Prehistoric Kingdom offers so much potential in the Early Access test, but also so little gameplay. Does the building game stand a chance of becoming the Jurassic World of our dreams?
Imagine going to a fucking dinosaur park – but being totally unimpressed and bad-tempered during your visit because there are just too few bins. This is exactly the kind of madness I love about park-building games. So as soon as I hear the words “park” and “construction”, I’m actually immediately hooked. And then when someone also quietly whispers “design options”, I’m unstoppable.
Jurassic World Evolution in 2018 was a real dream come true for me as a confirmed dinosaur fan – but one I woke up from pretty quickly, because especially in terms of design freedom, it was quite a disappointment. This made me and other park lovers all the more emotional at the first trailer of Prehistoric Kingdom, which looked suspiciously like the Jurassic World we had always wished for:
Prehistoric Kingdom promises creative freedom like from Planet Zoo, the breeding of own dino species and additionally also primeval mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers. We took a close look at the build-up hope in Early Access – and were left with mixed feelings. So far, the project is bursting with potential – but also has gaping holes that urgently need to be filled. We reveal what you can currently get in Early Access.
Table of Contents
A building dream or nightmare?
Yes, the first look at the building menu is a real feast for the eyes. Here, countless modular geometric shapes are waiting to be assembled into impressive buildings and decorations such as signs, odds and ends and even special effects like fire directly stimulate the imagination for exciting building projects. But if you don’t want to build every outhouse yourself, there are also a handful of presets that can be set up and either used directly as they are or edited further.
In the terraforming menu, too, there is no end to the enthusiasm. With the help of six different tools, you can create trenches, mountains, craters, ponds and rivers. Planting trees is a real pleasure, because you can select one or more tree species of a climate zone and thus create varied and organic-looking forests with different tree densities. It is also easy to remove only certain tree species with the mouse click using the removal tool, without directly deleting all the plants in the area – we could have gone on like this for hours!
After a short time, however, building also turns out to be a mechanic with many teething problems. The back button is still complete nonsense, as it creates strange hills and holes in the ground where there were none before. Many of the modular objects are stuck in the ground and have to be moved and rotated on the Y-axis before they become visible on the screen. The fact that doors, for example, are stuck horizontally underground by default makes the process rather annoying in the long run.
Theoretically, all modular objects can be rotated, scaled, moved, arranged in groups and duplicated at will – however, if you are not an expert in 3D programmes such as Blender or Maya, you will sit in front of the menu rather perplexed due to the lack of explanation. Even “just building a simple shelter” can thus degenerate into a project lasting several hours, with constant swearing and an urgent need for a headache tablet at the end. What’s missing here is a comprehensive and comprehensible building tutorial on the one hand – and a clearer menu structure on the other.
We are groping in the dark
But numerous annoying bugs are currently eating away at the building fun. Objects refuse to snap to the grid, new buildings can’t be reasonably attached to existing ones and path textures don’t match modular floor plates. Grass also grows through objects and when it comes to functionality, it is absolutely not recognisable what can be used by guests and animals at all and where you have obstructed.
All this would perhaps only be half as bad if the lights didn’t go out every few minutes. At normal speed, an in-game day only lasts a little more than 5 minutes, and at night you are in total blackness. Actually, there is a function in the menu to deactivate the day/night change, but it doesn’t work yet. You can press the pause button while you’re building, but since sooner or later you’ll want to release dinos and have to hatch them, this is only a temporary solution.
If you are unlucky, it will also start raining in the few hours of daylight. Then everything remains hard to see and your wet grass starts to look a bit like plastic. Although some sunrises in Prehistoric Kingdom look quite atmospheric, the wind and weather effects are still lacking.
You might be wondering why we’re going on about the building menu and not getting to the park management. The answer is: There is not much more than building in the game at the moment.
What you get – and what you don’t
Those who download Prehistoric Kingdom now in Early Access get 23 animal species, three playable maps (Great Britain, Costa Rica and Spain), a sandbox mode, a challenge mode and a short tutorial. The latter is very rudimentary, however, and reveals nothing about the construction mode, for example. There is currently no campaign and guest management or finances do not really play a role yet.
So far, guests roam around the park without taking any notice of the dinosaurs – or the great buildings that we have built by the sweat of our brow. The dinos and mammoths look great and lifelike, but currently only have three very functional animations for walking, eating and lying down. So this is definitely where we hope to see more human-animal interaction in the future to create an atmosphere that is as believable as it is atmospheric.
The care of the animals runs broadly as you know it from park simulations. Each species of dinosaur or mammal needs a certain planting, diet, shelter, entertainment and water. In addition, excrement disposal must be taken care of. However, there is currently no interaction with other inhabitants in the enclosure or aggressive behaviour. Nor do you have to worry about animal deaths, spectacular escapes or safety in the park in Early Access. Visitors won’t even get mildly excited if an eight-ton T-Rex suddenly crosses their path.
You can also unlock and breed new dinosaur species. Each species is then available in different colour variations, which can also influence the needs of your primeval giants. Actual genetics, which you can use to influence the personality of the dinos, is still a thing of the future.
Why Prehistoric Kingdom could still be really big
So, that was a lot of complaining. But despite all the annoyances and still missing features, we still have to state: Prehistoric Kingdom has infinite potential. Because almost all of the criticism we can currently voice in Early Access is part of the developers’ extensive (Roadmap). In May, for example, new animations are to follow and guest interactions are also scheduled for an update planned for June.
This will be followed later in the year by guest management, new maps, new species, social needs for animals, diseases, management of staff, genetics and numerous improvements. In other words: Prehistoric Kingdom still has the chance to become a grandiose building game that puts Jurassic World Evolution in its pocket. But it also has the potential to fail along the way.
If you’re already in Early Access, you have to be aware that you’re definitely not getting a finished game for 25 euros. But after all, that’s the whole point of Early Access – and building games in particular have often proven in the past that this additional development phase is good for them.
If the development runs smoothly, the player feedback is implemented and the roadmap is adhered to (an Early Access of one and a half to two years is currently planned), then a grandiose building game could await you here at some point – but you should also be aware that Prehistoric Kingdom is currently still very far away from that.
Preliminary rating box
Editors’ Verdict
Early Access or no Early Access? We asked this question of faith in the team just the other day and the answer couldn’t have been more ambiguous. Whether one is willing and perhaps even enjoys witnessing the beginnings of an unfinished game live and getting more content step by step is absolutely a matter of taste.
What I can say, though, is that for me it’s the only game at the moment that has the potential to be something Jurassic World Evolution never became: a dino-building game with almost limitless design possibilities. So I’m keeping all my fingers crossed.
