Intro

If you know Prehistoric Kingdom, the ultra realistic dinosaur management game currently in early access, you’ll know there’s a bunch of features that the community have been asking for, that are missing. Some are being worked on, some might never come to the game, but these are the 14 things that I wish were in Prehistoric Kingdom.

[1] Large Aviaries

Starting off with probably one of the most obvious missing features: large aviaries, just like we see in the Jurassic World Evolution games. Right now, the game nails ground-based animals, but completely misses pterosaurs, and has only a couple of flying animals. This means that the parks feel really one-dimensional vertically. What I’d love to see is proper, fully-enclosed aviaries. Massive domes or netted structures that really enrich the park’s skyline, and let pterosaurs fly freely above the guests. Guests could have walkways beneath, or viewing galleries like in JWE. These habitats could be fully functional, with areas for perching, feeding, and really dynamic movements. Instead of just building and expanding outwards, you get to actually build upwards again. This is definitely an aspect that JWE has, that would work really well in Prehistoric Kingdom.

[2] Tracked Rides

Another feature you *might* not have thought about is tracked rides. In games like JWE, Planet Zoo, or Zoo Tycoon, you can build tracked safaris or boat rides through your enclosures, giving your more adventurous guests up-close views of the dinosaurs from inside their enclosures, and bringing in another way to decorate and populate the space within your park. At the moment, guests walk everywhere. That works, of course, but over time, the park feels almost static. There isn’t any real flow of guests that isn’t along your paths, along the outsides of your enclosures. Adding safari trucks, river cruises, or even monorails would completely change that, letting you really control how the guests get to see your animals around your park. Also, it adds to the classic theme park feeling. Right now, it’s just a zoo. With tracked rides you can make it start to feel a bit more like an attraction.

[3] Bug Houses

Now, this might sound like a really small and minor addition, but small-scale bug house buildings would be really cool in Prehistoric Kingdom. Right now, everything is huge and spread out. This is great for realism; dinosaurs are pretty big and do need that, but it can leave parts of the park feeling empty or underdeveloped. With limited theming items, it can be really hard to populate them, and having more options for smaller exhibits that very often would go completely unthought about when it comes to prehistoric times would be both educational, and really cool. These gaps would be more dense and detailed, and it adds more variety to the game. Not every attraction needs to be a big, giant dinosaur enclosure. You could have little bug walls, walk-through exhibits with prehistoric beetles all around you, and it's these little more intimate spaces that can really tie the entire park together.

[4] Map Overview (commenter)

I saw this mentioned in the comments of my last video, and it’s a really simple idea that would improve the game so much. In JWE and Zoo Tycoon 2, there is a really nice map view that lets you see the location of all of your important teams, facilities, and animals. As your parks grow, navigating them and finding the little buildings you have placed around it can start to feel a bit clunky. Zooming in and out to find specific areas that you may have completely forgotten about can be a bit annoying, so a clean and well-designed map screen that can show enclosures, facilities, and animal locations would make designing large parks so much easier. This would also make it easier to locate small baby animals that may be lost within your foliage. It’s one of those features you don’t even think about until they’re missing, but once it’s there, it’s really difficult to play without it. Big shoutout to user-TN65K0 for this idea. Thanks for your comment.

[5] Path Placing

This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine: path placing. As you look around your park, you notice lots of tiny bumps in the paths from where you’ve forgotten to terraform before paving. Path placing can be more frustrating than it should be. On this sort of terrain, which is a lot of the maps, you kind of have to fight the system to be able to get the result that you want. I’d love much more advanced control, with elevation changes, proper bridges, improved snapping, tunneling, and just more flexibility overall. Realistically, path systems are like your park’s entire backbone. If this can’t be mastered, it really limits the rest of your park.

[6] Cave Exhibits

In my opinion, cave exhibits or underground building is one of the coolest ideas. Right now, everything exists purely on the surface. This is fine, but it does limit creativity just a bit. Adding the ability to have control to easily let you build *into* terrain would open up so many new possibilities. You could have underground viewing galleries, hidden enclosures, or even entire cave systems which house specific species, as let’s not forget that caves were likely home to many different species. For the guests, I suppose this would add a more adventurous experience. Instead of things being visible immediately, you can create different zones layered within your park, like a theme park or more organised zoo.

[7] Gigantosaurs

Alright, this one is more about rounding the roster out a little bit. Having all of the major large theropods in the game would just make it seem more complete. Right now, the gigantosaur is missing from the ‘big four’ theropods, and it’s just a little bit annoying. This top-tier lineup just *needs* to be finished so that I can sleep at night. And no, I’m not being dramatic.

[8] Lagoons

Okay, lagoons can not come soon enough. Adding marine reptiles introduces an entirely new type of exhibit. They make more complex systems in your park, and lagoons are visually distinct from anything else that you’ll find in your park. Suddenly, you need to think about feeding for underwater creatures, deal with water depth and tank size, underwater viewing; the animals move in completely different ways compared to land species so these exhibits will need a completely different type of thinking to them. Imagine the immense scale of Jurassic World Evolution lagoons, paired with the building tool of Prehistoric Kingdom. You could build truly custom lagoons, with this entirely new layer of gameplay, *massively* expanding what players can do with parks. This could bring with it feeding shows for animals like in Jurassic World, and this could be expanded to all of the animals in the game. It would be a really cool feature to get the ball rolling.

[9] First-Person Staff

A proper first-person staff mode would take viewing the park up close to a whole other level. Instead of observing, you could actually be doing things around your park, just like in the zoo tycoon games, and everyone’s favourite game, Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection. You could be maintaining enclosures, feeding animals, washing animals, or even handling the logistics of moving stock if that’s something you’re interested in. The management side of the game would feel so much more personal, so much more immersive. You could be doing this from the body of a staff member, or maybe you could even have your own personal avatar. It sounds just so fun, and you get a reason to explore your park from a completely different perspective.

[10] Antler & Horn Distinctions (commenter)

This is kind of a smaller detail, but one that would add an enormous amount of realism. Someone in the comments, big shout out to ‘A random deer’ for this, suggested better variation in things like horns and antlers on animals. Right now, animals *can* be kind of uniform with their horns, when there would have certainly been a lot of slight variation between them in the real world; each animal’s antlers are completely unique just like a fingerprint, formed by their genetics and their environment. Wouldn’t it be awesome if, and this ties in to a feature I’ll talk about shortly, the antlers could break apart slowly in combat, horns could be grazed from butting against trees. These subtle variations in shapes, sizes, patterns would make the herds feel so much  more natural. It’s the kind of detail you don’t consciously notice at first, but it makes a huge difference to how believable everything else feels.

[11] Further Performance Improvements

For a lot of you, I know this is one of, if not the most important on the list: performance. As your park grows, the game really does still start to struggle, so there are some serious performance issues that need to be addressed before the game releases, if it wants to be accessible to the wider audience of gamers. No matter how many new features get added, if the game can’t smoothly handle large, detailed parks, everything is restricted. We need better frame rates, a more stable game, and a smoother simulation before version 1.0.

[12] Multi-Species Exhibit Bonuses

This is a feature that could really help to push the game away from a building sandbox, towards being a proper simulator. Right now, mixing species is pretty much a creative choice. There isn’t a huge amount of incentive behind doing this, like there is in Planet Zoo, for example. Mixing different species together can improve animal welfare through more natural social environments, and it’s really important that Prehistoric Kingdom addresses this. They could add proper systems, where compatible species provide reduced stress and enrichment bonuses, while increasing the overall welfare of the animals. Incompatible matches could cause tension or reduced wellbeing, such as combat between animals. This way, it becomes a really meaningful decision, not just decoration. We know other zoo simulators have done this, but Prehistoric Kingdom could take this a whole step further. To really create immersive enclosures, you could be encouraged to match animals from similar points in history, which could then provide education benefits to the guests. The exhibits would really quickly feel a lot more alive, with naturalistic habitats. It gives you the opportunity to experiment with different mixes of animals, instead of just increasing the sprawl of your park with one enclosure per species.

[13] Chaos (Predator vs Prey, Breakouts)

At the moment, the simulation in Prehistoric Kingdom is very controlled, and very calm. The management side can feel overly safe, which is why proper *chaos* systems should be introduced. Predator versus prey interactions, breakouts, attacks against staff and guests would really add a new layer of gameplay. In many zoo games, a lot of the most memorable moments, and the best teaching moments, are when things go horrifically wrong. Breakouts and hunts in Jurassic World Evolution force you to react really quickly. That game is really skilled in forcing you to make quick-paced decisions, and it’s super cool. If Prehistoric Kingdom added more advanced AI behaviours, it would make enclosure design much more important; you would need to build for safety too. Breakouts especially could be tied to enclosure maintenance, low welfare, or improper fence types. That way, the chaos isn’t completely random, but reliant on the player’s poor decisions. This would be multiplied depending on the difficulty of the mode picked by the player. Fences could degrade quicker or welfare could get out of control more quickly on hard mode, while easy mode could be more forgiving. Right now, there’s not a huge amount that can go wrong. This would make the decisions you make matter so much more, and possibly help Prehistoric Kingdom gain more influence online, with those exciting moments to clip and share. 

[14] Purussaurus Brasiliensis (commenter)

Last but not least, a suggestion coming from Cai_man, the Purussaurus brasiliensis, or Giant Caiman. This thing is basically a prehistoric monster crocodilian, that would fit really well into your semi-aquatic exhibits, and the game’s roster. It’s visually unique, and also opens up some really interesting enclosure ideas, and could tie in really nicely to future lagoon systems. It’s one of those additions that would instantly make the game feel much more diverse, and more exciting. Imagine a giant caiman lurking under the water while some other animal is unknowingly drinking at the surface.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed, if there’s anything else you thought of that I didn’t say, let me know in the comments. I would love to hear all of your ideas! I’ll see you in the next one. Bye!