Repterra is a base-building survival RTS about reclaiming a world that dinosaurs took back. You raise a colony, wall it, wire it, feed it, and then hold it against waves of prehistoric wildlife that arrive in numbers the engine really shouldn’t be able to render.
It’s from Chute Apps, published by MicroProse, and every single player who reviewed it reached for the same comparison within about a sentence.
Yes, It’s They Are Billions With Dinosaurs
Let’s get it out of the way, because everyone else already has. One player called it “literally They Are Billions, but with dinosaurs” and meant it as a compliment. Another described it as the love child of They Are Billions and Red Alert 2. A third reached for Age of Empires instead.
The comparison is accurate and Repterra isn’t hiding from it. What’s more interesting is the one place it improves on the formula.
Players also consistently described it as more forgiving than They Are Billions while still being a challenge — which, given that game’s reputation for run-ending catastrophes, is probably the right calibration for a wider audience.
The Loop
Sprawling defences, production lines and power grids across procedurally generated maps. Fifty different buildings to place.
Lure enemy dinosaurs in with food and distractions, then turn them into your own front line.
Pair dinos in the breeding station and see what emerges. Crossbreeding and genetic mutations are actively encouraged.
Assign a soldier, engineer or tamer to a dino — each human/dino pairing unlocks its own special abilities.
The Scale Is the Selling Point
There’s a lot around it too: three factions with distinct focuses, upgradeable respawning hero units, twenty-five customisable loadout perks, dozens of genetic mutations, and a permanent unlock shop layered over everything. Chute Apps have not been idle.
And unlike a lot of games in this space, 1.0 ships with a Custom Level Editor and full Steam Workshop support. That’s the feature players usually spend years asking for, included at launch — and for a wave-defence game it’s the difference between finite content and an indefinite one.
The Progression Gate Is the Real Problem
Worth noting that the seven maps are procedurally generated with their own topography and conditions, so replays aren’t identical — but repeating a region you’ve already cleared to buy access to one you haven’t is still the friction point people keep naming.
Other Rough Edges
The faction criticism is the one we’d weight most. Three factions with genuinely different play styles is a headline feature, and if perk unlocks eventually homogenise them, that undercuts a real part of the replay pitch. Worth watching how post-launch balance handles it.
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
|---|---|---|
| Air and Water Break the Wall MetaThe subgenre’s dominant strategy has always been terrain abuse — find a chokepoint, wall it, win. Flying and swimming dinosaurs mean treelines and rivers aren’t free defences any more, forcing layered multi-axis planning. A genuine improvement on the formula. | Balance Still Needs TuningWave composition and unit strength were repeatedly flagged, with dinosaurs described as very tanky on higher difficulties. Not broken, but not settled either. | Point-Gated Map UnlocksYou replay cleared maps at higher difficulty to buy access to new ones. The honest catch, as one player admitted: remove the gate and the game finishes in under eight hours. The grind is currently doing content’s job. |
| Absurd, Well-Optimised Scale100,000+ dinosaurs at 60fps on a quad-core i5. The pre-rendered 90s art style is both a deliberate nostalgic choice and the reason six-figure unit counts run at all — style and performance solving the same problem. | Factions Blur TogetherPerk unlocks eventually let any faction play like any other, with only the unique unit truly separating them. That undercuts a headline feature and part of the replay pitch. | No PvP or SkirmishThe most requested missing mode. Inviting Age of Empires comparisons sets an expectation of deathmatch play that simply isn’t there yet. |
| Level Editor and Workshop at 1.0Custom level creation and full Steam Workshop support ship with the finished game rather than arriving years later. For a wave-defence title that’s the difference between finite content and an open-ended one. | Breeding Feels OptionalA genuinely interesting crossbreeding and mutation system that several players never found a compelling reason to use. Clear room to push it further. | Derivative by DesignNobody minds — “literally They Are Billions but with dinosaurs” was offered as praise. But if you’ve played that to death, a lot of this will feel very familiar before the flying enemies arrive. |
The Verdict
Repterra delivers a compelling mix of base-building and dinosaur combat that scratches both the strategy and survival itches. That was our read during Early Access, and 1.0 has since tightened it considerably — three factions, a level editor, Workshop support and a brutal endgame Volcano map all arrived on the way out.
What makes it worth playing rather than merely worth comparing is the flying and swimming enemies. Removing terrain abuse as an auto-win strips out the one strategy that trivialises this genre, and forces you to actually think about defence in three directions rather than one. That, plus a hundred thousand dinosaurs running at a stable frame rate, is a genuinely good pitch.
The problems are progression and polish. Point-gated map unlocks make you re-clear old ground to reach new, faction identities blur as perks accumulate, wave balance is still settling, and breeding remains a system in search of a reason. None of it is fatal; all of it is fixable, and Chute Apps have been shipping updates at pace.
The honest read: if you liked They Are Billions and want more of it with a meaningful twist, buy it — especially at the launch discount. The air and water units alone justify the ticket for anyone who found that game’s wall-cheese meta stale.
If you’re expecting Age of Empires-style skirmish or PvP, wait. It isn’t here, it’s the most requested addition, and the campaign structure is the whole game right now.
A confident, well-optimised take on a formula that deserved iterating on. MicroProse picked a good one.
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