Land Before Time: Primal Planet

Thrills, spills, terrible lizards, and more in this standout sidescroller.

‣ Primal Planet
From: Seethingswarm, Pretty Soon
Platforms: PC
Release: 2025
Steam Page • Demo Video • Developer Site

Prepare to stab dinos and aliens with your stone-tipped spear.

We start this adventure with a small stone-age family clad in furs and huddling around their protective fire, a happy gathering rudely interrupted when a giant dinosaur tries to eat them. They escape but are separated. The caveman joins forces with a young dinosaur whose mother perished during the attack. Together, they set out to find the others.

It must have taken real guts to survive in prehistoric times, scavenging for food, battling creatures out to eat you, and making sure your kin survive. There are the carnivorous dinosaurs, the giant insects, the skull-wearing raiders flying on pterodactyls and, of course, alien abductions. Stone-age living was no joke, but it does make for a neat Metroidvania called Primal Planet.

This impressive pixel-art sidescroller is, unbelievably, largely a solo development project. I say unbelievably because many solo-developed games have a lean quality due to the developer making tough choices with limited resources. It can result in less ambitious art, fewer animations, stripped-down gameplay, smaller levels—things like that. These changes don't diminish a game, yet still leave it with a lingering sense of restraint.

But not Primal Planet. Charging headlong into the competitive Metroidvania sub-genre like a pack of raptors, this demo brings it at every level: impressive pixel art design; lush maps with absorbing parallax backgrounds; responsive and versatile platforming that balances arcade enjoyment with a little challenge; unlockable skills and explorable maps; and an excellent soundtrack.

I'm savagely laundry-listing these features because there's a lot that can be said about Primal Planet. After reuniting with your family, you continue fighting dinosaurs, swimming in underwater caves, and witnessing some concerning activities, eventually finding your way to your village. But a surprise attack hints that this is just your adventure's start.

Played solo or in local co-op, Primal Planet's demo is impressive. It looks good, the controls are responsive, and it grasps the purpose of sidescrollers while meeting the Metroidvania sub-genre's expectations of exploration and unlockable skills with some inventive touches (such as using spears as platforms to reach new spots). The developer behind this game, an accomplished pixel artist, had thought of everything.

It's, of course, easy to fall for a demo's flattery. Developers sometimes front-load their demos, showing a substantial chunk of the final product. For example, if Primal Planet's full game is only 4 hours long (which wouldn't be unheard of for indie sidescrollers), the demo would represent a quarter of the game. Yet, I suspect there will be more to it, seeing I barely scraped the skills tree and only had glancing encounters with some of the enemies.

📽 Demo Snapshot: A little crafting by the fire

Instead, it's perhaps more likely that the majority of the game will take place in the same jungle biome, though that wouldn't bother me. It's a beautiful place to experience, enhanced by the day/night system that seems superficial but adds atmosphere and a sense of progression. Likewise, the demo's environmental puzzles are basic but have potential.

Every game that I feature on AIIG excites me. There are no gap fillers. But now and then, a demo excites me more than usual and becomes a day-one buy. Primal Planet effortlessly joins that list and has the potential to be a hit: it looks great, plays well, isn't too challenging nor too simple, and hints at a fun—even epic—storyline. I'm already preparing to stab dinos and aliens with my stone-tipped spear.

Primal Planet is due for release in 2025

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Explore Primal Planet with Youtube Chapters:

• 📽 00:00 Intro

• 📽 01:24 Relaxing by the fire

• 📽 02:17 Find your family

• 📽 07:50 Spears are cool

• 📽 08:05 That's weird

• 📽 09:24 There they are!

• 📽 12:12 A basic puzzle

• 📽 14:33 Sneak very carefully

• 📽 15:43 Reunited!

• 📽 20:36 Crafting by the fire

• 📽 22:46 A cave painting

• 📽 26:00 Friendly dinos!

• 📽 30:25 Those are not dinosaurs

• 📽 31:27 The village

• 📽 33:39 Attackers!

• 📽 35:59 Death isn't permanent

• 📽 40:13 Outgunned

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