The Isle just hit a new record on Steam, showing that dino survival is still going strong in the genre
The Isle’s EVRIMA overhaul is shaping the best dinosaur game yet. 10 years later, it’s bigger, better, and still evolving.
If we’re talking about the best survival games of all time, you can’t go wrong with Rust, No Man’s Sky, and Don’t Starve. More recently, Once Human, a free-to-play game that dropped in 2024, has been picking up a solid player base. Most of these games follow the same basic formula: you play as a human, build a base, keep an eye on your stats, gather resources, craft gear, and, well…. try not to die.
But there’s one survival horror game that’s been doing its own thing for almost a decade now and still stands strong. The Isle made by Afterthought LLC takes a different approach by letting you play as a dinosaur, fighting to endure and grow in a brutal open world. And with the ongoing EVRIMA updates overhauling the game, the ultimate dinosaur experience is only getting better.
Dinosaurs, survival, and mystery
The Isle is a multiplayer survival game where we can choose from dozens of unique prehistoric creatures, from towering giants to small, agile dinos. We’ll need to rely on our natural instincts and abilities to avoid becoming someone else’s meal and grow into a stronger, more capable beast.
The Isle; Developer: Afterthought LLC
The game features two modes: Survival, a tough, high-stakes experience where growth is earned, and Sandbox, where you can skip the grind and play freely without major survival pressures.
Instead of traditional cutscenes, The Isle tells its story through the world itself – mysteries hidden in the environment, waiting to be uncovered by the community piece by piece.
Even after ten years in Early Access on Steam, The Isle has built a huge fanbase – and it’s still growing. Recently, the game hit a new all-time peak of 13,500 concurrent players, all thanks to the EVRIMA makeover that kicked off in 2020. The devs basically scrapped everything and started fresh, and it’s clearly paying off. It’s gaining traction on Twitch too.
Why The Isle still thrives after nearly a decade in Early Access
With every update, The Isle gets new mechanics, improved visuals, smoother animations, and deeper survival systems. Instead of one big drop, EVRIMA is rolling out in phases, steadily adding content, new playable dinos, and refining the gameplay.
The Isle; Developer: Afterthought LLC
So far, it’s introduced big improvements to growth, diet, and combat, plus a more realistic movement system and reworked maps with better world design. Nesting and parenting mechanics are in the works, and playable humans are coming in a future update.
The Isle is basically the immortal Early Access game. Steam recently introduced a handy feature that warns you when a developer is neglecting an unfinished game, but it’s not so perfect, and The Isle is a prime example of that.
According to the Early Access info, the game’s last update was three years ago, which isn’t true at all. The devs are actively updating it, just on a separate branch. So don’t let that misleading label throw you off. Steam’s new system still has some kinks to work out.
