Prehistoric Pit

Prehistoric Pit is a bullet heaven roguelite in which you play as a dinosaur facing waves of Ice Age mammals. Your weapons fire automatically while you steer, dodge and choose upgrades. A run lasts about 30 minutes and ends with a meteor; if you die, the run is over, with no revive.

Build your loadout

You choose from 25 weapons and 23 fossils, but can equip only four of each per run. You start with two weapon slots and two fossil slots, unlocking the third and fourth slots by surviving and killing enough in a single run. Each weapon and fossil stays with you until the run ends, with no swapping or selling back, so you have to choose between competing options such as armor or speed, critical hits or coverage, and reach or raw damage. Seven weapons scale with stats not usually built for offense: Amber Shards with Thorns, Slipstream with movement speed, Aegis Slam with armor, and Sanguine Vine with maximum HP are among them. Tank and glass-cannon builds can both deal damage, but use different weapons.

Take any of the 25 weapons to level 30 and find its matching relic to evolve it. Laser Eyes become the Pineal Eye, a floating third eye that hunts targets; a fireball becomes Phoenix Bloom, a bone volley becomes the Gravewaker, and a bite becomes the Tyrant's Maw. Each evolution retains what its base weapon has earned, but still takes up one of your four weapon slots.

Play as a dinosaur

The nine playable dinosaurs are T-Rex, Triceratops, Velociraptor, Ankylosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Carnotaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Pteranodon and Stegosaurus. Each has an exclusive starting weapon, an active ability and a passive. The Ankylosaurus holds its ground in the middle of the crowd, the Pteranodon avoids being where enemies are, and the Stegosaurus turns its spikes into a bleed that scales with Thorns. Only the T-Rex is available at the start; the other eight are unlocked through actions in a run, such as surviving five minutes for the Triceratops or dealing a billion damage in one run for the Pteranodon.

Survive the pit

Wolves, hyaenodons, oviraptors, entelodonts and woolly rhinos arrive in waves that grow denser every minute. A woolly mammoth appears as a miniboss, and the third stage pits you against a rhino and an entelodont boss at the same time.

The pit changes as you progress: stage one is open ground, while stages two and three surround you with ash and lava around a volcano. A meteor then hits the volcano and blows it apart, leaving a crater where you fight the Megapithecus.

Quests and difficulty

Progress comes from 114 quests tied to actions during runs, including survival time, kills, damage dealt and bosses killed. Completing a quest in a run you lose still unlocks its permanent reward, which can include dinosaurs, weapons, fossils, relics and extra slots. There is no gold shop or grind currency.

The game has four difficulty tiers. Killing a boss unlocks the next tier, which brings tougher enemies and better loot. The fourth tier has no quests left to pursue and is for seeing how long your build can last.

Leaderboards

Steam leaderboards track time, kills and character.