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Dev Diary: March 2025





Welcome to the March Development Update!

This month, we released our trailer for Update 14, showing off a variety of baby animals coming to the game. This update will be arriving April 24th, with the Public Testing Branch (PTB) version coming to Steam on April 2nd.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As always, the PTB version is intended to catch various issues and get feedback on new features. Not all animals will have ontogeny and the content itself will be in various stages of completion, lacking sounds, animations, skins and other things.



It’s officially 24 days until Update 14 is properly released and yet all of the features are effectively done! For the next few weeks, it’s a matter of finishing the content, polishing, bug fixing and making various tweaks to get this update exactly where we want it.

While there’s a list of changes we’ll be working on until release, one of our favorites is an expansion to our animal thumbnails, with an aim to include renders for babies, sexual dimorphism and genetic mutations. Especially with ontogeny, this is going to make it a lot easier to find specific animals! It also works for the Animal Holder, so you’ll know if you have an albino before it’s even in the park.





Update 14

[h2]Baby Animals[/h2]
It’s a new month, so it must be time to show off more baby animals. Today, we’ll be sharing a bunch from our Discord, starting with the highly requested Spinosaurus! These tiny croco-saurs lack many of the features found in the adult versions, such as their tall crests and giant sails.

Adorably, they even move around with their tails raised, demonstrating how much more nimble the young ones are.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The sauropodlets of Camarasaurus grandis, however, are what you might expect! With proportionally shorter necks and softer features, these babies sport similar coloration to the adults with banded faces and more abundant patterning.



Next, Ankylosaurus has to be one of our favorites! Despite their size, these grumbles are still miniature tanks, though that iconic tail club hasn’t grown in yet. This is also one of the few species that we’d like to create a baby-specific sculpt for, removing various wrinkles and smoothing out their osteoderms. Keep an eye out for that in the future!



Plateosaurus gracilis is another favorite of ours. With the adult having clown-like face colors, we wanted to make the juveniles equally bold. Their cookies and creme patterning evokes a similar vibe to the adult, while making us slightly hungry, too!



Finally, here’s a look at our Sinotherium! Like their modern relatives, the horn on this baby rhino is yet to grow in, leaving a small protrusion on its head.



[h2]Animal Herding & Social Groups[/h2]
That’s right, animal herding is coming to Update 14 - surprise!!! You thought it was the next update, but we actually snuck it in for this one.

So, how does it work? Animals that are adolescents or older will be eligible to join a social group. At random, the game will pick a group leader, allowing them to decide where the herd will go or what they’ll do. For example, if the group leader decides to rest or drink, herd members will follow and attempt to do the same thing.

This level of herd cohesion is something that we can vary per species, making animals like Dryosaurus very tight knit, while a pair of T. rex are more independent from each other.



To check if your animals are in a social group, we’ve added a new tab to the animal information panel! Here, you can find the group leader, group members and see how many babies are associated with this group.



[h3]Adoptive Parenting[/h3]
Rather than taking up slots in a social group, baby animals are instead adopted by adults, creating a more realistic herd structure. Within these new family units, babies will follow their parents until reaching adolescence, eventually disbanding to find a proper social group. While growing up, though, they’ll do their best to stick near an adult. It’s pretty cute watching them cluster up!

Non-final thumbnail renders!

In the case that babies cannot find an adult (oh no), they’ll cleverly form their own clutch, following a leader much like a regular social group.

[h3]Animal Awareness & Socialization[/h3]
Finally, we’ve implemented the first version of animal awareness. In this update, animals will be able to speak to one another, offering a call and response. They’ll prioritise group members, but can occasionally call to other species or animals outside of their group. This behavior can only happen if the animals can see or hear each other.

Animals will also use sad calls when they have unmet needs, or if their welfare is really low, let out an angry bellow. For our fearsome Leaellynasaura, it’s more like an angry rat.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In the future, we want to introduce look-targets/head IK that would allows animals to look at each other, making it more obvious who they’re talking to. We also want to reuse the sad and angry calls as a way for animals to react to each other e.g. “get away from my herd!”

[h3]All Together Now![/h3]
You probably want to see all this in action, so we’ve prepared a short video showcasing a couple of species and different scenarios. In this video you can also catch a glimpse of animal locomotion V3, an update focused on smoothing out movement and adding a trot animation for every animal! It’s still very much work in progress, so we’re hoping to improve it more by April 24.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Update 15 (The Next, Next Update)

So, since we managed to sneak herding into Update 14, what’s the plan for 15? Well, while we can’t get too specific just yet, our goal is to further enhance the animals with new behaviors and animations to make them even more lively.

Notably, this includes expanding the social and herding behaviors to feature a more dynamic social hierarchy with things like threat displays. There’s a lot that we can do, and we’re excited to finally begin exploring this side of Prehistoric Kingdom. With that said…

[h2]New Species[/h2]
There’s a new species on the horizon and they’re, uh, flocking this way. It’s everyone’s favorite chicken mimic, the Gallimimus!



Although the first ornithomimid in Early Access may have been Deinocheirus, Gallimimus has had an even longer history with Prehistoric Kingdom, namely being part of our first two demos ever! It’s certainly been a while, but we’re overjoyed to see Gallimimus finally come home. We’ve missed you!



[h2]Paleobotany[/h2]
Let’s take a look at even more paleobotany arriving in Update 15! Below, you’ll find the last few foliage species coming to the Scrubland biome. This includes a relative to the modern monkey puzzle tree, araucaria!



When you combine all the Scrubland plants together, you get a pretty cool environment! All that’s missing is a Stegosaurus hiding amongst the cycads.



With Scrubland out of the way, our attention turns to a different type of land, the Wetland! For this biome, we have a lot of plants that are intended to sit in shallow waters or on top of the water’s surface.



In addition to the water-based plants above, we’re also going to have giant horsetails! This plant is quite a bit larger than its modern counterpart that’s currently in the game. Think somewhere between reeds and bamboo.



This brings us to our final plant for today and it’s a peculiar one! It’s not a palm nor a mangrove, but actually a fern. We especially love this one and hope you will, too!





Update 16 (The Next, Next… Next Update)

[h2]New Terrarium Species[/h2]
To close out this Dev Diary, we have a new terrarium species to share with you! Meet the adorable Simosuchus, a tiny crocodilian from the Late Cretaceous. This armored pug is believed to have been herbivorous due to its short snout and unique teeth! We’d still suggest keeping your hands away from its mouth, though, they’re quite nippy.




Created by W3


Created by ASSASSINSPINO


Created by W3


Created by Alkhan



Thank you for reading March’s dev diary!

To recap, Update 14’s PTB is on April 2nd while the actual update comes out April 24th. We hope you’re excited to finally play it and await your feedback!

- The PK Team

Update 14 arriving April 24!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Update 14 is coming next month on April 24!

An early version of this release will be available on the Public Testing Branch starting April 2, allowing the team to gather bug reports while we polish Update 14 and add the last few assets.

[h2]Baby Animals & Seamless Growth[/h2]


The headline features for Update 14 are the brand new baby animals and their seamless growth systems, allowing players to watch their animals morph and change in real time!

It was important to us that babies weren’t simply scaled down adults. Throughout their life, they’ll adjust their size, proportions, colors, sounds and even behavior over time. We’ve been working hard to create a new set of animations and sounds exclusively for use by the babies.

Seamless growth will be available for all of our current and future species, excluding any Mini-Exhibit or Terrarium bound creatures like the tiny Archaeopteryx and Microraptor.

  • INCUBATION
    From the Animal Nursery, players can choose to incubate their animals from any age, easily allowing them to create babies, adults or anything in between.

    You can also pick the maximum maturity of an animal, too! This means that as an animal grows up, it can continue to look young despite its age increasing.

  • BABY BEHAVIORS
    Depending on the species, babies will instinctively seek out a parent to adopt them! They’ll try to stick close to their guardian, or if unable to find one, stay with other unadopted babies as a clutch.

    At the end of Early Access, we would like to include breeding as a mechanic that adult animals can use to create natural offspring.

[h2]First Person Mode[/h2]


First Person Mode allows players to experience their park from a whole new perspective, dropping down to the eye level of a human.

In this mode, players can run, jump and crouch like you’d expect from any other first person game. We even added a few interactions like sitting in benches, opening/closing habitat gates and looking through binoculars to see what your guests see!



The full patch notes will be available once the update goes live.

See you soon, park managers!

Dev Diary: February 2025





Welcome to the February Development Update!

It’s almost been 65 million years since the last blogpost! Or has it? Thanks to your support, we’ve been releasing mini-status reports every Wednesday over on our Patreon. These reports include exclusive baby reveals, concept art and weekly information about what we’re working on. While some of the Patreon content will be shown in this Dev Diary, there’s still a few things that we won’t be showing here.

To touch on when we last spoke about our financial situation, we wanted to take a moment and thank you for your help. Your support on Patreon has not only helped us immensely, but shown us just how important our project is to this community. If you can help spread the word or afford to offer a donation, the team would appreciate it greatly.

For now though, Prehistoric Kingdom is not going extinct. ♥



[h2]Ontogeny Progress[/h2]
It’s been all hands on deck this last month preparing Ontogeny for Update 14. In terms of art, around 40 of the 58 babies are in advanced stages of completion. Most of the remaining production time will be spent on finishing their skins, animations and sounds.



On the technical side, every day presents a new challenge to overcome. Since we change the physical proportions of our animals as they grow, this has a huge impact on various animations like sitting and walking around. Our amazing programmers have been developing new tech to help support our seamless growth systems, allowing us to:
  • Correct limb IKs with age
  • Reposition the vertical offset of young animals while resting, rolling and sleeping
  • Reproject root motion to better sync movement speed to their new leg lengths
  • Swap between navmesh sizes as animals get bigger
  • Prevent animals from growing if a space is too small
  • Swap locomotion and key animations as animals age up

We’ve also improved the way we handle animal selection with an optimized set of colliders that scale and stretch based on age. This lets us keep the selection accurate regardless of an animal’s current growth stage.



Thinking about all the implications that come with seamless growth, there’s a good reason why games haven’t really done this before! It has to scale, it has to react and it’s a big technical hurdle to solve. But, we’re giving it our best shot and are proud of the results thus far.

[h2]Free Patreon Post: Ontogeny Audio[/h2]
If you’d like to learn about how we’re approaching audio for ontogeny, be sure to check out a free blog post we put up on our Patreon last month! It outlines the problems, requirements and the solutions needed to keep asset development and implementation scalable.



[h2]Update 14’s Release Window[/h2]
Once we’ve gotten Update 14 in a more playable state, we’ll start to push early versions to the Public Testing Branch on Steam. While we’re not quite ready to begin this yet, you can expect to hear more next month as we get closer to Update 14’s release window in late April.

With how big this update is, we want to give ourselves some decent runway to ensure there aren’t any babies missing from the update. It’ll also be just in time for our Early Access anniversary!



Update 14

[h2]Baby Animals[/h2]
This month, we’re pleased to unveil even more babies! These are but a handful of the animals already shown on Patreon, so if you can’t wait for Update 14, go check that out.

Up first is the massive Paraceratherium and its much smaller relative, Juxia. These little ones are almost like a baby rhino and tapir rolled into one with their prehensile lips and big ears.



Next up are the fan favourites Parasaurolophus and Charonosaurus. Each species has a unique pattern to help them transition into their adult coloration, making them quite distinct from one another. If you look close, you can even spot a tiny nub on their head!



Finally, the most scrungly one of all, Deinocheirus! We knew from the start that Deino simply had to have baby bird energy. Our artists looked at animals like juvenile pelicans, roseate spoonbills and flamingos to find the perfect level of freak. What a funky fellow!



With the baby Deinocheirus ready, one of our artists, Ida, was able to recreate her classic meme with PK flavoring.



If you’re looking for something really cute, though, we also shared the babies for the woolly rhino, Dilophosaurus, Dryosaurus and Velociraptor on our socials!



We’ve also refined the Megaloceros fawn since its reveal earlier in the month. There are some fur fixes that we stilll need to make, but it looks more like a young deer now. Thank you for your feedback!



To cap off this section, let’s take a look at some seamless growth! Please note that any stuttering is due to processing time steps since the increased speed is unrealistically fast. During normal gameplay, this effect is imperceptible.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Alt Species Changes[/h2]
Thanks to recent tech advancements, we’re also taking the time to improve the visual differences of alternate species in Update 14. This means corrected proportions and more accurate shapes for many animals, such as the two Smilodon species.

Below, you can see that populator is much more robust than fatalis with its bulkier build. Fatalis is sleek with a skinnier face, limbs and reduced shoulders. We even gave it cheek ruffs from the original concept art!

We’ll be reducing the fur length on populator’s ears!

In the case of Camarasaurus, each species will have a different head shape and silhouette. From left to right, grandis is the skinniest species with a rounded head. Supremus almost resembles a Brachiosaur with a bulbous skull, short neck spines and a thick neck. Lentus maintains much of the current Camarasaurus, acting as a middleground between the three.



Of course, you can expect to see similar changes for all the other alt species like the Parasaurs, Pachyrhinosaurus and others. Some changes may be less extreme than others, but the team is excited to get these animals feeling more unique.

[h2]First Person Mode[/h2]
Since we initially revealed the prototype last month, we’ve seen a lot of great comments about this feature. We’re happy to say that not only is first person mode now functionally complete, but we even had time to sneak in a few object interactions, too!

While running around the park, players will be able to sit on benches, swap between seats, look through binoculars and open/close gates to enter habitats. Any music that’s currently playing will also be given a radio-like effect!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Eventually we’d love to include some simple park management gameplay and make animals respond to the player in first person, but for Update 14 we think this is already a lovely little feature. It helps to appreciate a park from new perspectives!

[h2]Gameplay Changes[/h2]
Rounding out our progress on U14, we’ve been making a few targeted gameplay adjustments now that ontogeny is coming to the game.

  • Animal Creation
    Animals are now incubated asynchronously in the Animal Nursery. This means that rather than waiting for one after the other, all incubating animals will progress at the same time. We’ll likely lengthen adult incubation times a little to compensate, but it definitely feels better to have a group of animals be ready together.
  • Animal Points
    The base appeal of an animal has been rebalanced so that it’s calculated on an animal’s current mass and perceived popularity. This will help make things a little more objective when it comes to balancing, as we previously made the numbers up based on vibe.

    As a side effect, base appeal now slightly varies for each individual due to their differences in mass. A small adult T. rex will be slightly less appealing than a large one, for example.
  • Excavation System
    Widespread animals such as Edmontosaurus regalis and various mammals can now be found in multiple dig sites. Excavation progress will be carried between all the other dig sites a species is present in. We’re also looking to retune excavation costs and speeds to make them feel like more of a long term investment.
  • Staff Dispatch Improvements

    The way staff are automatically assigned to tasks has been improved to hopefully make job completion more reliable. Back to work, slackers!




The Future

[h3]Paleobotany[/h3]
To wrap up this Dev Diary, let’s take a look at some of the other paleo plants that’ve been worked on. As a reminder, don’t forget that paleobotany will be coming after Update 14!

Below, you’ll find a coastal biome conifer from throughout the Mesozoic, Elatides! This tree will come with a bunch of variations, including one that splits off into two trunks.



Next up are two scrubland plants from the Jurassic, Kimuriella and Korallipteris! We think these two go well together, giving off an arid yet somewhat alien vibe.



Finally, here’s a quick look at one of the oldest plants in the world, the cycad! This family has been around since the Permian, almost 300 million years ago. Despite this, many species can be found all over the world today.




Created by W3


Created by ASSASSINSPINO


Created by Emerson Hul (@ps_arts_official on Instagram)



Thank you for reading February's dev diary!

We’ll be back again at the end of March for our next dev diary. Each week until then though, we’ll continue posting to our Patreon to provide small status updates as work continues on Update 14.

- The PK Team

Prehistoric Kingdom - Patch (EA 1.10.50)



Welcome, Park Managers!

In this small fix patch we are targeting a couple of the more egregious animal bugs, leaving the game in a more stable state until the next major update (Update 14) is released. Enjoy!

Full Patch Notes

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

Dev Diary: January 2025





Welcome to the January Development Update!

It’s a fresh year with new features on the horizon. We’ve been steadily working on improving the animals behind the scenes with work on ontogeny, sociality and combat for 2025. The thing is though, we actually need your help.

Patreon and Our Future

As a niche indie project, development funding can be hard to access, especially through the Early Access period when most potential customers understandably hold off from buying the game until it's complete.

Currently, the majority of our funds are generated during major Steam sales, but revenue can otherwise leave us spread too thin to have the financial security necessary to pay the entire team or commission new work from our artists. This has put us in a tough position, having to weigh our vision for the game against what's financially viable.

We currently have an active team of around a dozen people all in different roles, with some of our core members voluntarily taking staggered or reduced payment to keep us moving forward. This isn’t sustainable, and is why we’re looking to Patreon.



By opening a Patreon, we’re hoping to help ensure that development remains stable throughout the remainder of Early Access. As of this Dev Diary, we have 7 major updates left to complete before we can consider the game ready to leave Early Access.

Beyond keeping the game alive, the main benefit of becoming a patron will be access to exclusive polls, sneak peeks and our weekly development summaries that provide an informal look at what we’ve been up to. Our monthly Dev Diaries won’t be going anywhere, but certain things from the Patreon will be kept exclusive.

If you are in a position to help support the longevity of Prehistoric Kingdom through Patreon, we would be incredibly grateful. We appreciate everything the community has helped us build over the years, whether it was Kickstarter, buying our game during Early Access or even cheering us on from the sideline. You helped us get this far. Thank you!

[h3]Artbook & OST Available on Patreon[/h3]

As a final note, Volume 1 of the Artbook and Soundtrack are now available to purchase as standalone products on Patreon if you don’t use Steam. They’re also included in certain Patreon membership levels!





Assuming we’re able to secure more funding, we’ve updated our roadmap to Early Access release with an emphasis on animals. It can’t come all at once, but step by step we plan to incrementally improve the animals until they are properly completed. This begins with Ontogeny, coming in Update 14.

Update 14

[h2]Ontogeny[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Update 14 will feature the first iteration of ontogeny, bringing baby animals to Prehistoric Kingdom. Using an age slider in the Animal Nursery, players will be able to preview the growth of a species and create animals at a specific age. When placed in the park, they’ll grow from a baby to an adult!

Here’s a sped-up demonstration of how growth works, using the Mammoth as an example. Note how there are no model swaps or sharp transitions! Instead, its proportions, shape and skin seamlessly change over time.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We’re still working on the little guy, but here’s an upclose look at the current baby Mammoth. They’re certainly different without their massive tusks!



To make babies extra cute, they’ll have their own locomotion to make them bouncier and more wobbly than the adults. It definitely makes the T. rex much less intimidating!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Babies like those of the cave lion are especially adorable! We love how these little kittens came out with their soft faces and massive paws. We bet they just can’t wait to be king.



On a technical level, we’re implementing ontogeny so that upcoming behaviors such as sociality and combat can factor it in from the start. It also allows us to observe how babies fit into the gameplay loop before more advanced features such as breeding are added at the end of Early Access.



As mentioned in a previous diary, one of the benefits of this approach is enhanced sexual dimorphism. For things like mammoths, we can stop their growth early to give females shorter tusks. It’ll certainly make herds look even more diverse!



[h2]First Person Mode[/h2]
This highly requested feature will let players explore their park from the eyes of a human: walking, running and jumping their way around the zoo!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We’d really like for players to be able to interact with attractions such as binoculars and in a later update, incorporate basic managerial tasks such as refilling feeders or cleaning dung in exchange for an upfront cost. We feel this would not only increase the sense of Prehistoric Kingdom being your zoo, but provide a more active way for players to engage with the park itself alongside staff.



The Future

[h2]Sociality and Herding[/h2]
Most of sociality will revolve around herding and how animals respond to each other. Depending on things like competitiveness or the territoriality of an animal, this can result in social behavior like friendly communication, scaring off competing herds and running away from threats.

Long term, we want to focus on the herd structure and how animals move up/down the ranks. Seeing herd leaders challenged in competitive species, or animals playfully chasing each other in more social ones.



[h3]MIXED HERDS[/h3]
“Mixed herds” is a concept where small species would essentially magnetize to larger ones, as long as they’re compatible. They’re still totally independent social groups, but it mimics the commensalism that you’d find in the real world.



[h3]SOCIAL BEHAVIOR OR… SOCIAL ANIMATION?[/h3]
A question we often see is if Prehistoric Kingdom will have “social animations”. This refers to the idea of a highly choreographed/synced animation between two animals, usually showcasing some sort of “canned” physical interaction.

At this stage, we will be focusing on social behavior (animal AI) instead. Not only are social animations out of our current budget, but they have problems with seamless ontogeny and individual size variation that can only be solved with a heavy tech investment. Regardless of those circumstances, we view social animations as more of the “cherry on top” and should not form the basis for sociality in Prehistoric Kingdom.

[h2]Combat and Hostility[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Above animations are triggered manually to test how threaten behaviors could look!

Combat is being designed as a dynamic system, making use of triggerable attacks and additive animations. This would allow animals to injure each other while moving around and perform actions such as biting or horn stabs.

It’s important for us to prioritize not only the scalability of aggressive interactions across species, but to consider the size of our team, too. Going dynamic means we can build something that’s variable and potentially more reactive for a lower cost, rather than something built around hundreds of cinematic but ultimately predetermined animations.

With that in mind, here are some mockup images using our current library of prototype animations. They depict an incoming attack, bite and hit reaction.



Below is a short animation test demonstrating how a threaten pose could be combined with locomotion and various attacks to create the appearance of an angry animal. Keep in mind that combat is in such early pre-production that we’re not worrying about polish or making it overly sophisticated yet. We just need animations to test with!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

There’s a lot to research, trial and develop before we find a definitive path forward that’s achievable for us, so we ask to keep your expectations for combat and hunting measured.

[h2]Paleobotany[/h2]


It may not surprise you, but a lot of prehistoric plants are only known from leaves! We’ve been working with Tom Parker (scientific illustrator and author, worked on Saurian!) to ensure that our interpretations are scientifically plausible. For many species, Prehistoric Kingdom will be the first time some of these plants have been recreated in 3D.

All 8 in-game biomes will offer paleobotany, though the majority of species will be going towards scrubland, tropical, wetland and coastal.

Paleobotany is currently planned to feature around 30 extinct species of foliage when it’s finished, including fan favorites such as Araucaria (monkey puzzle), Kimeriella (Zamites), and Gingkos. Below, you can see some of our first assets created for the Coastal biome.



For the Ginkgo trees, we have two different species: one from the Jurassic (Ginkgo yimaensis) and one from the Cretaceous (Ginkgo adiantoides). It’s incredible to think that Ginkgo’s date all the way back to the Carboniferous, before the dinosaurs!

We decided to give them unique growth habits to better align them to the Coastal and Temperate biomes, with the added benefit of increasing their visual diversity.



In terms of gameplay, we plan to create unique dig sites specifically for paleobotany. They’d be scattered across the world, much like our animals are. Placing compatible paleobotany within a habitat would not only provide enrichment for the animals, but increase their Animal Points rating, too. We will continue to show more plants coming with paleobotany as the year progresses!



[h2]Terrariums[/h2]


Terrariums are an upcoming set of modules that will replace the existing Mini-Exhibit system, acting as a rebrand of sorts. Like before, these facilities will house simplified versions of animals that would be otherwise difficult to include in regular habitats, typically due to their size, unique locomotion or ontogeny requirements.

Our goal with terrariums is to better integrate them into regular gameplay, expand their customization options and revisit their pipeline so it’s easier to setup new species.

[h3]CONFIGURATIONS[/h3]


Terrariums will have 3 configurations to switch between: amphibious, arboreal and terrestrial. Each configuration will change the inside of the tank, making it more comfortable for your chosen species.

  • Amphibious
    Features a shallow pool and terrain for semi-aquatic animals
  • Arboreal
    Features a set of trees for arboreal animals to perch on or jump between
  • Terrestrial
    Features elavated terrain with viewable burrows for animals to hide in


Each of these configurations will have a small (4x8) and a large (8x12) version to replace the current Mini-Aviary. The small version will be especially great for custom reptile houses or adding little installations throughout the zoo.

Very early mockup, not the final design!

Players will need to set terrariums to use the right substrate, climate setting and provide enrichment in order to satisfy their terrarium animals. Beyond these few options, we’re planning to keep the insides sparse so that players can go crazy adding their own foliage and create dedicated terrarium prefabs. There will also be null styling for further flexibility, allowing players to visually “combine” multiple terrariums or sink them into the ground.

In terms of management, Keepers will need to supply terrariums with food and clean them in order to keep your animals happy and healthy. When disease is added, terrarium animals would get sick, too.

[h3]TERRARIUM ANIMALS[/h3]
Regarding animals, Archaeopteryx and Microraptor will be joined by Compsognathus, Tiktaalik and Yi, with more being revealed later in the year. Since these critters are being rebranded to terrarium animals, it certainly opens the door for some larger species!



[h2]Flat Rides[/h2]
Inspired by real world zoos and fun fairs, we’ve begun looking into potential flat rides to add to Prehistoric Kingdom. These researchable modules would add a significant amount of Attraction Points to the park rating, giving guests something to do when they’re not watching animals behind fences.

In particular, we’ve been considering a Ferris Wheel, Theater and a Hot Air Balloon that would float straight up to give guests a good view of the park. If you had any suggestions that would fit the game’s tone, we’d love to hear them!

Creative Commons Reference Photos (with authors)





Created by Green Godzilla


Created by W.B.


Created by Roundtable



Thank you for reading January’s dev diary!

As you can see, there’s a lot of great stuff in the works but the future of Prehistoric Kingdom is uncertain. Any extra support we can get would be extremely appreciated to keep the game going. In the mean time, we will be releasing progress summaries on Patreon, with the next Dev Diary releasing at the end of February. Thank you again for all of your support thus far.

Until next time,

- The PK Team