Jurassic World Evolution
Can you succeed where John Hammond failed?
Due for release in summer next year, Jurassic World Evolution is a theme park management sim with the added danger of dinosaurs roaming around your attractions. It’s being developed by Frontier, creator of Elite Dangerous, and will see you following in the footsteps of dino-resurrecting entrepreneur John Hammond as you try and build the world’s greatest dinosaur-themed amusement park. And, like the films, there’s the constant threat of something going wrong and your guests being eaten by rampaging dinosaurs. But that’s all part of the fun. Dealing with natural disasters and escaped dinosaurs will be just as important as making a profit and keeping your guests happy. “We make games about things people are passionate about,” says game director Michael Brookes. “With EliteDangerous it’s space and astronomy. With Planet Coaster it’s rollercoasters and theme parks. And for JurassicWorld, well, who doesn’t love dinosaurs?” With games such as ZooTycoon, ADog’sLife, and Kinectimals in its back catalogue, Frontier is no stranger to making games based around creatures great and small. “We have a history of bringing animals to life in computer games,” says Brookes. “Dinosaurs are the ultimate challenge, but one we’re happy to be taking on.”
“The core fantasy is building your own Jurassic World,” says lead designer Andrew Fletcher. “You have an incredible island setting, you can bioengineer amazing dinosaurs, attract visitors and try to keep them safe, and build a business. That’s what we see in the films, and that’s what we want to give players the chance to do themselves.” As in Frontier’s other, less dangerous theme park sim, Planet Coaster, you’ll actually build your amusement park, placing buildings and facilities, decorating it and creating enclosures for your dinosaurs that hopefully won’t fall to pieces when one of the tropical storms that frequently batter the region comes rolling in.
The game will be set across five islands, which fans of the Jurassic Park franchise will know as the Muertes Archipelago, or Five Deaths. “They’re the main locations in the game,” says Fletcher. “Isla Nublar (the island where the Jurassic Park films and Jurassic World take place) will feature too, but we can’t say how that fits in yet. The cool thing about having multiple islands is that they have different characteristics and will throw different challenges at the player. Each one represents a clean slate. Every time you expand your empire, your operation strength increases, and you get access to more resources, more dinosaurs. This means you can approach each new island in a new way.”
REX APPEAL
The footage released of the game so far focuses mainly on the dinosaurs. Even though it is, like PlanetCoaster, a game you’ll mostly play floating above your park, you’re treated to some impressively detailed and animated dinosaurs when you drop to ground level. We see herds of giant long-necked herbivores traipsing through a rainstorm, the silhouette of a T. rex roaring against the setting sun, and even a few glimpses of dinosaurs fighting one another. That’s another problem you might have to prepare for when you start filling your park with different breeds of dinos. It’s a good-looking game, and it’s clear Frontier isn’t skimping on its production values.
Like any good strategy game, there are multiple ways to win in JurassicWorld Evolution. ‘Win’ meaning becoming successful in a particular field, and not having too many guests being turned into dinosaur chow. The three paths you can take are entertainment, security, and science. These are what Frontier describes as the pillars of the game,
Like any good strategy game, there are multiple ways to win
around which all of its systems orbit. You can follow all three and have a balanced, jack-of-all-trades style park, or you can doggedly pursue one. Both are legitimate ways to play, and you’ll have a different experience depending on which path you decide to lean into when you start building and operating your park.
“Entertainment follows the dream of John Hammond in Jurassic Park and Claire Dearing in Jurassic World, where the dinosaurs are attractions,” says Michael Brookes. “You’re using them to attract tourists and make as much money as possible. Security is about how fierce you can make your dinosaurs. How dangerous they can become. But also being able to manage them safely. There’s a very big risk/reward factor. And science is about understanding how they lived, what they were.” So if you start tinkering with DNA and making your own savage, colossal dinosaurs, you’re going to have to spend resources on keeping them away from your customers.
To complicate things you’ll have a team of advisors to wrestle with, each of whom represents one of the three paths. “They have competing personalities, and they’ll demand different resources from you, which they do through contracts,” explains Brookes. “So they’ll give you tasks that they want you to do, like researching a complete genome for a particular dinosaur or constructing a certain facility.” I’m not sure yet, but it seems likely that ignoring one advisor to help another might affect your reputation with them. I’m interested to see how deep this system goes, and whether they’ll go rogue or cause problems if I refuse to support their requests. Smuggling embryos to sell on the black market like Dennis Nedry, perhaps?
“There’s a further layer of management above this which is managing disasters,” says Fletcher. “We all know from the movies that things don’t always go to plan, and we want to represent this in the game and turn it into an engaging gameplay system. You’ll encounter emergency situations like a heavy tropical storm that will damage your infrastructure. This can damage your park and upset your dinosaurs.” I see a glimpse of this in one of the handful of screenshots that Frontier has released so far: a concrete wall with a gaping hole in the side, presumably caused by a natural disaster. Pretty much the last thing you want if you have a load of hungry velociraptors behind said wall.
NEW BREED
But perhaps the most interesting feature in Jurassic World Evolution is being able to meddle with DNA and create your own dinosaurs. You’ll remember that in the most recent movie, scientists genetically engineered the 50-foot-long Indominus rex to try and attract more guests, and you’ll be able to do the same—but hopefully with less disastrous consequences. Or maybe you’ll create one with disastrous consequences specifically in mind. The beauty of these games is being able to create your own stories, and I’m sure people will have fun saving their parks, then purposefully letting dinosaurs go to watch them run rampant. Unlike John Hammond, however, you can always reload your park and try again.
“You’ll start by sending fossil dig teams around the world, who’ll return with dinosaur bones that you can extract DNA from,” says Fletcher. “You’ll build the genome, and can even make slight adjustments to it. It’s about trying to key into the science of the movies. Once you have a genome, you have to incubate the dinosaur and then set it free in your park.” Frontier has yet to reveal the intricacies of this system and how much control you actually have over the creatures you create, but it sounds fascinating. A special building called a hatchery is where your embryos will hatch and grow, and I wonder if you’ll be able to hire employees like Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady from Jurassic World to train or tame the dinosaurs from birth.
I haven’t seen much of JurassicWorld Evolution in action yet, but the passion of the developer is clear. Frontier’s history of making strategy/management games is also encouraging, and I can’t wait to watch my carefully constructed park fall to pieces as tropical storms surge, hungry dinosaurs break free from their pens, and guests have their holidays spoiled. I mean, it wouldn’t be a Jurassic Park-related thing without everything going to shit, would it? We’ll check in with the game again when there’s a playable build available, but for now color me interested to see more. And fingers crossed they get Jeff Goldblum to play one of the advisors.
I can’t wait to watch my carefull y constructed park fall to pieces