Dinoblade Review: A Souls-Like Where You Play the Monster

Updated 2026-10-16: The autumn updates added a playable Raptor in Story Mode and a Rematch mode for defeated mini bosses; the price is back at the $19.99 list.

For comparison points beyond Dinoblade's own complete guide, see the Dinoblade boss guide, Alabaster Dawn tips, Kristala review, Windrose combat guide, and Crimson Desert parry guide. Each comparison is about combat feel, not genre identity.

Steam lists the game at $19.99, and players rate it Very Positive across all languages (figures in the Reception box). Team Spino kept shipping bug fixes after release, and the autumn updates went further: a playable Raptor in Story Mode and a Rematch mode for defeated mini bosses.

Key Takeaways

• Released July 23, 2026 on PC, solo developer Jean Nguyen (Team Spino LLC), co-published with Boltray Games
• $19.99 list price on Steam; the launch-week discount was temporary
• Steam remains Very Positive across all languages
• Souls-like combat: dodges, parries, weapon-skill abilities, closest comparison is Sekiro
• Single-player only, no co-op
• Boss Rush mode unlocks after beating the final boss
• No official biome names or full boss roster; community route guides fill in the order as secondary evidence

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Overview

Team Spino LLC is, as far as anyone can confirm, one person: Jean Nguyen, a solo developer whose Dinoblade concept traces back roughly four years to a viral short animation of a Spinosaurus wielding a Buster-Sword-style weapon. That origin story matters for calibrating expectations. This isn't a small studio's polished second release; it's one person's multi-year passion project finally shipping, composer Johannes Westenrieder aside, with Boltray Games attached as co-publisher.

The game runs on Unreal Engine 5 and puts you directly in control of that sword-wielding Spinosaurus across a series of distinct, visually varied environments: a foggy, bioluminescent swamp, sun-lit grassland canyons, a night-time flower meadow, snowy plains under a full moon with wandering sauropods in the background, autumn forest, and a coastal beach at dusk. None of these areas has an official name, which is an unusual gap for a full release this early in its life. Steam's own store description leans on generic descriptors ("dry canyons," "mist-shrouded jungles," "forgotten ruins") rather than naming anything specific, so the area names you'll see on community wikis are their own labels, not the developer's.

One of Dinoblade's several distinct biomes. None of them have a confirmed official name yet, official sources included.

Gameplay

The headline mechanic is direct: dodge, parry, and answer with weapon-skill attacks, the same rhythm Sekiro built its combat around, translated onto a dinosaur body instead of a human swordsman. Confirmed abilities beyond the base sword swings include a summon that calls in a previously-defeated dinosaur to fight alongside you, an energy beam fired directly from the sword, a freezing roar attack, and a leveled "Alpha Roar" transformation ability that scales with progression. That's a real, if still thin from the outside, ability kit, and it's enough to make combat feel like more than dodge-then-swing repetition once a few of those tools are unlocked.

Despite marketing copy about venturing across a "sprawling world," Steam's own store tags include "Linear" (a heavily-used tag on the store page), and official patch notes reference players getting stuck and unable to "move forward to next level," which points clearly to stage-based, sequential progression rather than one seamless open map. That's not necessarily a knock: a tightly directed sequence of boss-focused levels is a defensible structure for a solo-dev souls-like. It's worth knowing going in, though, if the marketing language led you to expect something closer to an open-world survival game.

Combat culminates in named boss fights, and this is where the documentation gap is most obvious. Four bosses are confirmed by name through official patch notes and direct screenshot evidence: Akai, Kasei the Tyrant, Red Ashe, and HORN (a horned, ceratopsian-type opponent whose name appears directly in its own on-screen health bar). The game's official soundtrack release, titled a "Boss Theme Collection," has eight tracks (The Tyrant, The Titan, The Giant Claw, The Blood Moon, The True Form, The Ice King, The Flame Reborn, The Great Cataclysm), which suggests roughly seven main bosses plus a credits theme. But no source, official or community, maps all seven track titles to specific confirmed boss names with certainty, and no biome-to-boss pairing has been documented at all. If you're the kind of player who likes planning a fight order in advance, that information doesn't exist to plan around yet.

Beating the final boss unlocks Boss Rush mode, confirmed directly in the official store description, letting players replay just the boss encounters once the campaign is cleared. That's a real, useful piece of structure for a game whose main draw is clearly the fight design rather than exploration or story.

A coastal biome encounter against armed enemy dinosaurs, another unnamed area in a game still short on published location names.

Verdict

Dinoblade's Very Positive Steam reception comes from its core idea working: playing as the dinosaur, with Sekiro-derived parry timing, feels different from anything else in the souls-like space. The most upvoted review grants that "the game's got performance issues" but calls it "the definition of 'hell yeah'" (Steam review). Another player sums up the split: "objectively a poorly made game," janky and badly balanced, "But. It. is. so. damn. cool" (Steam review).

The negative reviews are about length, price and polish. One calls it "a 'mid' game at best" once you strip away the dinosaurs (Steam review); another says the "walking around on a mostly empty map" adds nothing and that skills crashed the game (Steam review). A 7-hour fan calls it "short, gorgeous, ridiculous and fun" (Steam review), which is the honest summary.

Who it suits: souls-like fans who want a short, loud boss-focused game, dinosaur lovers, and anyone happy to reward a solo developer's passion project. The boss music and boss rush mode are what players praise most.

Who should wait: players who measure value in hours (several reviews report three to seven), anyone sensitive to stutter and crashes, and souls-like veterans who want tight, responsive dodges. A sale makes the short runtime easier to accept. The world itself is still thinly documented: no biome has a confirmed name and the boss roster is only partly known, so the Dinoblade boss guide sticks to what is confirmed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Dinoblade worth buying? For fans of the premise, yes. Steam players rate it Very Positive at its $19.99 list price, while several negative reviews call it short and rough for that money. Go in expecting a solo-dev-scale game, not a AAA open world.

Is Dinoblade an open world game? No, despite marketing language about a "sprawling world." Steam's own store tags include "Linear," and official patch notes reference moving to a "next level," which points to stage-based progression rather than one seamless open world.

Does Dinoblade have co-op or multiplayer? No. Steam's category list confirms single-player only, with no co-op or multiplayer category present. Play solo.

Who made Dinoblade? Solo developer Jean Nguyen, credited as Team Spino LLC, co-published with Boltray Games. The game grew out of a viral animation Nguyen posted around four years before launch, showing a Spinosaurus wielding a Buster-Sword-style weapon.

How many bosses are in Dinoblade? Not fully documented. Four named bosses are confirmed through official patch notes and screenshots (Akai, Kasei the Tyrant, Red Ashe, HORN), and the official 8-track boss soundtrack suggests roughly seven main boss themes plus a credits track, but no source maps the full roster or confirms a total count.

Is Dinoblade a Monster Hunter game? No. You play as the dinosaur, not a hunter fighting one. The store page promises timed dodges, rolls and parries, so the closer comparison is Sekiro rather than a Monster Hunter-style gear-grind loop.

Related Reading

• Dinoblade Complete Guide: the hub for every Dinoblade guide on this site.
• Dinoblade Bosses and Abilities: What's Confirmed So Far: the 4 named bosses and confirmed skill kit in more depth.
• Alabaster Dawn Review: CrossCode's Shadow, Its Own Light: another indie action game built around tight, punishing combat.
• Crimson Desert Combat Guide: Parry, Dodge, and Builds: a different take on parry-and-dodge combat design worth comparing against Dinoblade's Sekiro-derived system.

References

• Dinoblade on Steam: official store page, patch notes, and current review data.
• Dinoblade Steam Community hub: official post-launch patch notes, including the July 24 and July 25 fixes.
• Dinoblade Official Release Date Trailer: official trailer, developer's own YouTube channel.