Who hasn’t grown up having a favorite dinosaur when they were a kid? I’m sure those same people remember watching “Jurassic Park,” seeing dinosaurs be resurrected and put into an amusement park only to have it go horribly wrong. Now a game is in the works where you can run your own dinosaur amusement park. That game is “Jurassic World Evolution.”
It starts you off on 1 of 5 islands for you to start building your own dinosaur attraction with a set of buildings that are already built and ready to go.
One is to provide electricity, another is for researching dinosaur DNA. Once your research on a particular dinosaur has reached 50 percent, you can start its incubation which will require a separate building that you build as part of the tutorial.
As your research on a genome increases, you can start adding enhanced traits to make them stronger, prolong their lifespan and customize their appearances. But if you chose to add more traits, it will get more expensive, but the benefits will make it worthwhile.
If you want more dinosaurs, you’ll need to send out an expedition team to different parts of the world to find fossils to bring back so you can research the dinosaur’s DNA. Different dinosaurs inhabited different parts of the world (i.e. the Triceratops inhabited North America) so if you want a specific dinosaur, you’ll have to go to a specific part of the world. Some will be locked until you’ve reached a certain level.
Once you create a dinosaur, you’ll need to build an enclosure for it to live in. As you progress and get more money, you can buy more sturdier fences to minimize the risk of them escaping.
Dinosaurs have their own unique needs in terms of habitats. You’ll be able to modify the land within an enclosure to satisfy their needs. You can plant trees, level the land, build hills, manage how much space they have and put in a body of water. Doing all of this will help ensure their survival.
You can’t have only one dinosaur in an enclosure. Not only is it boring for your guests, but the dinosaurs themselves need to socialize with their own kind just like any other animal. Also, disease can spread amongst them, so medical care must be put into consideration.
Let’s not forget about dinosaurs that are serious carnivores. While it can be easier to manage herbivores since they won’t be eating each other, carnivores can be difficult because they will want to eat other dinosaurs (and probably your guests as well). You can however put in feeders to help satisfy their appetite, but don’t assume that’s a guarantee that they’ll leave other dinosaurs and your guests alone.
There are three main divisions in the game. Science, entertainment, and security. Each one will give you contracts to do so you can increase your reputation with that division. These divisions will be wanting your attention, but you can do work for all three of them.
You will however need to find a certain balance between them that works for you. If you keep ignoring a certain division, they won’t be happy with you. Once you complete their contracts, not only will it reward you with money and reputation, each division can give you their own unique rewards depending on who you’re working for and what contract you’re working on.
Then there’s profit. Since this is an amusement park, you’ll need to keep an eye on how much money you’re making. The more successful your park is, the more profit you generate over time. If you need some quick cash, you can sell fossils you’ve found that you don’t need or want, or you can start doing more contracts.
As you make more money and start leveling up, you can put in more buildings and unlock new islands to expand your park, but it will also unlock new challenges as well.
Don’t forget your guests. Even with top notch security, you’ll be running the constant risk of these dinosaurs escaping and wreaking havoc on your guests. The game will remind you that these actions have consequences. You’ll also need to find ways to keep them entertained so you can make more money.
The developers and publishers, Frontier Developments, put in some serious time and effort to decide on what dinosaurs should be included in the game. They read all the books, watched all the movies to figure out what dinosaurs should be put in. They will even add some that haven’t been used before, so you have some new dinosaurs to look forward too.
It will also include some classic characters from the “Jurassic Park” world like Dr. Ian Malcolm (voiced by Jeff Goldblum) along with some new ones.
On June 12, you will be able to bring an extinct species back to life while putting who knows how many people at risk for the sake of profit. What could possibly go wrong?
Samuel Christian
Intern