The Lost Wild preview: Jurassic Park meets Alien Isolation in a bone-chilling horror game

Polygon Summer Game Fest 2026

Polygon
Summer Game Fest 2026
Live game reveals, world premiere trailers, and what’s next from 40+ developers, publishers, and hardware makers.

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There are some movie scenes that just stick with you forever. Jurassic Park happens to hold several of those scenes for me. Whether it’s raptors stalking around a kitchen or the T-rex looming over a car, that film is overflowing with tense moments that convinced me that dinosaurs were evil masterminds for decades. Those creatures are going to need some better PR, though, because The Lost Wild sure seems like it’s going to continue that image for a while longer.

The upcoming first-person horror game, revealed during Sony’s June 2026 State of Play and set to launch in 2027, looks to meld Jurassic Park and Alien: Isolation into one unholy union. If the live gameplay demo I saw at this year’s Summer Game Fest is any indication, developer Great Ape Games is cooking up the kind of nerve-racking stealth game that is going to terrify a whole new generation of players who weren’t traumatized by Steven Spielberg in the ’90s.

The story kicks off when a character named Saskia gets into a car crash. She stumbles into the woods looking for help, and things go south pretty fast. The demo I saw started there, with Saskia stumbling around in the dark with nothing but a flashlight. The first bad omen is some abandoned science equipment; the second is a scientist getting gruesomely chomped in half by an Allosaurus.

Slow, methodical stealth is the name of the game from there. The demo saw Saskia sneaking through the woods as the dino stalked her. It’s not a dumb animal patrolling on a set path; it’s an ambush predator that can react to the player. If you run, it will hear you. If you use your flashlight too much, it might see you. Saskia needs to stay quiet and out of sight to avoid it, but she also needs to learn its particular behaviors to survive. The demo had some strong shades of Alien: Isolation, but with the Xenomorph subbed out for a snarling dinosaur.

The Resident Evil series seems like a bit of a touchstone, too. Saskia hunting for a keycard that could open a gate brought it to mind, but the game’s save system did too. Like typewriter ribbons, saves are a limited resource here. Unlike Resident Evil, though, you’re not safe when you save; a dinosaur can snatch you up mid-animation if you’re not careful. Everything here feels like it’s designed to make you feel as defenseless as possible.

The demo had plenty of tense moments that called my Jurassic Park memories to mind. At one point, Saskia scrambled into a shack which contained the key card she needed. The Allosaurus started circling around the building, its long tail passing by the open door. To escape, Saskia opened a side door, picked up a mug, and tossed it at a car to set off its alarm. That distraction gave a short opening for an escape, though it wasn’t a surefire guarantee; Saskia ended up meeting an untimely fate while trying to sneak away through the grass, only for the dino to pass over her hiding spot with its towering body.

Fog obscures a monitoring station in The Lost Wild

Most sweat-inducing of all was when she finally opened the escape gate, only for it to trigger the sound of screeching metal as the way out grinded open. As you can imagine, the Allosaurus sure heard that and gave chase.

All of that made for some good old-fashioned survival horror, and I’m curious to see where it all goes from there. The end of the demo teased a bit of a sci-fi twist, so there’s clearly another layer here. I’m also curious as to whether other dinosaurs behave differently and if Saskia will get more ways to defend herself aside from mugs. The first slice was an effective though simple preview of sneaking that will hinge on Great Ape Games’ ability to build out some stealth systems beyond slowly walking and evading dino sightlines. Though even if there’s not much more to it than that, The Lost Wild looks like it’s custom-made to dish out hold-your-breath moments that Spielberg would be proud of.