I’ve always liked tycoon-style building strategies. I spent my youth in the old Zoo Tycoon, constantly return to the huge Planet Zoo, and Alpha Software Inc. I also left maybe too much time (I’m afraid of the day when the full version arrives). And when this sub-genre is mixed with dinosaurs that no one can love, this is the perfect choice. In the past we got Jurassic World Evolution 1 and 2 in this area, but now the folks at the Blue Meridian team, behind publisher Crytivo, are trying it out, bringing pre-access to their Prehistoric Kingdom. Later, I was given the opportunity to pre-test the title, and you can read my brief experience in the following lines.
- Platform: PC
- Publication date: April 27 (Pre-Access)
- Director: blue meridian
- Genre: Construction strategy / tycoon
- Czech location: Not
- Multiplayer: Not
- Availability: 7+
- Price: €24.99 (620 CZK) on Steam
Pole, meadow, dinosaur
If you choose to go through Pre-Access, you will be able to start your efforts in one of two main modes. The first one is called the Challenge, where you choose from one of the three vast maps available (England, Spain and Costa Rica) and one of the three available difficulties to give you starting conditions such as the capital city or the main dinosaur species. After that, you just start the game, load onto the map and start building your own dinosaur garden, where you have to take care of your economy at least a little, which sometimes makes it difficult to wait for the accumulation of the necessary funds (but you can speed up the time).
But if you want to break away from the chain a bit, you can go to the second mode, aptly named Sandbox, which is no different from the first, but in it you can set different conditions and restrictions, or remove them altogether. After that, the first scenario should be available in your version, which will teach you the basic operations and introduce you to individual mechanics. And I immediately admit that this is exactly the scenario that I missed a little at the beginning.
Do you have free time Mr. owner
In the beginning, I had to be content with just a few strict tutorial messages, when individual elements of the user interface were not explained to me, which I therefore had to learn to navigate for some time. Thank goodness, however, there are quite a few elements in the games from Frontier Developments (maybe surprisingly enough) that it didn’t take that long again. However, some sliders, tabs, or indicators still feel a bit clunky (or perhaps rather unfriendly), so from that point of view, I hope there will be further improvements.
However, after the necessary orientation, I was finally able to immerse myself in building the prehistoric park of my dreams. And construction is what the creators have clearly relied on the most. The game offers a modular design very similar to that of Planet Zoo (maybe even a little looser), where with more than 600 different elements you can freely build individual buildings, invent decorations and generally shape your park to your liking. and preferences. In this way, each of your buildings can be given its own personality, and it is more or less up to you whether you want to get the job done quickly or have the smallest details, including interiors. So, if this aspect is your favorite, you can definitely go all out here. However, such a modular design also requires a lot of care and dedication, so if you don’t want to mess around with individual elements too much, you can choose from various prefabricated structures and buildings that can be further modified.
Welcome to Prehistoric Park!
Of course, when building, one should not forget about the most important thing, namely the prehistoric lizards themselves (when the game is called the Prehistoric Kingdom, right?). You get their DNA from excavations around the world (there’s only a map, unfortunately you don’t look at them directly), which you unlock with science points, which you passively get for making the dinosaurs in your park become good. Once you unlock a dinosaur this way, you can buy it with money at your science center, where charges will make it underhand for you. Such a piece can then be freely released to your island, but of course you’d be better off placing it in an aviary you’ve created that will be tailored to its needs.
Such needs then include suitable fencing (resistance and height), a sufficiently large water area, suitable flora, shelter and, of course, food. It is also a good idea to ensure that visitors can see samples, as this also increases the amount of contributions to your piggy bank. In the preliminary approach, you will find a total of 23 species, each of which also offers different skins. Also, when you click on them in your park, the voice of Nigel Marven (Prehistoric Park) will usually play, offering you some interesting information about the species. However, these interesting things are very often repeated.
Really very advanced version
And the replay, unfortunately, does not currently avoid the gameplay either. In its current state, the title is really only meant for the big building enthusiast or big dinosaur fan. Otherwise, you won’t find too much content or mechanics here. So if, for example, I get great pleasure from micromanaging your “realm”, when you like to set prices individually and decide the economic side, then at least you are out of luck. The authors have only included the basic economy so far, so that park operation can be made possible at least at a basic level. This means that there is no hiring of employees, no possibility of setting individual prices, no optimizing consumption.
The same is true for animal care. Very soon you will find that building individual pens becomes a repetitive activity where you will always place the same things. In addition, you just get rid of feces from time to time. And it’s all. Nothing is known about potential diseases, life cycles or mating. Just something to spice up this site a little.
And then we have the technical aspect. During the game, I came across a fairly rich portfolio of bugs. So you need to be prepared for overlapping textures, sometimes non-working (or not at all) tools, and regular jamming of fauna. In addition, we can add clumsy animations or flaws that after loading a position, all previous settings will be reset and you will automatically get rid of all credits. I’ll probably need to work on optimizations as well, as I liked the RX 580 with 8GB of VRAM for 30fps and lowest settings at Full HD (in this case, dare I say a few fps). However, it should definitely be noted that visually the game is beautiful and can conjure up some really nice landscapes accompanied by good music.
Long way, but there is potential
So it’s more than clear that writers still have a long way to go to the perfect experience where they have to work on both the flow of the game and the content that currently lacks some of the deeper layers that would make sure it’s playable. it just doesn’t look like it. However, the fundamentals are certainly solid.
Source :Indian TV
