How’s this for a tease?

“I think people are just going to really love it, and they’re going to learn a lot about a really iconic Marvel location that doesn’t get a lot of mention or play in the game.”

That’s Justin Woods, producer on Marvel: Avengers Alliance, summing up what players can expect from the online and mobile RPG’s 21st Spec Op, which goes live today. The location in question is the Savage Land, home to Ka-Zar and some forms of life you just don’t see anywhere else, even on the Marvel Earth.

“The new grunts in this location are the Hauk’ka and dinosaurs, just regular run of the mill raptors and stuff,” Woods said in a phone interview with Bam Smack Pow. “Players will be facing off against those, but they’ll also be facing off against some new super villains, namely Stegron and the High Evolutionary, some classic characters from the Savage Land setting as well.”

For people who have yet to experience Avengers Alliance on Facebook or on mobile, Spec Ops are limited time batches of content that allow players to experience side stories that award special rewards upon completion. In the case of the Savage Land, it’s also allowing Woods and his team to introduce new environments and maps into the game, which doesn’t happen as often in the seasonally structured regular story missions.

With Ka-Zar, the Spec Op’s reward hero, the developers are also testing out some unique game mechanics for the first time.

“One of the cool things about Ka-Zar specifically is that Zabu, his pet sabretooth tiger, is actually part of his character,” Woods said. “Every single attack that Ka-Zar does, Zabu also does something with him, and so they’re basically two characters in one. It’s really hard to kind of imagine because we’ve never done anything like that before, but mark my word, it’s going to be really awesome. The animation set and the animation frames are just really elaborate for Ka-Zar. He’s a very detailed character.”

Since it’s a story-driven game, there also has to be a reason for the action to move to the Savage Land, and in this case it’s due to the machinations of the High Evolutionary. It seems he’s been experimenting on the local life forms — no surprise to fans who know his M.O. from the comics — and the results are getting noticed by super-powered characters all over the morality scale.

“The High Evolutionary is testing on the local populace of dinosaurs and Hauk’ka, and that’s drawn a lot of attention from the science villain community,” Woods said. “So people like Doctor Octopus and the Lizard and those types of folks who are already in the game have also sort of journeyed down there to see what he’s up to, and to see how they can kind of get in on the action.”

The beauty of the Spec Op system is that it allows people who aren’t regular Avengers Alliance players to jump in and experience new content even if they’re brand new or haven’t played in a while. That means they’re self-contained by necessity, especially since they only stick around for a limited time. As Woods explained, it simply wouldn’t be fair to reference older Spec Ops too heavily once they’ve gone away.

They also allow the developers to get characters into the game that have yet to appear. Sometimes the tie-ins are obvious, like the August Spec Op that coincided with Guardians of the Galaxy. Others can come from the game’s community, as Woods is active on Twitter (@MAAInsiders), and his conversations with gamers can lead in some surprising directions.

“The other day, this fan introduced me to this new character Sleepwalker from the 90s,” he said. “A bunch of fans and I got to talking over Twitter about how cool this guy is, and how cool it would be to get him into MAA.”

Woods clarified that there are no plans to work Sleepwalker into any upcoming Spec Op — he’s already written outlines for the next six — but it does serve as an example of how just about anything is on the table in these updates.

Other iconic, Marvel-specific locations are on the team’s wish list for future Spec Ops, but for now, Woods hopes people just have fun with the latest one.

“Savage Land looks great,” he said. “We’re exploring some parts of the Savage Land that aren’t really well known but are beautiful and amazing. I hope fans really take the time to sit down and appreciate the Savage Land as well as the new characters, because it’s not often that we add new environments and new maps and stuff to the game, so I really hope people enjoy it.”

Marvel: Avengers Alliance is free to play on Facebook, through the iOS App Store or Google Play for Android.