prove that something existed. But even if it turns out an animal exactly like Dakotaraptor existed, once the fossil is invalidated, the name Dakotaraptor can't be used anymore.
It's also worth mentioning that there are hundreds or even thousands of species that either weren't ever fossilized or whose fossils we have not discovered and may never discover. Some were rare, some lived in regions where fossilization wasn't likely, and some might've lived in areas where fossilization was common but somehow managed to avoid those conditions by luck or by being clever enough to avoid death traps.
Hey the game may be dead but the book was a fuckin banger
It's a great shame, especially given it was the first time I donated to a project, ever. I was so immensely excited for it, and it's tragic it's turned out the way it has.
At least other games like Prehistoric Kingdom have been doing so well at least.
Nice to come across a new channel too, pretty nice content :)
Never skip a Goldfish video 💯🙏😭
❤❤❤
“Today we’re gonna be talking about the downfall of Saurian…”
2 minutes later…
“… and that’s why I’m gay.”
I’m definely still getting the Saurian book
Scam, cause despite knowing their old manager stole away funds they did not go after him for said funds. Just let him walk away with no repercussion.
Tbh I think your exaggerating how much saurian died. The devs haven’t realized anything that says devolpment is stoping and nesting has been added.
I don’t miss the feather craze, or the “making spino’s quadrupedal water Pokémon “ those were dark times to be a dinosaur follower. I never played this game simply because the t-Rex looked like giant bloated chickens with stubby appendages.
And somehow, it still looked better than the reworked model they made but never even added
Ngl the idea of a single player open world dino game where u ty and survive as a dino against ai dinos is acctualy a cool concept but it wasnt ment to be. Might be controversial but path of titains haveing it for the singleplayer mode simmilar to sonora would be really cool. They are already developing ai and i feel like useing that code to make the single player a customisable open world thing where u get hatched would be really fun and would make the hame last even longer since you wouldnt necessarily need to even join multiplayer. Tho im not a dev so im not sure how well it would really work😅
PoT has a way better chance of succeeding where Saurian failed because they actually made a fun dino fighting game first and then started improving its plant accuracy AFTER. Saurian did it the other way around and look where that got them.
@@Justmonika6969 yee path being an already asteblished game they wouldnt need to start from scratch just sone code adjustments and a single player open world is feasable for path. And of u dont like it comunity and offical servers are an option so its sole perpous isnt just a one trick pony
The single best thing to come out of the project is the art book
It feels like a “Too little, too late” kinda thing. It was promising, but developed far too slowly too keep up with The Isle, Beasts of Bermuda, and the juggernaut Path of Titans. If it just picked a specific year of accuracy (say 2016) and only had the most accurate models of 2016, it would have developed faster, and possibly been able to over take The Isle. It’s alarming to see The Isle fall into slow development like Saurian did, history repeats itself, and The Isle seems to be dying. Hope is all we can have.
I remember begging my mom to back this game for me because I so wanted to be apart of the game’s progression.
Always saddens me when I remember the game and see much hasnt changed 😢❤
I hope one day a competent dev team will make a saurian successor and we’ll finally have the dino survival we always wanted, however that dream is thin and our chances are low
At this point Saurian devs should sell their project to real dev team because... This is sad. I was waiting for this game even before it was released, - and its been 8 YEARS since. Saurian is old enough to go to school, but still super raw and unfinished.
8 years of waiting for t-rex, goddamn... And you know whats sad? Its the only solo dinosaur simulator.
I'm still very thankful for saurian, as it got me into dinosaur survival games and I really liked it as a child :)
I even found the rare mosa corpse once!
I remember when the lead artist, RJ Palmer, said that Saurian wasn’t going to end up like Mesozoica.
Oh how the tables have turned.
The Saurian devs I interacted with may have turned out to be stuck up, arrogant know it alls in areas even outside paleontology who would treat you like dung if you dared to disagree with them (I still remember how they said how it was "cute" when people thought they knew something they didn't when it came to the "Edmontosaurus or Anatosaurus" controversy), such project didn't deserve such fate. The community could have benefitted a lot from the idea and implementation of a dinosaur survival game set in an actual, real life formation with accurately represented flora and fauna. From what you said, it's apparent doom was that it's good idea was badly implemented. At least I am glad we may be able to simulate a formation's flora and fauna in Path of Titans by carefully selecting maps and which dinosaurs will be playable on a server.
I'm a backer for Saurian, and I'm very annoyed about that one person who ran off with a huge chunk of their money. The game had potential, but since that whole fiasco, they've never recovered. It's unfortunate.
No doubt the situation demoralized them too. They should've pursued legal action against the embezzler, but they opted not to. Now he can go embezzle more money from some other company where he works because he didn't get punished the first time. And while they wouldn't have recovered the money from suing him, because he most likely spent it all, perhaps they ought to have done at least that. The game could've been finished, and it could've been bringing in revenue for the whole team.
0:46 It is an honor to have my meme used in this video
I personally not followed the game and there are like another 8-10 similar dinosurvival game beyond the 3 major but this game could have been a great one if they choose to add multiplayer, focusing on gameplay, wisely choosing peoples in positions. If someone gets money sometimes they forget they get that money for making something in return.
One of the saddest stories was an rpg game where a rich anonymos supporter gave a lot of money directly to a developer to make his dream game then he basically purchased crypto currencies and squandered the money what meant to be for pay salaries and extras. Kira Tv made a video about this a year or two ago not sure when this was but not too long ago.
Developing a game like this requires 1.5-5 million dollars to get a Isle size team and finance the development. Major studios or publishers does not tries to make a game like Saurian, Isle, PoT, Bob. They do not see potential on this side genre because the playerbase for this is fragmented.
Enough to mention the cenozoic era, where a small developer team tried to make a creature survival on the cenozoic era. Most of the playerbase left because they were more about the person than about the game so they basically ended to try.
If I have had spare millions I would consider to give them money but expecting them to develop the game and add ideas what can improve the game.
Saurian was planned to eventually have a multiplayer mode, but after their money got embezzled by a manager/developer, I imagine that plan got scrapped. At this point they will be lucky if they can get the time and resources to develop the game to completion. Short of another, more successful Kickstarter, I don't see it happening.
Saurian’s community is undoubtedly also part of its failure. They refuse to accept any criticism of it
That’s the issue with making a game with 100% accuracy it just strips the game of all fun to be had
Saurian is a huge disapointment, and I feel people give Saurian too much leniency at this point. Some people defending the game as being still in development... look at what the game is after so many years. I bought it around 8 years ago ffs, this is not normal game development and it shouldnt be just accepted or defended, even from a small dev.
The story of the dev stealing from the team is sad, but that is if it's actually the whole truth. People just seem to goble up whatever devs say, and that thief didnt steal for 8 years, the team just never had any idea on how to develop a game. And they still don't. I used to come back and check on updates and most of the time all I saw after MONTHS was trees and foliage being chanaged while the game mechanics and features remained barebones and untouched. Crazy. One of the many failures of Kickstarter for giving a bunch of idea-men money with no one to actually demand a finished game/product. Producers have their role and failures like Saurian show it pretty clearly.
We'll never get a good dinosaur game that's not a park manager and it makes me really sad.
It's not in development, it's in its death throes.
To be completely fair, we don't know if the artists are also coders/gameplay devs. If not, then the question is less "why are they working on plants so hard?" and more "why are the coders and designers responsible for gameplay not doing more that they can tell us about?"
But I agree that far more focus was put on the plants than the dinosaurs in the updates. The dinosaurs should've been the primary focus, as well as the gameplay and making it fun. Realism can be improved once the gameplay and dinosaurs are implemented and playable.
i truly hope that Saurian can recover in some way, genuinly it had such a cool promise and actually had a GOAL, not just wander around aimlessly but simulate life, the educational value of this game could have been insane, and it's tragic to see things happened the way they did
I truly love your channel. Keep doing the best work.
Honestly, really sad to know about. I never played the game but I really liked the soundtrack and I used to listen a lot
Saurian was my gateway game into loving dinosaurs games. I blught my first gaming pc to play it. Its broken my heart to see it like this.
I wish Morrison formation game too
saurian always had the wish I always wanted of a fun singleplayer dinosaur game, but alas we are stuck with online only games with annoying grievances, piss long growth times and not much to do besides hide in a bush for 4 hours and then proceed to die and do it again. I love path but the grindy nature of these games make it tiring
All I know about this game before watching this video was that the artist behind it was kinda mean
I do love the plants, and all the small animals shows a really dedicated attempt to be a solid world
5:13 Nesting has been in the game for 2 years
I'm really hoping attention and life can be brought back to this game. It had so much potential, and I believe that it still does. I plan to have my own mini series featuring the game on my small channel next month. I don't know if Saurian is dead, but I believe that there is hope for it.
Wolfquest with dinosaurs would be so much more fun than a dressed up deathmatch game with bars you fill up between pvp matches.
The stomping land sucessor 😂😂😂
A fundamental problem with dinosaur survival games like The Isle, Path of Titans, Beasts of Bermuda and Saurian is that the gameplay is generally pretty boring when youre not playing with friends. Its a fun idea on paper. Playing as a dinosaur, and fighting for your life and constantly on the fine line of predator or prey? Sounds exciting until you hop in and quickly find that 90% of your gameplay is just Dinosaur Walking Simulator because you can go for many straight hours without seeing another person. Saurian is probably the biggest offender of this since its singleplayer.
Sauron’s was the only thing I’ve ever backed in kickstarter and it’s why I’m suspicious of every other project I’ve ever seen after
*Sniffle* T.Rex didn’t even become playable.. 😢
To add, i still remember buying it and opening... The magic of that intro screen, the menu and the music, than the first game experience as the Raptor baby. It was nice. But yeah i recon the money. the AI was pretty bad indeed. xD
Man I remember being excited for saurian like ten years ago.
Okay 7 years ago 😅
We need a single-player dino game in the style of The Isle, Beasts of Bermuda and Path of Titans.
I still find the game fun to play, it's actually challenging, and I especially really enjoyed growing up with my siblings and eventually splitting off to make my own herd.
i think the video is way too sad, the game did have triceratops in 2020 and after this we had yearly updates in 2023 we had major performance improvement too...for me the game is not dead until the devs themselves say that they cant work on it anymore it might have hard times sure but that doesnt mean it stopped forever, in me hope is thriving more than sadness and giving up it doesnt matter to me that the game is not as famous as it was mainly since its singleplayer and nothing really changes if its famous or not gameplay wise, the only thing that changed is the end of the monthly devlogs, i feel like the video focuses only on the negatives...where are the positive things like the 1 update per year we had since triceratops (not crazy yeah but there existed longer periods of time with no update before that) what about the nesting update, major performance improvement, environment changes like fauna rarity pectinodon and daytime/nighttime creature seperate spawning...finally even with the devlogs updates were sudden and unexpected i was literally bored of my life having nothing to do and suddenly nesting update dropped
next update is tyrannosaurus...it only makes sense that it lates so much it introduces new model, new animations, new growth where you dont need to sleep, new mechanics and all that in a small passion project
this is the last message of a dev in the discord server:
"We're still working on the T. rex, it's just going slowly as expected since our available work time is very limited. If we weren't still working on the game, we would say so publicly. Sorry for your unease, though fwiw I've worked on this game completely unpaid for several years now and have no incentive to be dishonest"
what we objectively need is hope not sadness, sure the lack of money impacted the game but it didnt finish it off at all...again as long as the devs work on it hope exists if not for a finished game then for sure trex and pachycephalosaurus as well as the second part of the environment overhaul with the addition of old plants back and so a more completed environment look
I feel like the isle has done a pretty good job with their recode so far if you're looking for a realistic dino survival
I wonder if we’ll ever get a palaeo accurate game.
I truly believe their extreme commitment to accuracy was their downfall. It felt like every other devlog, they were announcing some major change caused entirely by newly published research. They should have seen the writing on the wall and stuck to whatever status quo they were at. They still would've been the most accurate dinosaur game, and could've changed things to fit new research after they completed the game. But instead, they unfortunately wasted time and resources making unnecessary changes instead of just finishing the game.
honestly feel that if they focused more on game play instead of accuracy the game would have been a success
They forgot paleontology is a living science and change everything
I wish the market for a singleplayer dinosaur survival game was tapped into more, because there is definitely potential to be had there, but to really succeed in making such a game, I feel like immense funding would be needed, as well as a good dev team that doesn’t end up eating said funding (ha ha ha, as if new dinosaur survival games ever have that)
the community was also pretty toxic, but you know most of these dinosaur games have their communities. I witnessed a lot of bullying from that community that was just swept under the rug.
I still remember that time they proudly announced they spent 300 hours completely overhauling the design of their T. rex to be featherless instead of, you know, fixing any of the actual issues with the game...
i am very sad to see the demise of such a cool game concept. truly a sad tale...
this along with the FNAF fan game Chomper's are sad stories on how a miss lead in development wither it's the creator being a bad person or just people losing interest in the project could lead to it all crashing down. even if a few fans come together to remake it like in the cash with Chomper's it's still unfortunate that a few bad things could lead to a game, or any other projects cancellation.
As we can all agree that Saurian sadly is dead, I think there is a lot the other games can learn from it. Just a basic thing is the little lizards running around, as I find it often hard to find food as a baby juvie in the Isle, if you go for AI it's way to easy. These lizards and other small AI are the perfect Solution, they are challanging but not impossible to catch and provide entertaiment through basically a minigame aswell as the recource you need (food). Overall the AI in this game is miles ahead, especially all the little critters like lizards mammals and even birds roaming around, aswell as small dinosaurs, but also the large Triceratops and Edmontodsaurus heards, these provide an immersion the other games lack thus far imo.
it’s sad because i feel like if it would have been successful maybe they could have been asked to make a late jurassic period game, with allosaurs torvosaurs and stegosaurs. it is what it is though im glad there’s at least something cause i’ve had moments where it’s actually cool but it will take many years to finish
I am still waiting for Path of titans to add bots and an actual offline mode to scratch that itch that Saurian left me so many years ago. That game is the last hope unless a big studio decides to make a game of this kind.
Such an unfortunate turn of events! Still don’t regret buying the book though!
I subscribed becaue someone trying to survive in the woods in a dinosuar suit is something that literally nobody has done before.
I personally put $60 into the game.. i know some people put upwards of $200 into their kickstarter. Pretty dang sad to see what happened
92 views in 9 minutes alone this man is popping off!!!!!
I learned by lesson about backing games with The Stomping Land...
wym BOB was made to try and take down the isle and has a low player count that steadily drops when nothing new comes out; it also destroys your cpu.
Dang, I always wondered what happened to Saurian
In dinosaur genre, there can only be one, made the best of the others. There always be only one being the best but the worst at the same time (HEY HEY THE ISLE EVRIMA AM TALKIN BOUT YO!)
Right! 😂😂😂
I was an original backer and I honestly forgot about it.
It's a shame Saurian fell off the face of the earth. Was looking forward to an immersive SP dino game that wasn't an Isle clone.
From what I've heard, there's work toward redoing the whole code, but we haven't had an update in over a year. It may not be completely dead, but I'm not expecting much at this point, either.
I played Saurian and never really understood it. It had potential for sure, but it never went anywhere. There was nothing at all to do on there.
2:35 "I'm boss, back off!"
And just like the dinosaurs, I want, no, we all want it to bounce back but we also know, it probably won’t happen, or we won’t be alive to see it
I hope it will come back. Maybe ten years and it will be great. Seriously, i am hopeful
I still play it every now and then :[
If only Saurian could make a comeback.
So about 6 yrs ago, i got some extra money, and wanted to buy a new pc game. My choice was between this...and the Isle. Im soooo glad i picked the Isle, then. I picked it because it had a lot more to offer, and figured id get this when it was more completed, or at least added more. It never did.
See it hit the stretch goal to be multiplayer but yea..