The Isle

Highly recommend.

The Isle is a unique survival experience. To stay alive, you need to eat and drink—just like a real dinosaur. This mechanic leads players to start thinking and behaving like dinosaurs, which makes the gameplay feel incredibly immersive and different from typical survival games. You can even find a mate, lay eggs, and then players with a code you can give them can hatch from them instead of spawning in a random location.

There’s no hand-holding here—not even an in-game map. You're thrown straight into the wild and have to figure things out for yourself. Each dinosaur has depth, not so much in terms of combat moves, but in how you use your species' strengths to survive in the world. For example, a raptor can team up with others and coordinate attacks to take down larger prey. And that larger prey, controlled by a human player, will in-turn have its own strengths, weaknesses, and tactics, just like you.

Food and water can be scarce at times, and with a player cap of 100 on official servers, other players might be spread out. But remember—all dinosaurs need water. So rivers and lakes are natural hotspots where you're likely to run into others. You can also copy in-game coordinates into online maps (just search for "The Isle map") to help you navigate and find others more easily. It is not hard to find other players if you know where to look.

Make sure you're playing on Evrima, not the Legacy version. Evrima is where the (slow) active development and best experience is happening. The graphics and performance are good, but are typical of more demanding Unreal Engine 5 games. The sound is incredible as is the way the dinosaurs move. The view distance is almost infinite. I have experienced no crashes, server disconnects, or hackers (although I have seen others complain about them in the official Discord).

My dislike are sometimes the NPCs (small animals for food) don't spawn enough and they're too limited in variation. The world can feel a bit empty when other players are not around. Additionally, the health and stamina regeneration rates can be painfully slow. But I appreciate that this is a hard survival game. I would also love there to be another map.

System Specifications: 5700X3D, 32 GB, RTX 4070 Ti Super.
Settings: 4k max settings dlss balanced.
Frame-Rate: 60-100 (average 85).

people are very toxic in this game, you can hardly survive there is no food to survive on barely any food, i just don't recommend this game.

this game is so full of hackers its not funny, the only time something ever got done was 1 single game wide hack so, play at your own risk. be worth it if it was a free game.

Mix packing and hacking destroying the game. This game has potential but the Devs seem to not care about balancing the dinos. Needs a serious overhaul from someone who actually plays the game.

Omniraptor mechanics are bugged and you just die from try to make plays, which sucks because its the only carnivore worth playing.

The game has been in Early Access for.....10+ years....and it will probalby stay EA for another 10+ years...

I played well over 150+ Hours of legacy content, most fun i ever had with this game.

Then i played evrima, from rubberbanding issues, bugs that either kill your dino or break the whole game so you have to start from scratch, to server/connection issues, shadows so intense that you can't see anything anymore, to removing/nerfing food sources(ai) so you basically starve to death in 7/10 cases, tweaking the stamina system so you have to play even more bush/sitting around simulator and with the stamina tweaks some dinos become absolutely unplayable.

The Map design is also heavily flawed. From sudden cliffs hidden behind bushed, high enough to instantly kill you from falling down, to removing vital rivers which makes certain water dinos a pain in the ass to play.

I've often waited several months for updates that fix existing problems, only for new ones to instantly arise. A perpetual cycle.....

Just frustrating overall. Toxicity in this community is also a HUGE problem. (In legacy i almost encountered no toxicity at all - evrima on the other hand is the complete opposite it feels like, same goes for their offical discord server)

The game Devs (for some weird reason) monitor their Discord server more closely than their game, so you often encounter cheaters, which doesn't make the gaming experience any better. Instead of fixing their game, the devs get into petty arguments with ppl on discord.....

The original vision for the game seems to have been lost ages ago. The game Devs often times add things to the game no one has asked for. And the things the community asks for, are skillfully being ignored and pushed aside.

The Isle tries to be many things at once, and in doing so, nothing really works or feels like its finished or polished.

The biggest problem with the isle is - that there is not really anything to do - besides growing your dino (which mostly consists of sitting around in bushes until you are big enough, which takes from 2-6hours depending on what kind of dino you play)- fighting other dinos, then dying within 5 minutes and repeat the proccess.
If you point this out to the developers, they'll tell you that you're playing the game wrong...

I really wanted to give this game a thumbs up, but the way it looks now, it really doesn't deserve it, imo.

I could go back to Legacy, but i probably wont.

IF this game ever comes out of EA - I will give it another chance, until then, I unfortunately cannot recommend it.

Game is super boring and there is no tutorial. I couldn't figure anything out, and graphics we overall poor even for a 2015 game.

This game gives me cancer every time I open it but it's very fun and addictive with friends. If you're new, you should definitely watch some guides how to play otherwise you'll have bad experience. It has a lot of potential but for now it's laying in trash can. I hope it will change with newer updates

Played this game for years, have so many memories. Good game, very unique, there's nothing really like it. Other dino games never caught me like The Isle did.
Updates are pretty slow, proven by the 10 years this game has been in early access but.. the updates when they come are good. They show that the game is moving forward which is a positive. Thousands of hours can be had in this game, with that in mind it's worth the price.

There is enough variety in the dinos to keep it feeling entertaining. There are still a lot of glitches, but hopefully those get worked out in our lifetime lol. Good game to play with friends if you have a lot of time on your hands. Playing it as PVP is fun, playing it as dino simulator is fun. Would play again.

It would be nice if this game wasn't made by the dumbest people around. This dev team does not give a shit and hasn't even looked at their steam page in years.
they literally did not like that players in a pvp game gather up so they can fight and changed the map so players won't meet each other as much anymore which leads to people starving a lot more after not seeing another player for an hour.
Deinosuchus (Crocodile) can according to the dev team never see underwater at night even tho it was nocturnal oh and you also can't see when it rains so you get blocks of 20 minutes where you can't play the game as Deino. the devs see no issue with this, neither do they consider it bad that a crocodile can't swim more than 100 meters before being out of stamina and that it needs to wait 15 minutes to swim faster than 5 km/h again. IRL Deinosuchus reached speeds of 60 km/h but Dondi knows better ofc. i hope someone buys this studio and kicks everyone out, even if it's EA because the devs are this incompetent.

worst game ever designed for any type of survival the devs are trash cant get a game right dont recommend this game to anyone

Good game if you're looking for combat. Legacy is currently decent in terms of being newbie-friendly, good servers to start on. Albeit Evrima is a very good side as well in terms of graphics and performance, looking forward to seeing more additions to Evrima's side. Only downside is the grow times for dinos, especially in legacy. Be prepared to wait 6-8 hours if you're growing an apex.

This game is nothing but a challenge.

-=It doesn't respect the new player experience and hours of tutorials are required before you have enough knowledge to not let your first dinos die of starvation)
-=Official servers aren't moderated sufficiently -- and cheating is rampant.
-=Adversarial and combative discord admins.
-=The game is riddled with unfixed bugs that just don't seem to be fixed.
-=There is no ingame penalty for mixpacking(Carnivores playing with Herbivores)
-=The Evrima map Gateway is too large for 100 players on official. You can play for hours without encountering another dino, and leads to players only ever congregating in a few locations, ignoring the rest of the beautiful map.
-=Coastal Biomes are still a absent -- as of writing this-- with no sign of them being added on the development roadmap. There's literally NOTHING of interest that spawns in the ocean, no reefs, fish, dynamic waves, nothing. Not even sea grass. It's just a barren underwater texture.
-=Performance issues, crippling FPS drops when you encounter other dinos by a river.

If you can overcome these challenges and play on unofficial servers you will have fun with this game.

This game needs help its rife with hackers and mixpackers worse then any other dino game Ive seen. What crazy is that i believe the isle is way older then both of these dino games (POT/BOB). Runs worse and has less content.

Alright lets talk for starters why i gave this game a no,

The game itself, you don`t get told there the new branch of the isle The Evirma branch, Its not new player friendly, the map in the current branch is dogshit, oh yeah did i tell you there was a Pdf file on the team and they didn`t got fired only on the wiki they let go, Meanwhile the guy who did the whole game in the steam page got fire because the lead dev was brining random women to their shared Aparment and soon the guy who code the whole damm game got fired because of that.

If you want more of my option on the game this fella right here have all the answers to it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ2b01yemCY&t=5s&ab_channel=Zenny

Been playing this game for years and you can't even play for 5 minutes nowadays without coming across a hacker, Developers don't appear to give a damn about them and their easy anti-cheat is rubbish.

While there are certainly a few areas that need improvement mainly the relatively limited number of playable species in the Evrima branch, I can say with confidence that this is currently by far the best dinosaur survival game experience on the market, just by the core gameplay loop and mechanics alone.

P.S.: The dinosaurs also look cool af so thats always a +

Worst game i've ever played.

Only public servers (private ones cause crashes)
join public server
gets spawn killed
respawns
grows for 5 hours
gets one tap killed
Fun?
no.

I spawned in as a cerato, found a friend and we did a lot of stuff. We go to drink and I watched him get snatched by a croc and eaten. Then it ate me. 10/10 game

This is a review of Evirma, not the legacy version of The Isle. I highly prefer Evirma and recommend you play that version.

In its current state, it's not the human v. prehistoric Ark-like game some people want, but to me it's a super fun survival sim. Play as dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles, alone, with friends, or with strangers. I've actually really enjoyed playing with strangers and have found the in-game community on public servers nice and many people role-play really well.

It is a whole other level of fun being hunted, and hunting, actual players who can intelligently track, stalk, and evade you instead of playing against an AI which becomes predictable.

So good! just met a random bloke on the game named "Chee", proper laugh unfortunately i died. RIP. But i hope that "Chee" is living the best Carnotaurus experience!!!
i would tots recommend this amazing game in hope that you all meet a person such like Chee.

For me, this is the best survival game ever made where you can play as an animal. The game looks fantastic in the new Unreal Engine 5. The dinosaur models and the surrounding world are excellently designed. I like that even the biggest dinosaur isn’t invincible, and with skill, it’s possible to defeat anyone when it comes down to it. Aside from the occasional bugs, the game is very fun and is currently one of my favorite games on Steam.

You got my recommendation!

Rating 9 of 10 (just because of some bugs...)

Dinos cool 10/10. Ability play 0/10. Not player friendly. No food, anywhere. Hours of nothing.

I had some decent experiences playing this. I really like the concept and the idea of what the game is supposed to be: open world survival horror dinosaur simulation with pvp.
I don’t recommend it. It isn’t worth the $20, or even $10 when it’s on sale. It’s been early release for like a decade, it’s janky, buggy, and ultimately wastes your time. I mean it, I have a lot of hours and 75% of the game is walking. 20 % is AFK waiting for a storm to blow over or the sun to come up. (The game is borderline unplayable during rain and/or night for some/all of the dinosaurs.) and then about 5% pvp.
The player base is toxic filled with discord clicks who cheat constantly. Hackers/cheaters will insta-kill you if you defeat them (new hack where every player in the area gets tossed into the air and then slammed to the ground killing all affected) because they have no skill, rely on cheats, and have weird ego problems. It doesn’t seem like the devs or admins care at all. If you research the devs and their drama you’ll find an interesting story.
I played this game a lot, I regret it.
I enjoyed becoming good at it and learning the oppressive terribly-designed map, but I will never play this game again. I get the vibes that the devs don’t like their player base, and most of the players hate the devs too! It’s a really weird situation that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and no matter what dinos they add later it just isn’t worth the time/energy or the effort.
The devs and toxic player base deserve each other, truly.
I look forward to when an actually talented dev team (with a good leader) creates a game like this, and does it right.
Until then, there’s so many other games to play, why bother with this garbage?

Unfortunately at this point, the game is full of hackers and I tell myself this all the time. If only they put in the effort like they do in monitoring their discord, they'd have no issues at all.

Step 1: Log onto official server
Step 2: Spend Hours growing dinosaur and surviving (fun)
Step 3: Entire official server gets launched into the air by a hacker and everyone instantly dies (not fun)

Do not recommend unless you like role playing as the meteor from the extinction event

The Isle is a truly unique experience—both meditative and thrilling at the same time. There’s something oddly satisfying about just being a dinosaur, roaming the world, surviving, and interacting with others. The mechanics of different dinosaur species add a lot of depth, making each playthrough feel distinct. One of the most impressive aspects of the game is how the world shifts in perspective depending on the size of the dinosaur you play. A dense forest might feel like a safe haven as a small herbivore but a mere snack stop for a towering apex predator.

However, one major issue stands out—there should be an option to self-kill at least in Early Access. If you spawn in the southern swamp, you're practically doomed. The area feels like a barren wasteland with no food or resources, making survival nearly impossible. The only way out is to painstakingly starve or drown yourself, just to hopefully respawn in a better location. In its current state, the swamp shouldn’t exist in the game.

Despite this frustration, The Isle remains an immersive and engaging survival experience, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves.

Cheaters never get dealt with no anti cheat nothing

Very good game. I played it for +500h and I liked it a lot.
Big problem though: Cheaters are really annoying in this game.
Sometimes randomly dying by "magic"?
This time, I just got killed as deino by a baby cerato landing me only two bites!
Sad to be patient and grow during 2h to finish like this...
I would play more this game but I don't have that much time to lose dying by cheaters like that.
Let's hope devs will do something...

I play Evrima and I love the game, unfortunately I have friends. I can barely play with them because it's such a beach to find them. Add a good grouping system like in the old version of the game and I'll give a thumbs up immediately. I don't want to track down the one person I'm trying to play with for hours at a time only to die and have to hunt eachother down again and again.

Game is sound, I have not experienced any hackers, one bug with the food stuck in the mouth. It is fun even when you get eaten by another player. I have had so many laughs and good times. I would recommend this to others. Play with a friend on discord is a great way to have many laughs.

I've put a lot of hours into this game, it probably consumed most my life during the pandemic. 99% of my hours went into its Legacy mode. It was fun, a little dull at times, but I met a lot of nice people. The presence of community servers definitely makes the game better, as I would not touch officials with a thousand foot pole.

The Evrima recode looked promising at first, but between the yearly updates and horrible optimization and frame rate, I eventually grew tired of waiting and couldn't be bothered to reinstall. It was worse before, times between updates may be a bit better now, but it's not enough of a difference to keep me interested.

The playerbase of this game (especially officials and FFA-based servers) suffers from the classic "animal simulator" stereotype, ie. most players are toxic, rude and extremely petty. We're talking CoD lobby levels of rage. It may boil down to the fact the only thing in the game is PvP which leaves people itching to kill anything, but the attitudes of the players is something else entirely. This alone has made me shelve this game for good.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this game to people looking to have a good time. I wouldn't take back the time I spent playing The Isle (although I wish I didn't play as much as I did), but I enjoyed it at the time and it got me through some tough bits of my life and reopened my love of dinosaurs, and for that I'm thankful for it. But I will not come back.

More hackers than players, more bugs than hackers, more time in queue than ingame...

Don't trust anyone, not even yourself.
Playing with pals? I wish you luck. More than a Thanksgiving Monopoly game, The Isle will put your friendships to the test. Starting with a small pack, you will all swear allegiance to one another. An hour later, you're stuck in a bush sobbing while a ceratosaurus sniffs around for you, someone has left the group because they became impatient, and a ceratosaurus is pursuing another friend.

Additionally, avoid making an effort to be friendly with strangers. They will betray you more quickly than a soap opera villain once you think you've found a cool player to hang out with. "Friendly" in this world means "I'll wait five more minutes before eating you." Recommend you should try the isle Evrima

game is neat on paper, in play though its total ass. first of all you have to download the whole ass other beta because THATS the actual game, the game it downloads and boots up when you buy the game is an abandoned project idk why its even there anymore tbh. lets see, the amount of players who mix dino races into clans like this is fucking prehistoric rust is fucking dumb as hell. the hit box attacking for the game is HORRENDOUS like holy fuck i cant believe its just "normal" to these smooth brains who play the game regularly for a hit that clearly is like 5 feet away from its target to be hitting constantly. oh and dont even get me STARTED on the hackers in the game jesus christ i was encountering hackers in the official servers FROM DAY ONE, deciding now to draw the line on this game cause my croc id been p[laying for the last like 3 hours just got killled by a full grown croc that just i shit you not phased into existence in front of me and then killed me. absolute bs this game is fucking run by retard devs.

was unable to launch the game at first, trouble shooting led me to open Norton and add the game folder to the exclusion list - the game now launches and I'm able to RP as a dinosaur.. big success!

After watching a number of videos on YouTube of glorious looking dinosaur based survival game-play, i was enticed into purchasing this game. Unfortunately, i have manged very little actual playtime in the 9 hours Steam suggests i have "played". The majority of my time has been spent waiting in queues attempting to play on servers within my region, or trying to play on servers outside of my region and suffering from some of the worst latency i have ever experienced in an online game.

I cannot comment on the actual game-play as i did not experience enough of it to form an opinion.

Perhaps the game is currently suffering from success and there are just not enough servers to meet the demands of the player base but as it stands, i cannot recommend this game to you.

1.Spawn in
2.Get eaten
3.Spawn in
4.Starve
5.Spawn in
6.Find a group
7.Have parents and roleplay.
8.Everyone dies because we don't understand combat.
9.Replay the game for as many hours as possible.

Fun game. Spent a couple hours growing a carno with a friend. little tiny dino kills him in a bite, then focuses me and kills me in a bite. That little dino is a troodon apparently and shouldn't be able to kill large dino's our size that way. my friend who is much more experienced tells me we got killed by a cheater....

Yeah i'll stop playing now. If cheaters running around that can dmg hack you to death after growing for a couple of hours... Not fun...

Ah, The Isle—a game so committed to Early Access that it might as well be a fossil itself. After 10+ years in development, you’d think we’d have a polished dinosaur survival experience. Instead, what we get is a glorified walking simulator where your greatest enemies aren’t apex predators, but bugs, server crashes, and mind-numbing boredom.

Let’s talk optimization—or rather, the complete lack of it. Unless you have a NASA-grade PC, expect frame drops so bad they’ll send you back to the Stone Age. And don't worry about all those “immersive” features they promised—they’re probably coming in another decade or two.

Oh, and the community? If you love spending hours raising a dinosaur just to be slaughtered instantly by some bored troll, this is the game for you!

The only real survival challenge in The Isle is surviving the regret of spending money on it. If you want an unfinished game where progress moves slower than evolution itself, go ahead—buy it. Otherwise, run for your life.

★☆☆☆☆ (1/10, would rather be fossilized)

game is still early there is not much you can do but the worst part is if you want to play with your friend it might never happen they always spawn you super far appart and you cant just run to them without dying you can play for 10h and never reach them.....pathetic.....if they let us join together i will change my review for better because the game is simple its relax but i dont care about solo playing I WANT TO JOIN MY FRIEND FFS

sitting in a fully forested area. hears running coming straight for me out out no where. for the millionth time someone with unlimited stamina knows your location. go figure. not to mention finding out the dev is a shill and the guy that made path of titans is the original dev of this game. this dude got rid of him and now can barely get anything going. how does the original leave and make a game with so many selections of dinos and this guy can only get a handful of broken dinos out.....? you cant even update the page. its showing a version of over a decade ago. why doesnt it show evrima why do you have do go to beta to play? lol this guy sucks

Its good but needs more frequent updates. And an optimalization update. Not many cheaters, fun to play with friends.

It's not what I expected. Maybe for couple people it might be the perfect game, but I was shocked, AI is pretty bad and doesn't respond when you attack, the map looks pretty crappy. Just a handfull of dinosaurs you can pick and there is a point where your footsteps get on your nerves because it's one single crappy sound.
Why is it still early access? This game is almost almost 10 years old.

After the negative stuff I have some good points. Ambient sounds are awesome, the thunder is pretty good and the nature sounds awesome. Soundtrack isn't bad too. Despite the crappy look, the map is massive and there is a lot to discover.


I will probably buy this game when it's ready. It has a lot of potential no doubt! But for a 10 year old Game, a bit shocking.

Devs! you can do it better! I believe in you!

spent hours raising for all controls to get randomly disabled leaving me defenceless at the worst time. i had to just sit there and let everything eat me.

checked google and this bug was being moaned about 2 years ago.... i think that sums the 'early access' up in a nut shell

Horrible game with a horrible community, filled with horrible decisions and horrible game design. You want to wander around for 40 minutes and slowly stave to death? Buy this shite.

You want a visceral, realistic survival experience playing as a dinosaur? Then stay far away from this game...

Positives

There are some positives to the game, such as graphics (although somewhat poorly optimized), unique animals, unique sounds and some interesting ideas for mechanics, such as climbing trees. The Isle is probably the best out there when it comes to dinosaur survival games due to it being pretty realistic, yet all I can say is: if you respect your time, you will STAY FAR AWAY!

Negatives

Some of the negatives are less annoying than others, but all of them contribute to ruining the experience.

Herbivores attack you on sight, or just for "fun", even if you're another herbivore, without any indication of wanting you to leave. They don't get any meaningful penalty for being an a-hole, in a way it's like this game rewards toxicity.

Balance in this game simply doesn't exist. In real life animals fit into their niches in the ecosystem and not every animal will fight every other animal, not every predator wants to fight every herbivore. In this game however nothing really encourages players to leave others alone, even if they are 100 times smaller than them. This is because the devs can't come up with an interesting and egaging survival mechanic for every animal, which results in silly things like acid-spitting herbivores, because you will get eaten or killed by literally every player in this game, unless they just want to chill or seriously role-play.

You can have a "cutsom" experience on a non-official server, which helps in some cases, but sadly doesn't change the unrealistic game mechanics. These mechanics and half-assed solutions ultimately boil down to one thing: a dev team that keeps the game in perpetual development for no reason, constantly adding features nobody asked for and not making up their minds about how things should work, which results in constant changes to core mechanics. They have NO IDEA of what they are doing and NO VISION for what they should be doing. On top of that (and as a consequence of that) the development is insanely slow, so don't expect them to add your favourite dino any time soon. To illustrate how little the devs care: the actual game that is being developed is the "evrima" branch, but the devs don't bother to tell you that, instead they are advertising a version on the Store page that has not been touched for like 5 years or something, and they seemingly expect you to play the classic version full of Chinese cheaters and no rules, no bans, no care.

The devs insist on putting humans into the game eventually, but nobody in their right mind is asking for that (in fact, I never heard anyone specifically asking for that, or saying they can't wait for humans to be implemented, even the biggest bootlickers have their reservations). The original idea for the game involved humans and even mutant creatures, which they still seem to be pushing. However, in the meanwhile the game turned out to be a simple survival game, where you play a dinosaur. All they had to do was polish the mechanics and balance and constantly add creatures and maps, but instead the maps get deleted constantly, they add only a few dinos per year, and instead of sticking with one mechanic, they switch them for new ones for some stupid excuse. All of this results in an unnecessarily long development time.

The lead dev is also probably a huge factor as to why this game is in perpetual development-hell. The more you read or hear about him, the more you understand why this game with a great potential turned out to be a mess. Since he's an egomaniac from what I gather, I don't think this game will ever be finished, mechanics will not be settled on, and development will keep taking one step forward and two steps back. It is also very telling that one of the old lead developers left his side, and instead he went on to create another dinosaur game, that stuck to its mechanics and vision, and is now finished and successful. Meanwhile The Isle adds and removes the same change in a single update (yes, this means 0 progress) and doesn't know where to go or how to go there after a decade of back-and-forth.

I put almost all my hours in when I thought The Isle had a future, but now I see that I was just coping. If you can find a community without sweatlords and idiots, the game can be fun. Sometimes you meet another member of your own species in the game and mess around a little and it will be fun. But all of this games is just a time-waster at best. And since it's not a well-made survival game as it is advertised, I can only say: stay far away!

Love-Hate Relationship.. That is the experience you will feel.. Guaranteed. At first, you'll love it! Can't stop playing! But rather quickly does that feeling turn.. You'll notice that 90% of your time is spent in the game is as a juvenile searching for food. Why? Cause it takes a long time to grow and food is scarce.. When I say it takes a long time to grow, I mean a long time.. up to several hours as the biggest dinos(from the small list that we currently have) but only takes a minute to die. Rinse and repeat. As an adult, nothing to do.. Lay under a bush. The game lacks content and unfortunately, even after nearly 10 years, it's still in a quite early dev stage.. At this rate, our grand-kids may be able to experience the game fully released. There is so much potential in this game, the art looks great and the concepts are quite appealing! But it's all spoon fed.. It's eye candy until it's in the game.

TLDR; In the long-term this game is great investment(10/10). But right now, it's just a handful of dinos and afk sim(4/10).

P.S.. The graphics are amazing(10/10)

i love this game just wish it was more accessible for cheaper laptops/pcs and available on other platforms

Caveats to consider.

It has been in alpha or beta a long time. As it stands, it is still enjoyable for me.
There are going to be a lot of changes if the work on this game continues.