Dinosaur Fossil Hunter is a fossil hunting, cleaning, and assembly simulation for PC on Steam similar to House Flipper. Developed and published by Pyramid Games, Dinosaur Fossil Hunter offers paleontology fans the chance to play through the process of fossil discovery with hyper-realistic graphics, detailed excavation processes, and exciting exploration. However, issues with the game's driving mechanics and sometimes repetitive tasks can make immersion difficult, and occasionally dull.
Players get started in Dinosaur Fossil Hunter as an aspiring paleontologist with a dream of creating a large museum. Unfortunately, the main character can't be customized, requiring all players to follow the same basic story direction. The narrative has a surprisingly important part in setting up the game, which differs from other realistic games like Cooking Simulator, which offer minimal story elements to drive gameplay. Players learn that their main character has loved dinosaurs, fossils, and the puzzle of skeleton assembly since they were a child. This love drives them to take a risk and set out on a fossil dig in their early twenties, with the hope of making the passion a career.
Dinosaur Fossil Hunter uses the narrative prologue to give players a crash course in the key mechanics of the game, offering a glimpse into the complex processes that will be present once they embark on the paleontology journey. However, the simulation experience extends past simply digging and assembling ancient skeletons. In gameplay similar to Microsoft Flight Simulator, players will need to drive an off-road vehicle to their dig location, remove road obstacles, and locate areas that can be searched for fossils. Once the excavation site is set up, players will use a variety of tools to locate fossil-bearing stones, extract the rocks, clean them, and then plaster each specimen for transport.
Unfortunately, the detailed simulation mechanics are where Dinosaur Fossil Hunter experiences issues. Driving the off-road vehicle to dig sites is a critical part of exploration in Dinosaur Fossil Hunter. The roads leading to dig sites are narrow and unpaved, with rocks, debris, and trees frequently blocking progress. While driving the virtual car offers a sense of adventure, the physics behind car's weight and how it responds to collisions aren't consistent. At times it can seem weightless, and will easily fly off the road and into rocks, become stuck on top of rough terrain, or entrapped behind trees. While players can use the "R" button to reset to the road, the resets can be almost constant, making the discovery of a dig site frustrating.
While digging for fossils in Dinosaur Fossil Hunter is a relaxing and enjoyable part of gameplay, there are also issues that can create roadblocks while deep in excavation holes. After finding and flagging dig sites, players can use tools like shovels and pickaxes to remove dirt and rock sitting on top of potential fossils. These holes can be deep and are often filled with debris, making it easy to get trapped. Because not all terrain can be removed using the tools for digging, if players don't purposefully dig with an escape route in mind, they will be unable to get out of the hole with their fossil.
After digging the fossils out, players will need to transport them in crates back to the fossil lab. Fans of games with satisfying cleaning mechanics like Unpacking will likely enjoy the process of manually extracting, cleaning, and assembling the bones found within the excavated rocks. The bones are freed of debris using a small hand drill and cleaned using a variety of tools. While this process can be particularly enjoyable on large fossils, it can be a bit frustrating on smaller bones, as the tool target does not always register the area being cleaned. Despite this, watching the bones become identifiable as ribs, femurs, or talons is therapeutic and gratifying after the hard work of digging.
Skeleton assembly in Dinosaur Fossil Hunter is a combination of frustration and enjoyment. While the puzzle mechanics used to put newly found bones together give players the chance to see their fossils come to life, the relatively similar appearances of many bones, especially when they are small knucklebones of vertebrae, can be confusing and frustrating to place. While this could appeal to fans of complicated puzzles, it could be a setback for those who don't want to consistently go through each tiny bone and try to fit it in the same space until the correct one is placed.
While Dinosaur Fossil Hunter requires patches to fine-tune important mechanics like driving, digging, and cleaning, it will likely be a good fit for players wanting a satisfying fossil extraction game with attention to detail. It is also a great pick for kids who want to learn more about the realistic challenges of paleontology, and the process of getting dinosaur skeletons into museums.
Dinosaur Fossil Hunter releases on May 4, 2022 for PC via Steam. Screen Rant was provided with a Steam code for the purpose of this review.