Coming to Steam on July 25, Turok: Escape From Lost Valley looks very different from the first-person dinosaur-hunting games of old, but the idea is the same. Turok and his brother Andar are trapped in a valley full of dinosaurs. Hunting ensues. Adorable hunting.
While it seems to have come out of nowhere, Turok: Escape From Lost Valley was one of six finalists in last year’s Universal GameDev Challenge. The contest, launched during the 2018 Game Developers Conference, challenged small teams of Unity developers to create games based on iconic Universal-owned properties. The contest’s $150,000 grand prize went to developer Gbanga for one-on-one strategy game Voltron: Cubes of Olkarion, also coming to Steam on July 25. Despite not winning the big prize, Pillow Pig Games’ chibi take on Turok is getting a Universal Studios Interactive Entertainment release as well.
While earlier games in the Turok series were based on the character’s appearance in the 1998 Acclaim Comics series, Escape From Lost Valley takes the character back to his 1954 roots. In his earliest comics, published by Western Publishing, Dell, and Gold Key, Turok and his brother, Andar, were a pair of pre-Columbian Native American youths who found themselves trapped in a mysterious valley with prehistoric life. The series chronicles the pair’s attempt to escape this lost valley, just like this new game.
No laser rifles, no cerebral bore, just a couple of brothers doing the best they can in a dinosaur-infested world gone mad. We’ll see if Turok: Escape From Lost Valley is as charming as it looks when it hits Steam on July 25.