RT - RFX

Bringing back the dinosaurs? Easy. But can Northplay save the RTS from extinction with the innovations of DINOLORDS?

- By Abbie Stone

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. ” Wise words there, from Jeff Goldblum's Dr Ian Malcolm in the original Jurassic Park. Words that he would have done well to heed when he signed on to star in Dominion, and words also ignored by Danish studio, Northplay.

Because it hasn't 'just' made an RTS with dinosaurs. It's also attempting to mashup two genres, pinching some of the best ideas from action-RPGs and tearing down RTS fundamentals that many deem sacrosanct in the process. Good lord, Northplay. You sure you wouldn't rather open a theme park with real dinosaurs instead? Sounds like a less risky endeavour...

Thankfully, this developer hasn't overreached and ended up with a Jurassic Park: Trespasser. Even the playtest build I played proves Dinolords is already a successful action-RPG/RTS hybrid. It's a refreshingly accessible RTS, too, one that could be enjoyed by For Northplay CEO, Michael Flarup, making an RTS had been on the bucket list for a long time, having been a fan of the genre since its nineties heyday. “I got started doing levels in Command & Conquer, back in the day when you had to hack some files to get access to those things,” he says. “And so I was like, 'Why haven’t we done this before?”

“Notice, however, the distinct lack of mentioning dinosaurs,” points out designer Kasra Tahmasebi. “Because it actually didn’t start out with dinosaurs at all.” Yes, amazingly a game called Dinolords was almost reptile-free. “We had this period where we were figuring out what our next game was going to be and we all wanted to try something a bit bigger,” explains Northplay CTO, Ulrik Damm. “We all really liked real-time strategy. And we played Stronghold, this all-time classic game.”

At this point Flarup proudly holds up a boxed copy of Stronghold (“Look how cool that is!”). “In