Personally I quite like Age of Empires, Warcraft, and Stronghold games. I also like dinosaurs. So, naturally, I like the concept behind Dinolords, a recently announced fusion of medieval city-builder and action RPG with RTS combat and also, you know, dinosaurs. Set to release into Early Access in the first few months of 2025, Dinolords is developed by new studio Northplay and published by the publishing arm of Ghost Ship Games, the developer behind Deep Rock Galactic.

You’ll control a single hero character whose job is to establish a settlement, attract villagers, and have them take over gathering resources. You’ll then train specialists, establish infrastructure, and expand your town with an army to defend against the enemy’s conventional and dinosaur-using troops. You’ll also, obviously, get your own dinosaurs eventually or why are we even here.

Northplay describes it as “a modern genre hybrid with a player controlled protagonist in a realtime strategy setting.” They also let us know the reason why there are dinosaurs in the medieval period.

“In the year 985 AD Eric The Red makes a discovery on his voyage to Greenland that would forever change history. Encased in the Sermitsiaq Glacier he finds ancient eggs that, when thawed and hatched, produced creatures that hadn’t walked the Earth since the dawn of time. Dinosaurs help build the settlements of Greenland and is [sic] brought back to Scandinavia to be domesticated and later bred for war. In 1002 The King of Denmark, Sweyn Forkbeard, launches the first dinosaur-powered conflict with his invasion of England, shocking the defenders and forever altering the course of history. The English King, Æthelred the Unready, is [sic] fighting a loosing battle against the invading forces. He sends his son, Edmund Ironside as a last resort to defend his Kingdom and learn the secrets of these great beasts,” reads the official description.

So blame Eric the Red, I guess. That’s Leif Erikson’s dad. So, uh, maybe we’ll go to dinosaur-inhabited America or something. Starting to feel like pretty much anything’s on the table for this one, folks.

Whatever. I’m in. This idea is too goofy to not be at the very least hysterical. You can learn morea bout the development of Dinolords on Youtube. You can find Dinolords on Steam, where it’ll release into Early Access in early 2025.