| Deathground | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Jaw Drop Games |
| Publisher | Jaw Drop Games |
| Composer | David Housden |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 5 |
| Platform | Windows |
| Release | 7 October 2025 (early access) |
| Genre | Survival horror |
| Modes | Single-player, multiplayer |
Deathground is an upcoming survival horror video game by developer and publisher Jaw Drop Games. A Kickstarter campaign was launched in July 2020 to help fund the game, which is being developed for Windows. It received an early access release on Steam on 7 October 2025.
Deathground is a survival horror game played from a first-person perspective. [1] Players take on the role of humans who must fight for survival against dinosaurs while navigating through various environments and facilities. [2] The game has six character classes, and it can be played solo or as a co-op game with up to four players total. [3] Players must search and investigate the environment in order to complete objectives and acquire resources for survival. [2] The game features several dinosaurs, including Compsognathus , Utahraptor , Allosaurus , and Tyrannosaurus rex . [4]
Deathground was announced in July 2020, [5] and had been in development for more than six months by Jaw Drop Games, [6] a British indie game developer. [7] Progress up to that point was self-funded. [6] The game's announcement was accompanied by a trailer and the launch of a Kickstarter campaign to raise additional funding. [5] Jaw Drop Games quickly reached its financing goal, [8] [9] and periodically released new images and trailers as development continued. [10]
Gaming outlets favorably compared Deathground to the Jurassic Park franchise and the video game Alien: Isolation (2014). [7] [6] [11] The latter was acknowledged as a source of inspiration, as well as other games such as Dino Crisis (1999) and GTFO (2021). The film Jurassic Park (1993) also inspired the development team. [2] Ryan Scott of Fangoria wrote about Deathground in 2023, after seeing a new trailer, that it "looks like the Jurassic Park video game we've deserved for a long, long time." [12] Writers for PCGamesN also believed that Deathground could fill the void left by the Dino Crisis series, dormant since 2003. [7] [13]
The development team sought to ensure paleontological accuracy, for instance by including feathered dinosaurs such as Utahraptor, [5] although feathers can be toggled off if desired. [14] Deathground is being developed with Unreal Engine 5. [10] The game's composer is David Housden. [15]
Deathground was originally planned for an early access release on Steam in the third quarter of 2021, [6] to be followed by a full release the next year. [16] However, the game missed both dates as development continued. [1] [17] A new trailer debuted in March 2025, with the early access release scheduled for later in the year, [15] [18] eventually occurring on October 7. [19]