TLDR, buy it. It’s somewhat more engaging than The Isle and Path of Titans for now. I’ve played it more than both of those combined.

I’d like to begin by stating how passionate I am about this game, and that I would not be making this review if I did not care. I began by helping Vipe with a few security hole issues in 2018, and joined QA shortly after the game launched on Steam (at a time where NDAs were not issued; I can speak freely but will not reveal anything sensitive of course). I believe I quit QA that same year. I have about 10,000+ hours total (purchase date 1 January, 2019). I’ve been running communities for a very long time (early 2000s) and game servers since 2012. I regularly test stat systems in games I play, particularly where they relate to in-game currencies, security, or balancing. I continue to regularly balance test Beasts of Bermuda for my own community’s server configurations. I run the server owner Discord for Beasts of Bermuda (and other game) server owners as well. Hopefully this review has some substance to it.

- The game has considerable depth, and often would make just as much progress as The Isle.
- The ability to customize assets and actors on preset maps. This is a wonderful tool, and bootleg “sculpting” is possible with the vast array of assets available.
- The most intricate skin system of any of the major dinosaur survival games.
- Palaeophis, a snake playable, which is an impressive programming feat. The CPU usage and interactions with water however definitely need attention.
- Great playable variety, everything feels unique to play.
- The playable models (that is, the new models) look like actual animals instead of movie monsters, while still having visually distinct character.
- The weather-based PvE is engaging, and currently not seen in the other big dinosaur survival games. You can experience fog, wind storms, rain storms, lightning, fires, floods, and tornadoes.
- Lots of server customization options.
- Work in progress Esc menu \ Help tutorials for new players!
- There are in-game resurrection and reincarnation mechanics, which prevent you from losing your creatures you become attached to! This does not defeat time sink value.

- Family Sharing remains enabled, with no option for server owners to disable it (which is possible), out of fear of it causing more problems. Family Sharing can “randomly” wipe all your game progress, and new players are not informed of this.
- Balance issues can be glaring at times, and the informed pleas to fix or improve are drowned out by biased players that will rage about and claim the game is dying if their main playable is nerfed in the slightest for balance. This is both on the community and developers.
- Important or potentially important balance changes, security fixes, and other fixes are withheld until the next major update or major hotfix update. As of updating this a memory leak that can max out your total RAM has gone unfixed for over a month now (first reported 23 August 2024).
- Major bugs go unfixed for months if not years. For example, most water sources not being drinkable past a certain growth. Velociraptor has been unable to properly climb for years (likely due to the Use key blueprinting/code being a massive tangled web).
- Poor optimization and poor communication with players on how to effectively report optimization issues.
- Poor overall communication with players. The roadmap, if it exists, is not public.
- Long periods of server crashing, however they are generally fixed within a month or two.
- Playables are given multiple buffs or nerfs at once, when often only one or two was needed. For example, on 31 January, 2024 Acrocanthosaurus (an apex predator playable) needed a flexibility buff (and only that). It received five (arguably six) buffs at once.
- This survival game has become more focused the cosmetic. While I greatly appreciate the efforts of the skin team, we do need engaging survival content in addition to those cosmetics. Chill servers are not to blame, and in fact prevented the game from fully dying by being the only servers populated pre-Archelon patch.
- Some “survival” servers choose to completely disable death penalties with “automatic, full growth resurrections”. Chill server owners should be contacted to figure out why they don’t use the PvE game mode, the PvE game mode should be made suitable for chill, and automatic resurrections should only be possible in PvE.
- No chat filter configurations, this is pretty important to me from a security standpoint.
- Major security issues can take months or even years to be fixed. The Unreal Engine console is accessible to all players, which is where a lot of issues stem from. I don’t want to say too much as to not disclose the issues themselves, but there are many of them to the point you should assume most aquatic players always know where you are.
- Tyrannosaurus is overpowered as it is in every competitive dinosaur survival game. It has high health, high damage, high speed, a gap-closing ability, good “metabolism” (large stomach, low food drain), and in the Life Cycle game mode its growth rate is almost the same as Velociraptor’s. Many creatures are then made extremely strong just to contend with these sorts of overpowered apexes.
- An “us versus them” mentality between the developers and the playerbase. Some of the playerbase does affirm this, and this is just as much of an issue with the community as it is with some members of the team I’ve seen behave this way.

Be careful what private server you choose to plant your seed of nostalgia on, and note officials are chaotic as that's where many players go to blow off steam. I understand a dinosaur simulator game is extremely cool, but be careful where and what you choose to play. A camouflaged skin Megaraptor with Swiftness and Sneaky is recommended for new, exploring players. Fliers are notoriously difficult for new players to pick up, your brake key is your Use (F by default) key!