Isle of Fangs is a first-person survival game you can play alone or in co-op with friends. You wash up on a beach with a hatchet and a pickaxe, on an island full of dinosaurs, and have to make it through the days and nights.
You chop trees for wood, break rock for stone and strip bushes for fiber, then craft a bone spear and a torch. You cook over a campfire, put up walls and a gate, and keep an eye on your hunger. Feed a Frillhorn enough berries and it's yours to ride. Stripeclaw raptors hunt in packs, and the Bloodcrest, the biggest predator on the island, lives up in the highlands.
What stands out is the look: every dinosaur, plant and rock has bold ink outlines and flat colours, like a comic book you can walk around in. It runs in a browser, with a keyboard and mouse.
The idea
A dinosaur island to survive on
@steve knew what the game should be from the start: an open island with jungle, plains, coast and highlands, a few different dinosaurs, and the whole loop of gathering, crafting and building, with day and night.
All of it went into the first prompt, down to where the health and hunger bars go.
Build a first-person survival game in an open world full of dinosaurs: gather resources, craft tools and weapons, build a base, and tame or fight dinosaurs. Render everything in a hand-painted cel-shaded comic-book style: flat poster-like color blocks with bold black ink outlines on every dinosaur, plant, and structure. World: an open island with a jungle, plains, coastline, and highlands, populated with a handful of distinct dinosaur species (a small pack hunter, a large herbivore, an apex predator) … Ship it fully playable: gather/craft loop, basic building placement, at least one tameable and one hostile dinosaur, day/night cycle.
30 playable versions from this prompt alone35 versions to launch
The build
One long prompt, then a few short ones
Making a game on Tesana works like this: you describe what you want, Tesana builds it, and you play each new version as it comes. Then you say what to change and go again. Here's how Isle of Fangs came together:
- 3 AugThe first prompt
- 4 AugPlayable
- 9 AugThe whole island
- 10 AugOut on Tesana
The first prompt covered so much that Tesana had plenty to build before @steve said anything else. It made 30 playable versions from that prompt alone, with several passes on the colours, the plants, the light and the giant dinosaurs.
The first follow-up was one line:
give the player an axe and pickaxe as default
What got built
Five kinds of dinosaur
The island has a day and night cycle and five kinds of dinosaur:
- Stripeclaw raptors hunt in packs of three.
- Frillhorns can be tamed. Feed one berries five times and you can ride it.
- The Bloodcrest is the big predator up in the highlands. Bring it down and you win.
- Skynecks and Longwades are giant plant-eaters, up to 17 metres tall. They graze in herds near the beach.
In between, you're surviving: chopping wood, breaking rock, crafting at the bench, cooking at the fire and putting up walls before dark. A full belly lasts about a day on the island.
Build stats
What it took
From the first prompt to the island going live:
- 6 prompts to build the island.
- 35 versions of the game along the way.
Isle of Fangs is out now on Tesana. Go give it a try.
