Roarr! Jurassic Edition

Roarr! Jurassic Edition is a low-poly, isometric brawler built around one gloriously silly pitch: Sue, a T-Rex who has been hibernating for 65 million years, gets woken up by a noisy alien invasion and decides to personally sort it out. You play as Sue across six levels, each set on a different isle, stomping waves of squid-like invaders called Squiddies before facing a boss at the end of every chapter. The final stage throws all the previous bosses at you in a gauntlet. Up to four players can stomp together in local co-op, which is genuinely the context where this game comes closest to delivering on its promise. The combat toolkit is slim: a slash, a bite, a ground-pound-adjacent stomp, and a special roar attack that you charge by walking into buildings and trees rather than by fighting enemies - an odd design choice that feels accidental rather than clever. Sue can also be dressed up in various cosmetic costumes that change her look but nothing else. There are around 25 enemy types, including squid variants that have fused with cranes, drills, and excavators, and the visual variety of the enemy roster is probably the game's single strongest card. The destructible environments have a satisfying toy-box quality, and the low-poly aesthetic gives the world a bright, almost cheerful feel - buildings fold, trees topple, and the sense of scale when Sue squares off against a building-sized boss is momentarily alive. The problems stack up fast, though. The core loop of clearing a wave, shuffling to the next arena section, and clearing another wave exhausts itself well within the first level. Hit detection on Sue's attacks is inconsistent, the camera has a habit of lurching when you turn, and reported bugs across versions include inputs dropping mid-fight, freezes after boss kills, and enemies snapping to face you with no transition animation. The soundtrack is divisive at best - looping short samples that several critics have described as more grating than energising. The difficulty also has an unbalanced arc: mostly forgiving early on, then spiking harshly in the final chapter with little to justify the jump. Meat chunks dropped by defeated enemies restore health, which adds a thin survival rhythm to boss fights, but even that mechanic is overshadowed by how easy it is to just walk through most standard enemies. I want to like Roarr! the way I want to like any scrappy debut from a small studio with a good idea. The premise is genuinely fun on paper - a kaiju brawler with alien squids and a grumpy dinosaur protagonist has no right to be boring. But the craft isn't here yet. The six-level runtime runs out of ideas before the first level does. The co-op framing could rescue a lazy evening with the right crowd and a deep discount, but solo players are unlikely to find much to hold onto past the initial novelty of smashing a building with your tail. The Rexopedia, a small in-game encyclopedia of enemy lore, is a genuinely charming touch that hints at a more interesting game hiding somewhere inside this one. That game, unfortunately, didn't make it to release.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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