SAURIAN - An open world dinosaur survival experience

New Blogpost: Anatosaurus and the Name Game
almost 8 years ago – Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 05:09:44 AM

For those of you who are just joining the community of Saurian fans and followers, we've run a website and blog for some time now. We've frequently used our blog to share some of the research and design work that goes into bringing Saurian to life. Our most recent post deals with a topic that many people have asked about over the course of both the Kickstarter and prior development: What about hadrosaurs? Why are you calling the hadrosaur Anatosaurus?

If you like what you read, there's previous posts on the Western Interior Seaway, Dakotaraptor, Triceratops & Torosaurus as well as our Tyrannosaurus redesign. Check em out!

New Playable Dinosaurs Unlocked!
almost 8 years ago – Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 02:31:55 PM

Backers: 6
Stretch Goals: 0

We're starting to sound like a broken record over here. Yet again, your generosity and support have pushed us past another stretch goal so fast that we're scrambling to catch up! By reaching $130,000 in pledges, 2 new playable dinosaurs have been added to the roster that you, our backers will vote on to decide. Our plan at this time is to conduct voting at the conclusion of the kickstarter via the backer survey. We'll present the candidates you'll be voting on, along with a description of what sort of game play you can expect out of each dinosaur.  All potential candidates are dinosaurs that lived in Hell Creek and are already planned as AI entities. You will be deciding which of them we expand into full life cycle playables. In the mean time, here's a sneak peak at some potential candidates we've been working on in our 24 hour livestream!

Multiplayer Unlocked!
almost 8 years ago – Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 07:41:31 AM

Yet again the generosity and enthusiasm of our backers amazes us. When we first started planning our Kickstarter, we worried a bit that people would balk at amount of money we were asking for to implement many of the features we considered core parts of what Saurian could be; individual variation, Dynamic environmental, more playable dinosaurs and Multiplayer.  We were concerned we might even have a difficult time reaching our initial goal. To have fully funded all goals through Multiplayer with 11 days to go is humbling, Thank you!

First off, with Multiplayer unlocked, we now have funds we can dedicate to finding and hiring a programmer or programmers who's main responsibility will be collaborating with the existing development team in designing and implementing the multiplayer version of Saurian alongside the existing single player. If you or someone you know has previous experience with this sort of work, feel free to send us your resume at [email protected] (only serious offers will be considered, candidates must be over 18 years of age)

We are not yet ready to reveal the exact form multiplayer will take, but once we have made some more progress into this feature we will post an update for you guys.

Articles, Interviews and Kind Words
almost 8 years ago – Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 04:23:41 AM

One of the fun things about running a kickstarter that becomes as successful as you have made us are all the news articles and interviews that make it to press, and we figured it would be nice to gather some of the most recent ones into one post. In the past two weeks since we launched our Kickstarter, we've been featured in Youtube videos by BestInSlot, TheGamingBeaver and Trey the Explainer. We've done a podcast with Palaeocast and have a couple more in the works. We've granted interviews to The GameSkinny, The Grid Daily, and others that have yet to be published. We even have a TV Tropes and Wikipedia page now apparently. Most gratifying for us has been the kind words we've received from Paleontologists and Palaeoartists. Here's a couple examples:

"I am so pleased that so many people appreciate the fact that a group is trying to make the most accurate and educational experience possible, rather than just gratuitous excitement."

-Robert DePalma, Curator of Paleontology, The Palm Beach Museum of Natural History

"Saurian is simply the best looking and most scientifically accurate of all the dinosaur games currently being developed, perhaps the best ever. I can't wait to play it, and have a demo running in my museum!"

-Denver Fowler, Ph.D Curator, Dinosaur Museum at Dickinson Museums Center & Fowler Paleontology & Geology Consulting

"The Saurian team is working really hard to make an exciting and cool game using the latest scientific knowledge about dinosaurs, and I’m looking forward to spending some quality time in the cybernetic Hell Creek. Where else will I get to hang out with Ankylosaurus and Denversaurus?”

– Dr. Victoria Arbour, palaeontologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University

"As a professional paleoartist I'm a bit obsessive about dinosaur reconstruction, ecology, movement and behavior, so it's not often that I'm impressed by representations of dinosaurs in video games, movies or other media. That said, the gorgeous reconstructions and animations of prehistoric animals in Saurian have me impressed. They are by far the best representations of dinosaurs I've seen in any video game, and do a good job reflecting the current state of paleontological science and art."

- Brian Engh/Historian Himself

So again, THANK YOU backers for your generosity and support. Feel free to share these links via your own personal social media outlets, we still have over 2 weeks to go and lots more we can do to keep hitting stretch goals! 

Palaeocast Interview
almost 8 years ago – Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 01:44:30 PM

Hey Saurian fans,

Palaeocast is a fantastic (and award winning!) podcast that is committed to creating high quality palaeontological multimedia with no advertisements and at no cost. Nick Turinetti, Saurian's Project Lead recently sat down for an interview with them, and you should definitely check it out!

http://www.palaeocast.com/episode-65-saurian/