Dinoblade: Everything You Need to Know Before You Buy

Dinoblade, the game that started out as a bit of a meme, could end up becoming one of the unexpected hits of the summer if early trends are anything to go by. The game was already wishlisted more than 500,000 times on Steam according to a post by the developer and its demo is currently sitting at an Overwhelmingly Positive rating. Not bad for a game about a dinosaur fighting other dinosaurs with oversized weapons.

One could easily dismiss Dinoblade as a joke game, but there’s actually a solid soulslike hiding beneath its outrageous premise. Jean Nguyen, Dinoblade’s creator, is an accomplished Senior Gameplay Animator at Sucker Punch Productions who has worked on a number of high-profile titles over the years, including Ghost of Yotei, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, and Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Zombie Mode.

Dinoblade originally started out as a demo reel meant to showcase Nguyen’s dinosaur animations. After some of those animations went viral on social media, he decided to build a full-fledged soulslike game about a Spinosaurus fighting other dinosaurs with all sorts of crazy gigantic weapons. And now that game is coming out on Steam on July 23rd.

Story and Setting

Dinoblade takes place in a prehistoric world transformed by a cataclysmic event. You play as a young Spinosaurus that carries a colossal Great Sword forged from an ancient power and sets out to prevent a looming extinction. The other dinosaurs are not merely wild animals, either. Many of them carry brutal weapons of their own and know exactly how to use them.

The official synopsis hints at a mystery at the center of this strange world, one with the potential to save the Spinosaurus' species or doom it. Beyond that, developer Team Spino has kept the story details fairly light. As of this writing, there’s no official explanation for why dinosaurs are fighting with giant swords instead of teeth and claws, so that part of the premise appears to be something the game intends for players to discover on their own.

The world of Dinoblade is made up of several distinct regions. The opening level is comprised of dry canyons, but later on players can expect to explore mist-shrouded jungles and various other biomes. Each region is ruled by an Alpha, a sizeable dinosaur that acts as an end-of-chapter boss. Defeating these Alphas is necessary for progressing to the next region.

Combat

Dinoblade uses the familiar third-person soulslike formula. Combat revolves around reading enemy attacks, managing Stamina, and picking the right moment to strike. The Spinosaurus can string together light and heavy attacks, charge up stronger blows, dodge, roll, block, and parry. The overall tempo is generally fast and aggressive, however, simply mashing the attack button is a surefire way to run out of Stamina or get interrupted by a larger dinosaur.

The starting Great Sword may look absurd in your dinosaur's jaws, but the top-tier animations do a great job of selling the highly unusual fantasy. The original goal of Dinoblade was to showcase Nguyen’s animation work, and that continues to still be the case to some extent.

All attack animations have been designed around the Spinosaurus' full body, so swings, lunges, rolls, and finishers do indeed feel like custom-made moves designed for a dinosaur-sized creature rather than generic human animations pasted onto a dinosaur model.

Players shouldn’t get too attached to the starting Great Sword because the Spinosaurus will gradually unlock a variety of other weapons throughout the game. The playable demo cuts off right when you acquire the second weapon, but the in-game weapons menu mentions a few other ones. In addition to the starting Akai's Greatsword, players will also be able to get their hands (jaws?) on the following weapons:

•Astereon Meterrend

•Greybone Greatsword

•Noharu Flameborne

•Ancient Greatsword

•Akai Chainbound

Soul Arts

Melee attacks are the backbone of Dinoblade’s combat system, but there’s a bit more to it than just hacking and slashing. Your Spinosaurus can also use special abilities known as Soul Arts, which spend Resonance - Dinoblade’s version of mana - and generally come with cooldowns. These restrictions prevent players from endlessly spamming their strongest moves and make timing especially important during boss battles.

The demo includes five Soul Arts in the form of Meteor Slice, Alpha Roar, Meteor Dash, Survival Instincts, and Meteor Zone. Some of these abilities are better than others, but they’re all useful in their own way. Meteor Slice and Meteor Dash are quick attacks, Alpha Roar briefly incapacitates nearby enemies, Meteor Zone trades a long wind-up for a wider and more damaging strike, and Survival Instincts provides passive defensive benefits.

Soul Arts have their own progression currency called Boss SP. This currency is normally earned by defeating bosses, although the demo also hides some in optional areas. It's possible there may be other ways to acquire it in the full game. Boss SP can be used to unlock and upgrade Soul Arts, giving players a reason to explore outside the beaten path. It also forces you plan things out a little bit, especially early on when Boss SP is very limited.

Attributes and Character Progression

Levelling up in Dinoblade awards SP that can be invested into four different Attributes: Health, Damage, Resonance, and Stamina. Health increases survivability, Damage strengthens regular attacks, Resonance provides more energy for Soul Arts, and Stamina lets the Spinosaurus attack and evade for longer before needing to recover.

Separating normal SP from Boss SP gives Dinoblade two progression paths. Regular combat improves the character's basic performance, while major victories open up more specialized abilities. It’s a simpler system than the sprawling stat screens found in other soulslikes, but there are still certain nuances and trade-offs to keep in mind.

For instance, investing heavily in a larger Stamina pool supports longer combos and more frequent dodges. Meanwhile, investing heavily into extra Resonance allows you to use Soul Arts a lot more often. Since SP is limited, you won’t be able to pour a ton of points into both of them right away, so you need to pick and choose what to focus on.

The full game will undoubtedly expand beyond the demo's opening build. Steam promises new skills, powerful abilities, and hidden weapons that allow players to shape their own combat style. Team Spino hasn’t published a complete skill tree or a final list of weapons, so the exact depth of the endgame build system remains unknown.

Exploration, Enemies, and Bosses

The demo's dry-canyon level is mostly a directed route broken up by slightly wider spaces, hidden pickups, and combat arenas. It’s possible the game opens up a bit more toward the later stages, but it’s still more of an on-rails action game than an open-world one. The structure shown so far is closer to a sequence of connected regions with just enough room for limited exploration.

All regions in Dinoblade are populated by small and medium-sized enemies, tough minibosses, and full-fledged boss encounters. Some dinosaurs fight with bites, kicks, and tail swipes, but most enemies use oversized weapons and elaborate move sets.

Interestingly enough, minibosses can be summoned to aid the player in combat once defeat. Summonings work similarly to Soul Arts in that they’re activatable abilities with Resonance costs and cooldowns. Players can use these abilities at any time, not just during boss battles, though you should typically save them for difficult encounters.

Both bosses and minibosses feed directly into the progression system as they’re the main source of Boss SP. Defeating the game’s final boss will unlock an "ultimate" Boss Rush Mode, according to the official Steam page, giving experienced players a way to revisit the game's biggest fights after completing the story.

What the Demo Includes

The free Steam demo is the best way to see whether Dinoblade's combat works for you before launch. It covers the introduction in the dry canyons, includes a couple of minibosses, and ends after the area's main boss. Clearing the demo takes about one hour on average, although players who spend time exploring or struggle with the bosses may take longer.

The demo also gives you a taste of the core progression loop. Players can earn SP, raise Attributes, unlock Soul Arts, find Healing Ore, and experiment with different approaches to the demo's bosses. Because the demo reaches a proper boss encounter instead of ending after a short tutorial, it gives a much better sense of the game's difficulty and timing than a trailer can.

Reception has been unusually strong for such a small project. As of July 10, 2026, the demo has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, with 97% of more than 3,400 English-language reviews recommending it.

Some early hands-on coverage reported rough edges involving performance, the camera, and the interface, but the developer has continued updating and optimizing the game as launch day approaches. Still, the best way to judge how it runs on your particular PC is to download it and try it for yourself.

Release Date, Platforms, and PC Requirements

Dinoblade launches on July 23, 2026, for Windows PC through Steam. The game is single-player only and supports Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud, Steam Leaderboards, and Family Sharing. No console version has been announced, and the launch price has not been revealed as of this writing.

The Steam page lists interface and subtitle support for 19 languages. English is currently the only language with full voice acting.

The minimum PC requirements are overall pretty modest, especially for an Unreal Engine game. Check them out below:

•Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit

•Processor: Intel Core i5-7500 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600

•Memory: 4 GB RAM

•Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 4 GB or AMD Radeon RX 560

•DirectX: Version 12

•Storage: 13 GB available space

Is Dinoblade Worth Playing?

Dinoblade is pretty easy to recommend based on its premise alone. After all, it’s not everyday that you get to play as a sword-wielding dinosaur. Beneath the meme-worthy concept lies a genuinely solid title, however, we do have to point out that Dinoblade is definitely a bit more simplistic and rougher around the edges compared to other soulslikes.

The fact that Dinoblade doesn’t have a price tag attached to it so close to launch is a bit unusual, though not entirely unheard of. Our recommendation is to check out the demo and then decide if you want to grab the full game once the price tag has been revealed.