Go Home Dinosaurs!

Developer: Fire Hose Games | Publisher: Fire Hose Games | Release Date: 2013 | Genre: Casual, Indie, Strategy, Tower Defense | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

Don’t you just hate it when you are having a nice BBQ with your gopher buddies, and all of a sudden, a troupe of hungry dinosaurs comes barging in? Well, the gophers in “Go Home Dinosaurs!” are not going to surrender their food without a fight, and so starts one of the most whimsical tower defense games since Plants Vs Zombies.

While this title was originally created for mobile devices, don’t let the cartoony visuals and simple gameplay scare you away. Once you get sucked into the madness, it can be hard to walk away until all sixty levels are done and dusted. You should know the drill if you are familiar with the tower defense genre. Dinosaurs are marching down a preset path towards your BBQ, and the only way to prevent them from scoffing down the food and costing you the level is by placing defenses to take them down. Two bundles of dynamite serve as a last-ditch deterrent against the ravenous hordes. Still, these detonating will impact your level rating, so ideally, you want the pesky reptiles gone before they get that close to the grill.

Each level begins with you selecting cards representing the defenses you can use during the level. The number of cards and types of defenses grows as you progress, including wacky offerings such as freeze rays, meteor launchers, lasers, teleporters, and even a DJ that attacks using his giant speakers. Each weapon has a different shape and size, so the game has a puzzle element that involves figuring out what you can use on a level and where to place it. If you are not careful, you can end up with weapons that won’t fit anywhere on a level, forcing you to return to the drawing board. Luckily, you can take a look at the level while selecting your defenses to ensure that you don’t make this mistake.

After you have selected your defenses, the level begins, and you are placed in control of a single gopher. This little critter can move around to collect coconuts that serve as currency for placing defenses or attack the dinos directly. You will want to balance these two activities carefully to ensure the dinosaurs don’t get the upper hand. Later levels introduce new hazards, such as rocks that must be cleared before you can place defenses. Once you place a weapon, it cannot be moved, and if you only picked one card for that weapon, you cannot place another one either. You can also choose one-use weapons or power cards that are slightly more powerful but are gone once they are used, unlike the towers, which stay for the duration of the level.

The dinos you face are as goofy and adorable as the gophers attacking them, making for a very child-friendly game. The T-Rex will come stomping in, determined to get to the grub, while the Velociraptors sneak in disguised as bushes before dashing ahead once their cover is blown. You’ll also see triceratops, compies, pterodactyls, stegosauruses, and some boss monsters that show up at the end of each world. The game’s mobile roots are plain to see in the slightly cramped feeling levels, but this isn’t too big an issue. The audio is rather nice, with catchy tunes and gophers that utter all kinds of cult movie references. The game also supports Steam achievements and trading cards, which is always nice.

It only took us about six hours to complete the game, but we had a blast doing so. While it is easy overall, you can prolong the challenge by going for the three-steak rating on each level. We liked that the different defense sizes meant you must approach each level differently and can’t always rely on your most potent weapons. If you enjoy a good tower defense game and don’t mind the mobile roots, Go Home Dinosaurs is worth the purchase.

*Review originally published in 2013.