Looking for the best dinosaur games for PC?
Were you a huge Jurassic Park fan growing up? Maybe you’re a science geek. Maybe you just like big scaly beasts with razor sharp teeth and you want to experience the terror for yourself, in-game. Whatever you’re looking for in a dinosaur game, this list of fourteen dinosaur PC games is bound to include something for you.
1) ARK: Survival Evolved
Hunt down dinosaurs with crafted weapons in ARK: Survival Evolved.
As a man or woman, stranded on an island in nothing but your underwear, you’re freezing and starving to death. There is an urgent need to find shelter and food on the island. Gather resources, quickly, to build a shelter, craft weapons and find food. On the island, it’s kill or be killed.
Your health is affected by food intake, hydration, the temperature of your surroundings, and the weather. Harvest wood, thatch, fiber and stone to build structures and craft armor and weapons. Tame dinosaurs and use them as transportation or kill them for food and crafting materials.
You earn Engram points every time you level up. You can use them to learn the ability to craft new, useful tools and building materials. Host your own dedicated server or play on an official server and meet new people. Your main goal is to explore and discover new things every day on the island. Don’t succumb to your harsh surroundings.
5 Million copies of ARK: Survival Evolved have been sold on Steam and a new expansion called The Center was released on May 17th, for FREE!
The new biome and dinosaur available in ARK: Survival Evolved.
2) Primal Carnage: Extinction
This is one of the dinosaurs that you might see roaming the island or chasing after you at a terrifying speed.
You have a choice: either hunt and kill your human prey as a dinosaur, or team up with the mercenaries and do away with the prehistoric monsters, once and for all. Choose from a surplus of deadly weapons to take down the dinosaurs or rip, stomp and tear through your pathetic human enemies.
You are on a tropical island, where a company has secretly brought the dinosaurs back from extinction. When the power mysteriously fails, the dinosaurs break out of their enclosures and it’s up to you to eliminate the threat and take back the island.
Dinosaurs use primarily melee attacks while humans have the advantage of ranged attacks with firearms. However, the dinosaurs have more health, deal more damage, and move faster than the humans.
Dinosaurs can either regain health by killing a human with their bite attack or by eating from Iguanodon carcasses which are scattered across the island.
The official launch trailer for Primal Carnage Extinction.
3) Turok
This is the cover image of the new Turok remastered.
Turok is a series of first person shooters based on Turok, the comic book character. It is set in a primitive world where dinosaurs reign supreme. In the remastered version of the classic game, you play as Turok, a time traveler fighting to prevent an evil power from breaking time and sending dinosaurs into our world to wreak unimaginable havoc.
In Turok you travel through a series of 3D levels, searching for hidden keys and pieces of the legendary weapon needed to defeat the game’s final boss. You can use a variety of guns as well as other weapons like knives, crossbows, and missile launchers to defend yourself. Dinosaurs also come in bionically engineered form, in case you’ve been itching for the chance to fight a laser-guided T-Rex.
Turok received praise for its graphics and successful implementation of the Unreal Engine on its initial release in 1997, and sold over 1 million units in its first two months on the market.
The 2008 installment in the Turok series.
4) The Hunter: Primal
This terrifying creature is a Trex; one of the dinosaurs you will hunt in this game.
In The Hunter: Primal, you’re placed on a planet called Primal Eden that’s overrun with creatures from the cretaceous period. You’re a criminal and you are tasked with eradicating the dinosaurs and other dangerous life forms in order to have your record permanently erased. If you fail, your death will be seen as treason and your family will be punished for your crime. It’s a harsh world and you have to survive, for your family’s sake.
The planet’s inhabited by five different types of dinosaurs. There are back packs scattered around the planet with weapons and ammo to aid you in your mission.
You will explore the forests, fields, mountains and oceans of Primal Eden. As you trek through the wilderness, you’ll see strange structures left behind by previous inhabitants like you. Look to see if they’ve left behind anything useful, like weapons, ammo and clothing. But be careful, the planet’s overrun with poisonous plants and deadly dinosaurs.
The Hunter: Primal is the newest installment of theHunter franchise by Expansive Worlds and Avalanche Studios. The game has over a 100,000 player base since its release.
Trailer for the multiplayer features in The Hunter: Primal.
5) Dino D-Day
Attack of the Nazi T-rex. This game looks brutal.
Dino D-Day looks a lot like Call of Duty with dinosaurs. In this multiplayer first person shooter game, you will battle online with friends. You’ll have to choose between fighting for the Allied nations or Adolf Hitler.
As an Allied player, you can choose from six playable characters, each with unique weapons and abilities. As an Axis player, you get to choose from three human classes and three dinosaur classes. Nobody really wants to be the person to choose Hitler over the Allies but who wouldn’t want to play a dinosaur?
Launch trailer for Dino D-Day.
6) There Was A Caveman
This could be you. A caveman, swinging through the trees in the jungle.
There Was A Caveman is a retro, old-school themed game about a caveman in prehistoric times. The only tools you have to work with are your club and your skills. Swing from vines and beat up prehistoric creature with your bat. Double jump over huge gaps and try your best not to fall into lava. Lava is instant death.
Death isn’t the end of the world for the caveman even though you are sent back to the beginning when you die. The game has short levels so you can get back to where you were quickly.
This game only has about an 8,400 player base right now, but the game only keeps getting better. The developer and publisher, Nauris Amatnieks, is working very hard to improve it and keep up with eliminating annoying bugs.
Gameplay video of There Was A Caveman.
7) Dino System
Here is a predatory dinosaur eating its prey after a fresh kill.
Dino System is a 2D survival simulation that allows you to either manage the ecology of an island inhabited by dinosaurs or survive as a human. You will encounter realistic survival situations and track how your character is affected by their time on the island.
You can play in two different game modes. God mode allows you to manage the Island’s ecology, changing the weather, triggering events and watching how the island adapts. Survival mode allows you to roam the island as a human. Watch how your body reacts to your surroundings and choose whether to play on casual or hardcore difficulty.
The dinosaurs, plants, and animals don’t spawn but they are born, reproduce and die. As a human, you can choose to kill the last of a species of dinosaurs for food or let it live. If you let the dinosaur live, it can go on to lay its eggs and continue the species.
Be careful building fires and using torches. Fire projects heat to everything around it and it can spread to nearby vegetation, causing forest fires. Thunder and lightning can also trigger forest fires.
Gameplay of the alpha version of Dino System.
8) ORION
Take down hordes of dinosaurs with up to 4 friends, protecting your drone for as long as you can.
ORION takes place in the maybe not-so-distant future, when humans have left a ravaged Earth and journeyed up into space in hopes of finding a new home. In ORION, a parallel universe is discovered, filled with a renewable source of energy that serves as the driving force behind your missions on this new planet. But acquiring these energy sources, called ION, does not come without peril, as the landscape of the planet Orion is full of ancient monsters that will stop at nothing to take you out.
Your goal in ORION is to protect a Harvesting drone as it collects ION from the region’s surface, defending it against waves of angry dinosaurs and alien wildlife, shooting them down with your variety of weapons for as long as you can hold them back. The longer you are able to withstand the swarms of enemies, the more money you will earn at the end of the mission.
Currently you can play both online and offline, with the choice of two game modes- harvest and survival. Harvest mode has a set number of enemy waves where survival mode has an infinite amount of enemies. Items and currency can be collected with each level that is completed, and are used to craft or buy new equipment.
ORION is the sequel to ORION: Prelude, and is currently in early access on Steam. Currently the game boasts the ability to play in three different perspectives: Top-Down, First-Person, and Third-Person. You can also play local co-op with up to 4 other players and choose from three available character classes.
Teaser for the remastered version of the Strike Region in ORION.
9) ORION: Prelude
Fight off even more hordes of dinosaurs in the original installment of The Orion Project series.
ORION: Prelude is remade and revamped version of the notoriously bad ORION: Dino Beatdown, with new graphics, weapons, and open world gameplay. Like its sequel, players can work together or alone to fight off waves of dinosaurs, with the goal being to protect a generator for as long as possible. Between each conquered wave of enemies you have the chance to purchase new equipment to give yourself a better chance at defeating the next wave of deadly dinosaurs.
Dino hoards can be battled locally with up to 5 players or online, with both cooperative and competitive gameplay modes. You can choose from three classes: Assault, Support, and Recon. Assault gives you access to a jetpack, Support allows you to heal allies, vehicles and the generator, and Recon has the ability to become invisible for short amounts of time.
ORION: Prelude is available for the low price of $0.99 on Steam.
Gameplay of ORION Prelude.
10) The Isle
Survive life as a dinosaur in the unforgiving world of The Isle.
In The Isle, you are a dinosaur struggling to survive and defend yourself in the harsh environment. You can choose from several different dinosaurs to play as, with the option to be a typically peaceful herbivore, or a more aggressive and predatory carnivore.
The sandbox mode allows you to play cooperatively and join packs of other players as you attempt to take down other dinosaurs, or you can go rogue and pick off those roaming alone across the map.
As you traverse the world of The Isle, you must keep a constant eye on your hunger, thirst, and stamina levels. There are no waypoints or tutorials, and once you die you must start from the very beginning.
The Isle is currently in early development on Steam, with future plans to have three playable factions to choose from: the current Dinosaur faction, the Mercenary faction, and the Cannibal faction. The Mercenaries will be humans armed with vast amounts of weaponry, their main goal being to take down everything on the island before it kills them. The Cannibals are humans native to the Island, and use weapons like spears and bows to hunt and survive in the environment.
Multiplayer gameplay video of The Isle.
11) Dinosaur Hunt
Kill dinosaurs with a variety of weapons. There’s not much else to it.
Dinosaur Hunt lets you do just that- hunt down and kill dinosaurs with a number of different weapons. New maps unlock after you kill enough dinos on the current map and also triggers endless mode, which spawns dinosaurs continually until you die.
Dinosaur Hunt is available for the low price of $0.99 on Steam. There are also several expansion packs to purchase, including ones that introduce new creatures for you to kill, such as vampires, gargoyles, and even dragons.
Gameplay video of Dinosaur Hunt.
12) Caveman Craig
Throw rocks at dinosaurs and then drag them back to your cave. A hearty meal for the whole tribe.
As the title suggests, Caveman Craig is a simple caveman trying to survive in a world full of hostile tribes and rampaging dinosaurs. On each level you must build up your tribe and teach them skills to survive so you can take over the rival clan and claim their cave.
Caveman Craig is a casual strategy game that can also be played split screen with a friend. You can choose from three types of cavemen to train- hunters, gatherers, and preparers- allowing for different strategies to be utilized depending on your preferred type of play style.
The game consists of five main levels, as well as five bonus mini-games.
Caveman Craig gameplay video.
13) Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter Reborn
If you want to collect your trophies, you must be smart when hunting dinos.
A sequel to the ‘90s game, Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter, this game is more hunting simulator than it is pumping waves of dinosaurs full of lead. You can track dinosaurs on your handheld device, which also functions as binoculars, and must approach them cautiously to prevent the less aggressive ones from running away and the predators from charging and stomping you to death before you can get enough shots in.
There are only four weapons available in Carnivores: the Rifle, the Sniper Rifle, the X-Bow, and the tranquilizer gun, if you don’t have the heart to kill your prey. You also must purchase licenses for each type of dinosaur you want to hunt, otherwise you will be unable to collect the trophy and earn the rewards.
Each dinosaur you hunt will respond to your presence differently, requiring you to alter your attack strategy based on the behavior it displays. You can also utilize camouflage and an item that covers your scent if you want to go for the stealthier approach.
Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter gameplay video.
14) Far Cry Primal
An easter egg gives some hope for a dino inclusive DLC in the near future.
While there are technically no dinosaurs present in Far Cry Primal, speculations abound as to the possible release of a dinosaur DLC, sparked by an easter egg of what appears to be a dinosaur skeleton hidden away in a cave.
Far Cry Primal is the latest installment in the Far Cry series, but this time set in the Stone Age. You are Takkar, a hunter that became stranded after most of his party was attacked and killed by a Saber-Toothed Tiger. You must battle dangerous predators and survive the unforgiving elements to rebuild your village and bring your tribe back together.
Your goal is to travel across the land, collecting resources and rescuing scattered members of your tribe from hostile clans of humans. Animals can be hunted for their skins, essential in upgrading your weapons and equipment, and outposts can be taken over from other tribes to expand the map and create fast travel locations. The game features story missions and a plentiful amount of side quests. As you progress through these quests, your village’s population will increase and you will be rewarded with skill points, allowing you to shape Takkar to your liking and develop a variety of different skill sets.
There is a large, open world to explore and attempt to survive in, filled with vicious wildlife and deadly humans. Your available arsenal consists of simple handmade weapons like spears and bows, and the ability to tame wild animals to do your bidding.
Far Cry Primal debuted at number one in the UK, and was the best selling game in the US the month of its original release.
Far Cry Primal gameplay video.
No matter the year, dinosaurs will always prove to be creatures that spark our imagination. The genre of dinosaur games is still growing, and the possibilities of what new ways we can virtually inhabit their world make for a promising future.
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