Dino Topia Developer Interview: Where Creature Collecting Meets Base Building and Roguelike

Dino Topia aims to be a rare blend of roguelike action and base-building serenity, but with a creature-collecting game at its core. Thats a lot of systems to put into one game, which might make some skeptical, especially if they only enjoy one of those systems.

We had a chat with the development team at XA Studios to talk about how they balanced so many moving parts, what games inspired them, and the challenges of bringing their vision to a global audience. Heres how it went.

What Lurks in the Jungle of Dino Topia?

As someone who enjoyed playing roguelikes and base-building games, Dino Topia instantly grabbed my attention, but I cant say I wasnt skeptical at first.

After trying out the preview during Steams Next Fest and eventually playing the review copy, I thoroughly enjoyed most of the systems, but thats where I also realized that I tend to favor the base-building aspect more than the roguelike loop. I was curious as to how they thought of playing around these systems and striking a balance to make each one as engaging as possible:

Q1: There are a lot of systems in Dino Topia—the base building, roguelike loop, creature-collecting. What was your design process to ensure they all worked well and engaged the player as intended?

XA Studios: “Roguelike combat is intense and exciting, but prolonged tension can lead to fatigue. Home building is soothing and relaxing, but going too long without stimulating activities can cause boredom. That’s why we alternate between these two emotional experiences—intense excitement and calming relaxation—to give players a better overall experience.

After multiple rounds of testing and player feedback, we’ve maintained roughly a 1:1 balance between base building and roguelike combat. Creature collection is the core of our game, and the overall design revolves around it. Creatures have completely different skills, each offering a unique combat experience. They also possess different talents and work abilities, making them suited for various tasks in the home base. This ensures that every pet remains appealing and sparks the desire to collect them.”

As someone who easily gets lost in base-building, simulations, and management games, it is easy to find yourself preoccupied with just managing the base and the dinos. The lack of resources pushes me to explore its roguelike features, which is where I see the 1:1 balance they were talking about.

Q2: Many indie game developers draw inspiration from titles they’ve loved. Which games influenced Dino Topia the most?

XA Studios: “There are several titles that served as inspiration for Dino Topia, such as Cult of the Lamb, Palworld, and Rotwood. While each of these games has its own distinct strengths, we observed a common issue: some tend to focus more heavily on either the roguelike combat or the base-building aspects, which can lead to an imbalance in the overall gameplay experience.

With Dino Topia, our goal was to address this challenge by maintaining a deliberate balance between the two. Through multiple rounds of testing and player feedback, we’ve refined the design to ensure both roguelike combat and base-building are equally engaging, creating a more well-rounded and satisfying experience for players.”

While the imbalance in this sense isnt particularly a bad thing, Dino Topia creates a relaxing balance between its systems, along with implementing more depth into its creature-collecting aspect, featuring several gameplay-changing dinos for your runs. That certainly puts the creature-collecting at the games core, engaging players to look for more interesting dinos to play around with.

Q3: I really enjoyed the game—especially the base-building and survival-crafting mechanics—but the UI felt clunky. Any plans to redesign or improve it before launch?

XA Studios: “On PC, the main UI issue was a lack of consistency in certain operations, which has already been adjusted in this official version. On Steam Deck, the smaller screen resulted in small font sizes and uncomfortable UI scaling. We are currently making adjustments and optimizations for this, and we plan to release an update within a period after launch.”

After playing for around 8 hours (preview and review combined), my biggest gripe was the UI and how it was so hard to read most of the information. While things definitely look better on launch, its reassuring to hear that adjustments and optimizations will still be made after launch.

Q4: We’ve seen many Chinese game studios push into the Western market, often with big budgets. As an indie studio, what’s your biggest challenge in localizing Dino Topia for a market like the US?

XA Studios: “As an indie game studio with a limited budget, one of our biggest challenges in localizing for a major market like the US is the need to allocate resources very carefully.

Unlike China, where there are a few large gaming platforms and communities that make it relatively easier for players to discover new games, the Western market relies heavily on diverse channels such as press releases, influencers, and platforms like Reddit.

This difference makes it much harder for us to identify the key avenues that will generate significant exposure. Moreover, marketing costs in Western countries tend to be considerably higher, which further strains our budget. Balancing effective promotion with financial constraints requires us to be strategic and highly selective to maximize reach and impact.”

Over the years, the Western market has seen a surge in massively successful games from Chinese game studios such as Black Myth: Wukong, Genshin Impact, and Naraka: Bladepoint. I even remember being one of the first to cover Genshin Impact, and it still took around a week before it shot up in popularity.

Now, we are seeing more of these amazing games made by Chinese developers, and some of them deserve way more exposure and credit, like Dyson Sphere Program.

Dino Topia is surely shaping up to be a big hit, as it sits comfortably on Steam with a 92% very positive rating at the time of writing.

It is also clear that the developers have been laser-focused on balance—not just in gameplay mechanics, but in how they approach launching the game internationally. The game will just get better from now, and its exciting to see what XA Studios can come up with next.