Wield a Sword in Your Teeth: The Ghost of Yotei Animator’s Dino Soulslike Just Dropped a Must-Play Steam Demo
I bounced off every Soulslike—until Dinoblade. Sharp, savage, and surprisingly fair, it’s the first that makes every death a lesson instead of a wall.
I am absolutely not a Soulslike person. I want moody story vibes, snappy combat, and games that do not punish me like I forgot their birthday. But here we are: I played the Dinoblade demo on Steam and, somehow, I liked it. Yes, it is a Soulslike. Yes, I am confused too.
What the hell is Dinoblade?
The elevator pitch is so dumb it loops back around to brilliant: you are a dinosaur fighting other dinosaurs, holding a massive sword in your jaws. Not joking. Dinoblade started life as a goof from Sucker Punch senior animator Jean Nguyen, and then the internet in-joke grew legs (short ones, if you are a Spinosaurus) and became a real indie project from developer Team Spino.
The demo is live on Steam now, with a full release planned for next year. Team Spino even put it pretty plainly in a post on October 28, 2025:
"From no intention of being a game to releasing it next year, Dinoblade demo is now available on Steam."
Okay, but how does it play?
Picture a Spinosaurus clenching a giant blade between its teeth, then doing the dodge-roll, parry, and projectile toss dance with other prehistoric murder machines. I rolled through lunges, tried to nail parry windows, lobbed ranged attacks, and got chomped into paste. A lot. I often had no idea what the game wanted from me, the demo crashed on me twice, and I still kept going because the core loop is weirdly satisfying.
The rough edges (and there are plenty)
- Menus and UI look early-prototype.
- Hit detection can be flaky.
- Textures are inconsistent, sometimes messy.
- Controller support is genuinely solid, but all on-screen tutorials talk to mouse-and-keyboard players.
- It crashed on me twice in about 30 minutes.
- Generous checkpoints mean those crashes rarely cost progress.
Fights that actually feel good
I ran into little dino grunts, mid-tier mini bosses, and full-on boss fights with beefy thunder-lizards. I enjoyed all of it, even when the last boss of the demo wiped the floor with me repeatedly. The funny twist: I am pretty sure I was not playing the encounter the way the designers intended, and I still managed to win. It has a firm bite, but it is not mean for the sake of it, and the bosses are not 45-minute marathons. Bless.
Looks, sound, and performance
Art direction and music are strong, the way FromSoftware consistently nails tone and scale. Team Spino clearly knows where to put the money shots, even with limited resources. Be warned, though: it looks like a PS3-era game and ran poorly on my RTX 3060 laptop, even with settings turned down. Somehow, it still nails the gloomy, hulking feel you want from this genre.
Why it works anyway
Because dinosaurs. Give a Spinosaurus a sword it can only carry in its mouth (those tiny arms are not holding anything) and I will suffer the poke-dodge-parry cycle with a smile. The concept is ridiculous in the best way, and the execution is already more competent than a meme-born project has any right to be.
Should you try it?
Yeah. Even if you usually bounce off Soulslikes, the demo is worth a spin. It is messy and crashy and occasionally incomprehensible, but it is also fresh, funny, and, when it clicks, surprisingly satisfying. Do it for the dinos.