Following on from the fun animalistic tesselation skills of Birds Organised Neatly and Dogs Organised Neatly, a new developer has taken the same approach to puzzle games but with dinosaurs! Dinosaurs In Place follows a semi-tried-and-tested formula of asking players to fit a selection of dinosaur creators inside a grid-hatched play area. Everything must fit perfectly with no overlaps. It isn’t a wildly difficult concept to understand but when themed correctly, it can be enjoyable to play. Thankfully, that’s Dinosaurs In Place’s main strength.
Across 100 levels you’ll unlock dinosaurs that are increasingly less boxy in shape. You’ll get a 2×2 square dinosaur or a 3×1 square dinosaur to pick up and drop into the play area. You can right-click on the dinosaur to rotate them and each type of dino has its own personal sound effect to squawk or roar when you do. Easy early puzzles have small, square, uncluttered playing areas and that gets you used to the concept. As you move through the game, you’ll move through dinosaur ages and this means unlocking more dinosaur types and therefore shapes. You’ll have ones with curved necks or tails that require alignment. Others are just awkwardly long or bulky. Levels start to have stones or zigzags in them which can sometimes provide clues, but also traps to your puzzle-solving.
All of this makes for a well-themed and approachable puzzle game. The hint system is a little harsher than other puzzle games of this nature – offering only one or two hints for placements per level. To combat that and keep it casual, you can skip levels and move on and that prevents bottlenecking. You won’t get all the Steam achievements if you keep skipping levels in each set, but you’ll get to progress without frustration. Sometimes returning to a level with fresh eyes makes the solution clear and that happened for me many times in my playthrough.
My main critique is that aside from a theme change, this game has been made multiple times before. The level design doesn’t stand out as being innovative. There are no new gameplay mechanics to differentiate it from another animal-themed slot-them-together jigsaw game. As such, this is a great game for fans of this gameplay style but it doesn’t stand above any other existing game so is difficult to recommend elsewhere. It also fatigued me that I’ve played the Organized Neatly series within the last 18 months and this felt like an unrelated, but also fairly unnecessary sequel. If games want to reskin the same idea, that’s fine, but it needs to stand out beyond “ooh its this but… llamas!”
There’s nothing wrong with Dinosaurs In Place – it does exactly what it says it does well. I’d like to see some more complexity or tweaks to level designs or gameplay mechanics if the series expands in the future.
Review copy provided by the developer. Out now on Steam.
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