Since childhood, MeinMMO author Ody has been fascinated by real-time strategy – and dinosaurs! One of his favorite RTS games was accordingly a game from Germany that combines both. 20 years after its release, he takes another look and realizes: He completely missed one of the best aspects of the game.
The RTS is called ParaWorld – a name I had completely forgotten for a long time. Because as much as I loved the game as a child, I played it very little. My then-PC simply couldn’t handle the (in my child’s eyes incredibly good) 3D graphics of the title. When I finally had a more powerful computer that could run the game, I was without the installation CD for a long time.
What always stuck in my mind was the unique setting: humans not only fighting against dinosaurs and other extinct animals, but also alongside them. Huge long-necked dinosaurs, with archers shooting at enemies from their backs and chariots pulled by giant deer – these images have imprinted themselves on me forever.
Now I’ve played the game for the first time in a very long time – and it was definitely worth it!
ParaWorld is even better than I remembered
While it’s often the case with old games that they looked better and played better in our memories, I didn’t have this feeling with ParaWorld at all. On the contrary: It still feels better today than I remembered! I’m just playing the version from back then, without any mods.
The biggest surprise for me was experiencing the story campaign of the game for the first time. As a child, I didn’t even know there was one! I had only thrown myself into simple skirmishes against the AI, thus completely overlooking one of the best aspects of the game.
The premise of ParaWorld resembles a really good B-movie: a group of researchers has found clues that there is a parallel world to ours. They set off on an expedition to explore it – financed by a suspiciously sinister businessman. In fact, our team should have been more careful because they are betrayed and stuck in the parallel world.
Now we need to find our way back to our own world. The banter between the researchers is quite entertaining because they not only have their own personalities, but really crazy lore comes along with it. Thus, the actual home of the dinosaurs is that parallel world.
The reason we have fossils in our world? Well, from time to time, some of these animals wandered into our world – as I said, a B-movie plot, but funny.
Worth a look even after 20 years
The story is told in elaborate cutscenes presented in the game engine. While these may not look brand new anymore, thanks to expressive animations, the characters still appear lively despite the acute lack of polygons.
I was also very surprised by the variety of prehistoric animals that are actually depicted here – both as wild animals and as powerful units. There’s a mammoth that carries a huge ballista on its back, shooting entire tree trunks over long distances. Stegosaurus and sauropods, on the other hand, are fortresses on four legs, where you can station your soldiers on platforms on their backs.
There are also three factions in the game, each with a unique look, playstyle, and their own roster of prehistoric animals:
- The Northern People, a mix of Vikings and Celts with various Ice Age animals like mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, but also some dinosaurs
- The nomadic tribe of the Desert Riders, who have a range of dinosaurs from small velociraptors to large sauropods
- The Japanese-inspired Dragon Clan, which mainly relies on smaller dinosaurs but has more modern technologies. The Dragon Clan is the only one that uses gunpowder
ParaWorld is one of those games that I just can’t understand how it couldn’t become a hit. The game is bursting with creativity, and the gameplay is still good by today’s standards – although not the best you’ve ever seen.
A great game without a happy ending
Unfortunately, the game was the death knell for the Berlin developer studio “Spieleentwicklungskombinat Ost” (short SEK Ost). ParaWorld is said to have cost a total of 8 million euros in production (according to WELT). In 2026, when the game was released, that was a record sum for a German studio. In the end, it sold only about 100,000 copies – not good enough to recoup its high costs.
And here lies the major problem of ParaWorld: The game is now only playable with difficulty, as it is not available from common retailers like Steam, GOG, or the Epic Games Store. This means: If you want to play ParaWorld, you have to rely on second-hand markets like eBay and Rebuy and hope that it is currently being offered for sale. If you’re lucky like I am, you might get the game there for a small price of 2-5 €.
Do you have any memories of ParaWorld that you would like to share? Or are you perhaps encouraged to try out the game? Feel free to let us know in the comments. Currently, MeinMMO author Ody is on a real nostalgia trip regarding old real-time strategy games. One of his other favorites is celebrating a comeback in spirit: A strategy game from my childhood was dead for 19 years, now it gets a spiritual successor on Steam
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