Primal Planet Lets You Hug Your Dinosaur – Oh and It’s an Excellent Metroidvania Too

I’ve been playing video games since about 1982, and Primal Planet stands out among the most charming I’ve ever encountered. While there’s not a lot about it that’s especially new, the components are so lovingly tuned and crafted that I could barely bring myself to stop playing. The designer injected Primal Planet with an inexhaustible reservoir of creativity, color, motion, and wonder, and the combination delivers an absolutely captivating play experience.

Its charm starts with the hugs. I’ve been in love with superfluous embraces in games since the WayForward remake of A Boy and His Blob deployed a deeply rewarding hug button. With a tap, you could reach out as the Boy and squeeze your best friend the Blob to your heart’s content. The sweetness of the animation and sound design compelled me to hug my little extraterrestrial friend whenever he succeeded, and often to comfort him when he failed. Primal Planet operates from the same emotional playbook. It doesn’t give you much manual control over displays of affection, but works in plenty of opportunities to warmly embrace and interact with your wife, daughter, and the adorable Sino the Dino. It’s deeply committed to integrating utterly unnecessary but deeply rewarding moments of humanity, where your little pixel people feel truly human.

The caveman protagonist has a family of bot buddies accompanying him on his journey, and thankfully these AI companions are genuinely helpful. They follow you without getting lost and contribute meaningfully to combat. You can opt to carry your daughter or put her down for support, and your wife is a menace to enemies with her bow and arrow. They’re also deeply emotive characters, enough so that you get attached to them… an emotional hook that Primal Planet finds plenty of opportunities to exploit.

Of all my friends and family, I bonded most with Sino the Dino, a baby dinosaur that acted as a sort of friendly attack dog fighting alongside me. Some of that attachment is that Sino really is useful, and part of it is that the poor little guy is an orphan and I feel a bit responsible for him. I also love that unlike my caveman, Sino can eat small enemies to restore his health on the fly, making him remarkably durable.

The day and night cycles dynamically alter the visibility and danger in the sprawling world. Locales that at dawn are gorgeous vistas transform after dark into menacing hunting grounds. The backgrounds are absolutely crammed with visual splendor. Almost every pixel has a sense of motion to it, from blades of tall grass blowing in the wind to the gentle breathing of immense, sleeping dinosaurs.

Speaking of the dinosaurs: they’re undeniably awesome. Look, dinosaurs are simply the coolest creatures to ever walk this earth, and Primal Planet knows that, presenting these astronomical ancient avians with a Jurassic Park-like level of enthusiasm. The dinos are diverse in appearance and behavior, deeply colorful and behaviorally distinct. Compys scurry about like the little scavengers they are, raptors attack in packs and from hiding, and the big fellas are genuinely terrifying. The pixel art style and careful color choices richly infuse these colossal beasts with grandeur, beauty, and terror.

Mechanically, Primal Planet is rock solid. It’s a side-scrolling Metroidvania that gets platforming, combat, and exploration right. The levels are artistically lush but also cunningly designed to hide (and tease) secrets, alternate paths, and environmental puzzles. Curiosity is always rewarded, sometimes with jarring (but terrific) surprises.

It’s a world of quick death and constant twists and turns, but it doesn’t feel brutal or unfair, instead merely challenging. You’ve got a potent dodgeroll to keep you out of harm’s way, and your little dude is delightfully agile. Whether you’re battling dinos, rival tribes, or space aliens, encounters feel thoughtfully designed and balanced.

Primal Planet includes well-designed progression and crafting systems. XP gathered through battle and exploration fuels Skill Points, which in turn can be used to unlock double jumps, weapon proficiencies, and more. You share your Skill Point pool and XP with Sino, and can considerably upgrade his mobility and combat abilities as the game goes on.

Resources found can be crafted at bonfires into weapons, tools, and medicine. The resources are neither too abundant nor too scarce… distribution feels just right. And some items double as equipment. Craft a spear from flint and wood and you’ve got a decent melee and ranged weapon, but you can also toss it against walls and use it as a climbing platform, or dip it in a fire to create a torch useful for clearing thorns that block your path.

As the campaign continues, you meet new allies that help you unlock more crafting abilities, allowing you to create potent traps and weapons to scale with the ever-escalating threats. Resource gathering never felt like a chore, but rather as a reward for exploring and following hunches to hidden areas where rare items and components waited to be found.

I feel like Primal Planet was designed especially for me. It combines several of my favorite reagents in gaming into one glorious magic potion. When I boot up Primal Planet I arrive at an intersection of prehistoric beasts, science fiction, excellent exploratory platforming, incredible art, a light progression system, and a dash of the feels.

The beating heart of Primal Planet is the incredible attention to detail and environmental storytelling. Show-don’t-tell is the name of the game in Primal Planet, and it’s splendidly executed. Whether it’s UFOs beaming up dinosaurs in the background or your family stopping to create a cave painting together after a major story beat, Primal Planet just keeps intriguing and surprising.

Even though Primal Planet doesn’t really do anything revolutionary, I have rarely enjoyed a game more. Its creator seems to have surveyed the spectrum of components that make up a compelling video game adventure, and fine-tuned them into a deeply rewarding experience that evokes great Metroidvanias while feeling new and distinct. I absolutely cannot wait for the full release. Don’t sleep on Primal Planet.

Jared Petty really, really, really likes dinosaurs. You can find him at Bluesky as pettycommajared and at Threads as https://www.threads.com/@pettycommajared.