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During Sony's State of Play last night, Annapurna Interactive gave us a release window for The Lost Wild. The cinematic survival horror from developer Great Ape Games is coming in 2027 to PS5 and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, with a new trailer titled "True Fear Is Primal" debuting during the show.
Unfortunately, no Xbox version has been confrirmed yet. Whether that changes it remains to be seen but at this moment, it doesn't look like this is launching on Xbox simultaneously with PC and PS5.
The hook here is the premise. You play as Saskia, who wakes on a mysterious island overrun by prehistoric creatures, and the entire game is built around evasion rather than combat. There's no shotgun-toting power fantasy on offer here. The dinosaurs roam abandoned research facilities actively hunting you, and survival comes down to reading their movements and behaviour patterns.
As Great Ape Games CEO Nick Gregory puts it, these aren't monsters but wild animals that see you as prey. That framing is the most interesting thing about the pitch. Rather than scripted scares, the studio is leaning on intelligent predator behaviour and slow-burn tension, which is a harder thing to pull off but considerably more rewarding when it works.
Cat and mouse, not run and gun
Mechanically, this is stealth and resourcefulness over confrontation. You can pick up items to improve your odds, but the deeper Saskia explores, the more dangerous things get. Weaponry is strictly non-lethal: you can create distractions, use the environment against the dinosaurs, or temporarily scare off a predator to buy yourself an escape window. The studio sums up the loop bluntly: outmanoeuvre, distract, run, and if all else fails, hide.
It's a familiar template for anyone who's played the likes of Alien: Isolation, and the comparison is a useful one. Those games live or die on AI quality and pacing, so the obvious question is whether Great Ape Games can make its dinosaurs feel genuinely unpredictable across a full game rather than just a trailer.
A grassroots studio's dream project
There's a nice story behind this one. Great Ape Games describes The Lost Wild as a passion project that grew from a shared love of dinosaurs into a 25-person studio, now building what Gregory calls a love letter to the genre alongside Annapurna. That kind of origin doesn't guarantee anything, but the focused, single-idea ambition on display is encouraging.
Platforms and release
The Lost Wild launches in 2027 on PS5 and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
