Orion: Dino Beatdown ‘VidDoc’ series teases March release

Orion: Dino Beatdown–the indie game featuring space marines, dinosaurs, and jetpacks–is planned for a March release, and developer Spiral Game Studios has released the first weekly ‘VidDoc’ that discusses some more details.

February 29, 2012 5:00 PM3

The conflict between dinosaurs and jetpack-wearing space marines gets underway this March with Orion: Dino Beatdown on PC via Steam and OnLive. Indie developer Spiral Game Studios explains some of the game’s finer points, like jetpacks and dinosaurs, in a weekly series of video documentaries leading up to the game’s launch.

As far as interesting equipment goes, cloaking devices and ‘Medic Guns’ join the jetpacks in Orion: Dino Beatdown. Three playable classes will be on-tap for the up to five-player co-op-only experience, which takes place in “huge, endless environments.” Laser rifles supplement other, more-standard tools of destruction like machine guns and rocket launchers, and players will earn in-game credits which can be spent to upgrade abilities, weapons, or even call in vehicles like “Hover Bikes, Buggies, Mechs, Tanks and VTOL’s.”

Try not to confuse Orion: Dino Beatdown with Spiral’s other title, Orion: Prelude, which began life as a Kickstarter project. Both titles feature soldiers locked in life-or-death combat with hordes of prehistoric killing machines, as well as vehicles and frickin’ jetpacks (!!!); however, ‘Prelude’ is headed to Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network in addition to Steam and OnLive, at some unannounced point in the future. Based on what little we’ve seen so far, both games look similarly awesome, and awesomely similar.

Be sure to check out the two trailers below. The first is Orion: Dino Beatdown’s official announcement trailer, and the second is the first ‘VidDoc,’ in which the developer discusses Beatdown-related topics like open worlds, missions and objectives, dinosaur-types, DLC, playable classes, bases and generators, and player shops and structures. In other words, the gameplay is not just simply a case of “run around and shoot dinos in the face,” though there will probably be plenty of that, as well.

Orion: Dino Beatdown will run you $9.99 when it’s released next month.