Summary
Paleo Pinesis a dinosaur farm sim game with creature-collecting elements, where players can befriend dinosaurs in the wild, invite them to live on their ranch, and utilize their unique abilities to help with farming and ranching activities. However, dinosaurs don’t fight each other as Pokemon do, and the game emphasizes they don’t belong to the player, with their ability to return to the wild at any time if they aren’t kept happy. That said, although there are some existing similarities withPokemonlike rare species to discover, there are more elements fromcreature-collecting games likePokemonthatPaleo Pinescould lean into to enhance its dinosaur offering and dino-documenting mechanics.
Discovering rare dinosaurs across different biomes is just one of many things players can do inPaleo Pines, where players can set up and maintain their dinosaur ranches, plus complete tasks for NPC villagers to make money. While there are various species of dinosaurs and different color variants to find, developers Italic Pig could potentially borrow a common and popular fan-favorite activity found inPokemonvideo games - searching for and “collecting” sought-after shiny variants.
Why Paleo Pines' Should Include Shiny Pokemon-Style Rare Dinosaurs
Paleo Pinescontains many species of dinosaurthat also have melanistic and albino variations, except for ultra-rare ones. There are also rare color varieties. Although rare dinos do stand out to some degree from others, it’s possible that some players may find it tricky to spot rare dinosaurs by sight alone. Additionally, the player’s innovative and well-thought-out dinosaur journal log does label rare dinos, it doesn’t list them or rare color varieties separately. This means some players might find they rely more on memory to know which types are rare or by checking through the befriending process.
While some modifications could enhance the journal,Paleo Pinescould also introduce metallic shinies like shiny Pokemon or glow-in-the-dark variants to help rare dinos stand out. Shiny dinosaurs could appear in different seasons, times of day, or during special events as something that also suits the farming genre. Although someshiny Pokemon are still harder to spot, shiny dinosaurs could offer even more visual appeal to those players who enjoy creature collecting and may be keen to find and befriend them all, helping to increasePaleo Pines' overall replayability factor. While the developers have expressed a desire to add more dinosaur species and zones, shiny variants could also be a way to add more content without necessarily needing to create more species of dinosaurs or biomes, at least initially.
How Paleo Pines Could Expand Its Amount Of Dinosaurs Through Romance And Breeding
Another feature common inPokemonvideo games thatPaleo Pinescould also adopt to expand its dinosaur offering is breeding. WhilePaleo Pinesdoesn’t contain romance and doesn’t necessarily need to, it could include dinosaur breeding to lean further into its dino family-focused, community vibes. Creature collecting and breeding mechanics sometimes appear in perhaps less expected places, such as in RPGHogwarts Legacy’s shiny beast-catchingand magical creature breeding. Equally, some farming games even let players mix their own hybrid creations, typically around crops, such as hybrid crop mixing inStory of Seasons: A Wonderful Life.
While somewhat frowned upon inJurassic Parkfranchise, letting players breed different species of dinosaur could enable players to look after their literal dinosaur families hatched from an egg, likebreeding eggs inPokemon Scarlet and Violet. Breeding could be another way of expandingPaleo Pines’dino population, introducing more dinosaur care mechanics, and upping its cute factor even more, especially if players can crossbreed Shiny or other rare dino types, providing doing so is purposeful and beneficial to science overall withinPaleo Pines' community-focused setting.
Paleo Pinesis available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
MORE:Paleo Pines Dev Talks About The Dinosaur Companion Lucky, NPC Townsfolk
