In a sentence I didn’t expect to write today, Goodlands looks like the hybrid mix of Fossil Fighters and Animal Crossing that I feel like I could have only experienced in a dream. An adorable little simulator that lets me create my own dinosaur while I go on expeditions to dig up fossils? Sign me right up. I’m all in on cozy games, but this one is taking a few additional steps into the prehistoric era to shake things to their core, and I’m beyond stoked.
‘Goodlands’ Is Like ‘Fossil Fighters’ and ‘Animal Crossing’ Mixed Into the Best Primordial Ooze You Can Imagine
There’s something slightly mortifying about playing as a dinosaur digging up other dinosaur bones. But Goodlands makes it both adorable and hilarious. Mixing the best-of-life sims and games like A Short Hike to make a game all about excavating dinosaur bones with your goofy pals in the desert sounds like a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. While the graphical style may be simple, the inspirations are easily seen and felt by playing the demo on Steam.
It’s genuinely exciting to see someone who loved the Fossil Fighters franchise use its most fun aspects in different ways. The excavation methods are extremely similar to the oft-forgotten franchise. Players will get to use many tools to dig up these fossils, giving the process much more depth than the games that inspired it. Well, maybe except for Fossil Fighters, because the excavation process in that game still goes incredibly hard all of these years later.
Dinosaur games have been seeing quite an excavation attempt of their own lately. While fans patiently await news of a new Dino Crisis game or something in the same ilk, talented indie devs are taking up the reigns to create new entries that would make any paleontologist smile. Games like Unknown Tapes and PALEOPHAGE are keeping the dinos as terrifying as possible, but Goodlands is giving me those good vibes that I feel like we all need.
And most impressively? Goodlands is being put together by a single developer. It’s a passion project to its purest degree, and I’m all in on the vibes it’s bringing to the function. I can’t wait for the full release of this one to hit, with a multiplayer element hopefully following shortly after launch, as my wife would love to play this one with me.
The post ‘Goodlands’ Lets You Play as a Dinosaur Digging up Fossilized Dinosaur Bones, and It Looks Adorable appeared first on VICE.
