Paleo Pinesis a farming sim game with dinosaurs, developed by studio Italic Pig, where players can befriend these creatures and build a home for them on their customizable ranch. InPaleo Pines, dinosaurs are more than just cute critters for players to collect, but companions who can help out on the farm, unlock more of the island setting, and ultimately, become a part of the players' dinosaur family.
While somecozy farming games likeStardew Valleyalso include dinosaurs,Paleo Pinesputs the prehistoric species front and center rather differently. Game Rant recently spoke with Italic Pig creative director Nina Roussakoff about why the studio developed a cozy dinosaur farming sim and what dinosaurs add to the farming experience. She also spoke about the dinosaur AI andwhat its behavior adds to the game experience and much more.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Q: How do you feel about the release ofPaleo Pinesapproaching, especially after such a positive early access demo?
A: Absolutely terrified [laughs]. You’d think that it would be easier, right? Because the demo was well received, I think it does take the edge off a little bit, but it’s still absolutely a labor of love that a lot of people have put a lot of time and effort into. All the way through development, we’ve made a lot of difficult decisions and tried to make the best game we possibly could, but it is still really scary. Like, are people still going to love it once they’ve got the full game, you know?
Yeah, but exciting right, I guess?
A: Oh, yeah. Definitely exciting, but it’s the kind of excitement that you feel when you’re standing on the edge of a cliff. You know, “I’m not gonna fall down, but I’m just staring at the abyss there a little bit.”
Q: What inspired you to create afarm sim game with dinosaurs?
A: That is a great question, so the game was originally inspired during a game jam. It was kind of a concept that Jordan Bradley came up with, a Concept Artist at Italic Pig at the time. And in a way, it’s super relatable, right? Because if you think of these super cozy worlds and then you think of dinosaurs, they just go together so well. Putting the two together is actually sort of a very natural fit.
I think, as we worked further and further into the concept and the game, it became a lot about childhood - about that childhood joy and remembering what those very long summers of childhood felt like. I don’t know about you, but for me, dinosaurs were a really big part of childhood. I think that’s probably true for a lot of people around the world, so yeah, it’s that kind of combination.
Q: Could you tell us a bit more about the dinosaur companion Lucky?
A: Okay, so Lucky is a Parasaurolophus, which nobody can pronounce [laughs]. Lucky has been with the player character from when she hatched out of an egg. They’ve been together a long time, but there are no other Parasaurs around.
So Parasaurs is the shorthand that the people of the world use for Parasaurolophus. Lucky doesn’t really know where she’s from or who she belongs to. Part of Lucky’s journey and the player’s journey is about discovering where the Parasaurolophus have gone because nobody’s seen them for a very long time. And in a way, it’s about finding your family. It’s also about belonging, different types of belonging, and different types of family.
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Q: You have kind of maybe slightly answered this, but what do you think Lucky adds to the gameplay experience compared to otherfarming sims?
A: Okay, so yes, there’s Lucky. Lucky, as well as all the other dinosaurs, add a lot to the experience in that they do farming with you. Lucky is a steed, there are also other steeds, but you also have really small dinos that are - we call them companions or small dinos - that have kinds of other abilities that they can do.
Every steed has a set of abilities, and they can support you on the farm. For example, they can help you water crops more quickly, or harvest crops more quickly. They can clear obstacles. Lucky’s unique abilities are sort of clearing debris. She can sort of dig and she’s also a sprinter, so it’s really handy to explore the world with Lucky. She’s a very good steed for that purpose. But other dinos, of course, have their own complementary roles. You can spread the load between them.
Q: Could you explainhow players befriend dinosaursinPaleo Pines? I’ve seen clips of musical instruments and things.
A: Yeah, the Bubble Flute has been with us a really long time, and we’ve gone through loads of different ways to do it. Where we landed was, we really wanted to create that feeling of encountering your neighborhood cat - you stop, sort of just crouch down, you’re like, “come here,” and you make maybe a funny noise or wiggle your fingers. The goal was to really capture that feeling of, will this dinosaur respond or not respond?
It’s actually a multistage approach where with the flute, first, you kind of have to figure out what their Friend Call is and then replicate the Friend Call. Then, that gets them interested enough to engage with you, and you may feed them treats, trying to find the exact right balance before you offer them what we call a Poppin, which is a kind of dinosaur cupcake. That seals the deal, and then there’ll be your friend. That’s how you befriend them.
Q: It sounds very cute. The demo website lists 30species of dinosaursso far, with 13 in the demo. Are you able to say how many species of dinosaurs players can find in the game roughly?
A: I think I’m probably allowed to say that, so I’ll just go for it. It’s 38. We’ve got 38 species of dinosaurs in the game.
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Q: Could you tell us a bit more about the rare dinosaur varieties, and what inspired their designs such asthe Moon Glow Baryonyx that was inspired by Starry Night, the Vincent Van Gogh painting, right?
A: I think a lot of different people have contributed to the ideas for both the names and the colors.We have a number of differentcolors and patterns for different dinosaurs. Two that every dinosaur has that aren’t ultra-rare are melanistic and albino, which of course are based on real-life things. But, Starry Night and Moon Glow and so forth are not.
It was really interesting because we hada paleontologist advisoradvising us. Of course, we spoke a lot about the science of dinosaurs as far as we know, but I think one of the interesting things is that we often don’t know, really, a lot of things about dinosaurs, such what noises they made - we can only speculate. What colors they had - we can only speculate. You know, even since discovering the kind of feathered dinos, there are still a lot of questions about what they actually looked like. We probably would have gone with stylized, really fun colors anyway, but it’s sort of nice to think that some of these colors could have really existed [laughs] and have been as colorful as they are - we don’t know.
To bring it back to the question, which is the rare colors. The inspirations came from all over the place and lots of different people contributed their ideas. But some of it, if I’m honest, was a case of there was this really nice color palette, then we had to think of a name to match it - it’s also gone that way around.
And there are lots of different color varieties andI guess players probably find their favorites they like as they explore.
A: Yeah, so far I’ve noticed players do kind of have preferences or are looking for a specific one sometimes. I think the nice thing is that there are sets. Not every dino has every color. There isn’t a Moon Glow variety of every single dinosaur aside from albino and melanistic, which they all have.
So if you did want to collect all the Moon Glow ones, then there’s a specific subset you’d be looking for. Then you could have a ranch full of Moon Glow dinos, and there’s even an outfit that matches those colors as well. You can have yourself look in style with your dinosaur.
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Q: Could you explain more about the dinosaur’s special abilities and how some of them can help unlock more parts of the island?
A: Steeds have different abilities on the farm, but they also have abilities in the wild. Part of those are things like smashing rocks. The Triceratops and the Styracosaurus smash boulders, so they can clear the various places on the island. We’ve got dinosaurs that can clear logs that have fallen over, dinosaurs that can clear bushes that have this cottony stuff growing on it. And as you do that, you collect fiber, wood, and stone, so it kind of is a multifunctional thing. You can continue exploring the environment with them and continue collecting these resources.
Q: As well as discovering new dinosaurs, what kinds of other NPCs and townsfolk might players find and interact with, and what are they like?
A: The people ofPaleo Pinesare very quirky.I absolutely adore how they’ve come out, and I think our writing team has a lot of humor. I saw a video of a streamer the other day who had discovered Granny. What did Granny say? I won’t spoil it, but it was a reference to an old song. I didn’t even know it was in there, but it just made me chuckle when I saw it.
The humor is there. You know how in Disney films, kids see one thing but adults see another? It’s a little bit like that. There is nothing rude inPaleo Pinesin that sense. If kids played it, they would just play it and take it completely as it is. An adult playing it would be like, “That is a reference to this” or “This is funny because of that.” There’s a bit of that in there. That doesn’t really tell you much about the townsfolk. I feel like I’ve answered a completely different question there.
The community that we picked to build around the story and the character is very diverse. A lot of it is because the world ofPaleo Pinesisn’t set in the modern day. It’s kind of like an alternate universe around the birth of science if that makes sense. There are no factories anywhere. Things are handcrafted.
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In this community, we have a couple of scientists, Mari and Owen, who are really trying to learn about dinosaurs and figure out what science looks like. We’ve got a historian who’s kind of doing the same but from the kind of more archeology, historical perspective. There are also people within the community who fulfill other kinds of roles, like the woodsman Marlo who’s also the carpenter, and we’ve got people that are providing different skills and services.
The idea behind the way that they all relate to each other was really about that sense of skill exchange. Like, you’re bringing something to the community with your unique skills of being able to befriend dinosaurs and help out the community with farming and stuff like that. Then they do their bits, so they can craft things for you.
Some of them are weirder than others, right? Like Poppins, the dino cupcakes - come from Pippin, whoruns a stall, thinking that they are selling cupcakes or Poppins to humans and for human consumption, but they’re inedible to humans and dinos love them. And that’s just funny, you know what I mean? It’s about people really finding their place and that sense of belonging of how they belong to the community and what is their role within the wider part.
Q: You mentioned the cupcakes. How big of a role does cooking and things play in the game? I know there’s a mixing bowl where you may make things maybe to feed the dinosaurs and things like cupcakes like a treat for them or that kind of thing.
A: Yeah so Poppins are special in that, when you feed dinosaurs Poppins, it will recover their stamina. It’s also what you use to befriend them. Think of them as a bit of like a Poke Ball, I guess. They are special in that regard. The player can also do their own cooking, but not for Poppins. Poppins is something that just Pippin can do. Nobody else knows what the heck goes into these cupcakes, all kinds of weird things. However, the player can cook dishes, and those dishes can give you a boost, like boosts of various kinds if you eat them. You can give them to people for their Budding day. Budding days are the days when people first move into their tree house, so that’s what the community celebrates.
Q: Could you talk a little bit about how crafting works, such as things for the ranch and how much creative freedom players have when it comes to making their ranch?
A: Yeah, so you can decorate your ranch in a variety of ways. It’s all based on the outside. The idea is that you spend more time decorating dino pens and doing almost like kind of gardening but then with a mixture of farming as well. It’s all aboutthe outdoor space. You can’t actually decorate the interior of the house, so all the decorations are focused on the outside. Some items can be bought from merchants that you can interact with.
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Q: What’s your favorite dinosaur or part ofPaleo Pinesso far, and what are you most excited for players to see?
A: Well, first of all, whenever people ask me what is my favorite dinosaur, it always changes because they are all really, really cute. Whenever I play the game, my preference just changes because I’ll encounter another dino, and they’ll just make me laugh or they’ll do something daft and I’ll really enjoy that. I’ve been watching streams a lot more recently because so many people have been playing the game. I see someone else interact with the dino and go, “I want that. Oh, that was so cute.”
I’d say my favorite thing is probably because of the way that the dino AI has been written, there are a lot of just moments in the game where something happens that I could never have predicted. To give you an example, I was watching someone play, and they got really excited because these two dinos in the field were chasing each other and playing with each other. They tamed both of them, brought them back to the ranch, and put them together in a pen, and they continued to be best buddies in the pen. That’s not pre-scripted. We didn’t write like “Oh, there will be two dinos who do that.” This was just the dinos who decided that for themselves and then started doing that. When you look at it from the outside, you’re able to give it so much meaning if that makes sense.
You know, these crazy little situations where someone else was playing the game, and Lucky went and hid in a bush to hide and seek with the player. I know that Lucky hiding in bushes is the thing, it’s part of her AI, but it’s the fact that when you’re actually in there in the environment, doing it suddenly turns into a game of hide and seek. We didn’t write down, “Let’s make it hide and seek,” you know? How alive the dinos feel, how much they just do things, how you can watch them and interact with them and feel like they have a life of their own was unexpected and really special.
Q: You mentioned the sense of humor, and references to things that maybe adults might get. Can we expect to see anyEaster eggs from things likeJurassic Park? Or is it maybe not that far?
A: I think you can definitely expect some Easter eggs, but I’m not going to say anything more than that [laughs].
Q: What plans might you have to add to the game in the future, such as maybe new dinosaurs, festivals, or maybe even things like multiplayer?
A: We’ve spoken about a lot of things, and we have a huge list of what we would love to add. I think some of the things that are quite high on our list that we would really love to see would be aquatic dinos. With that also the swamp area would be really nice to add. We also have discussed flying pterosaurs and various other fliers, and more dinos in that direction.
We definitely also have been talking about how cool it would be to add multiplayer. But I think that, because the game is built so fundamentally from the ground up as a single-player experience if we were to add any kind of multiplayer functionality, it wouldn’t be like the whole game you play with the buddy co-op style. It would require such a huge budget to make that happen. I think that would be very difficult, but maybe other kinds of different forms of that we’ve discussed. It really depends on how the game goes. Watch this space. Like at this point, we just don’t know. That’s standing on that cliff looking down going, “I don’t know how far I’m going to fall.” [laughs]
Q: Is there anything else that you’d like to add today?
A: I feel like I want to add all the things. I think the thing is, it’s been such an amazing journey. We’ve loved every second of working on this game. Even in the hard times, it was so much fun, it’s an amazing team to work with, and everybody’s put so much love into the game. What I’m looking forward to more than anything is just to see everybody really enjoying it now.
I love watching the streams that I’ve seen so far. I want to see more. I want to see people discover all the really weird stuff that we’ve put in. I want people to find the weird things that we didn’t quite manage to finish, but people might laugh at. I’m excited for all of it. I just really, really hope that people go out and try it because it doesn’t take long before these dinos just work their way into your heart. I want to see everybody’s dinosaurs and their ranches, and how people kind of create their little dinosaur families.
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Paleo Pinesreleases for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on September 26.
