Intro

One year ago, I reviewed Prehistoric Kingdom, an up and coming dinosaur construction and management sim, and I gave it a 6.5 out of 10. At the time, it was ambitious, visually stunning, but held together by a pretty weak management system among other issues. But, it’s been more than a year. We’ve had several major updates, reworks, patches, and more. Now, we’re gonna answer one simple question: Has anything actually changed? This is my Prehistoric Kingdom Review 2: A Year Later.

[1] Animals

Let’s get it started with the animals. They have had a huge glow-up since we last had a look, with brand new aging options.

– Hold on, before we get too deep into this, let me just explain that every time we spot a *genuine* improvement, we’ll add one to this funky little counter in the corner, and you’ll hear *this* noise. We’ll tot them all up at the end, and see just how far this game has come in a year. –

Anyway, aging options: animals can now grow organically all the way from infant to adult at different speeds that cost different amounts depending on how long you want them to stay alive for. Their proportions, animations, sounds all evolve over time, and even really distinct features on them can start to be developed as they age. Babies have really unique visuals, and you can spend a bit more cash when getting new animals by having them start a bit older, so you can actually see them in their enclosures.

Of course, with baby dinosaurs came breeding! Breeding is a *huge* addition to the game, adding long-term population management into your concerns, of course bringing realism, and finally making the animals feel a little bit less than sort of exhibits in a museum, and more like actual animals. Also, we’ve got some new dinosaurs! New to the roster this year are the cave bear, compsognathus, diictodon, mononykus, simosuchus, Irish elk, Titanoboa and even more. Testing my pronunciation a lot with them. Herding behaviour has also been improved. Groups feel a lot more cohesive now, and there’s even more social interaction. The animals can play with each other, chase each other, and everything just feels so much more alive. AI improvements mean animals are less janky overall. There are fewer weird stops, and fewer moments where you just look at the animals and question life. Lastly here, animals have idle grazing and look-at behaviours, and threat and fleeing animations were brought in as experiments, to be expanded further later. All this feeds into a new health system that we’ll be talking about very shortly.

It’s also definitely important to add about the huge changes with the colours and different variants to the animals. Animals now have far more genetic variation in their skins, patterns, and colour palettes. Instead of every dinosaur looking like a slightly retextured clone, you can now create genuinely distinct individuals within the same species. What’s even better, this is down to you, the player, with how you decide to let your herds breed and mix between variants. Offspring can inherit visual traits, meaning over time your enclosures develop a kind of visual identity. You might accidentally breed a line of especially vibrant individuals, or end up with more muted, naturalistic tones depending on your choices. Combined with aging, herding behaviour, and improved animations, the animals now feel biologically diverse instead of museum replicas.

[2] Guests

If you’re an older viewer of the channel, you’ll know that I have hated on the guests in Prehistoric Kingdom. If you’re not, you can just take my word for it, but I hate them a lot less now. Before, they were as animated as my dead fish, with the IQ of that very same fish. But now, the guests have received some really meaningful AI and behaviour upgrades. Not only do they react more naturally to exhibits, but now, crowds seem to form a lot more believably, and the guests feel a lot less like soulless robots as they move around your park. Clearly, pathfinding has also had a nice improvement. Guests get a lot less confused by crossroads in the paths, which means less random congregations around bins, and other nonsense like that. What’s more, the needs system has seen expansion. Guests now respond much more *clearly* to comfort, visibility, amenities, which means designing enclosures and guests’ areas feels a lot more like it has a strategic purpose, rather than just being for aesthetics. But – and this is a big but – they’re still not perfect. They’re certainly not on the same level as Planet Zoo. Guests are a really challenging aspect of a zoo management because you don’t want to nail it, heading into the uncanny valley, and you don’t want complete unrealism because it sucks you out of the simulation. However, [] Prehistoric Kingdom is moving in the right direction. With pace, I might add. Guests actually feel like they’re a part of the park now, rather than just being decorative props gliding around in the background. And that needs to be recognised.

[3] Staff & Management

One of the biggest behind-the-scenes improvements comes from staff and management systems. A huge point for criticism for this game has come from staff and management, but we’re getting there. Staff training and salary adjustments now add an extra layer of strategy. Now, training opportunities for staff mean you're no longer just hiring and forgetting about members of your teams– training allows you to sort of specialise your staff members, really making them more efficient in their roles. Meanwhile, salary adjustments start to influence morale and staff performance.  For me, this ties directly into park efficiency and the sort of longevity of your park. Now, managing your staff isn’t just ticking a box and moving on; you actually need to balance and plan out your park. There’s also been improvements in balancing so larger parks are a lot more viable than they previously were. Loading bays are seeing some changes with how they’re operated too, to give players a hugely more hands-on approach. Also, loans have had a rework. The banks haven’t learnt from my last 9 bankruptcies, and are now willing to throw even greater sums of money at me. Fools.

[4] Science, Research & Progression

Since the last time we took a deep dive into this game, research has taken a huge turn. The science and fossils system has been expanded with new funding levels for your science teams, affecting your research progression speeds. You can now also decide how heavily you want to invest into all these new different research branches, really giving you that deeper level of decision making and planning. If you dump loads of cash into just one area, you’ll progress faster in certain aspects, but potentially leave others lacking. Paleo plants have also been expanded. What’s that? I hear you ask. Well, when we talk about paleo plants, we mean these entirely different plants that existed in a whole other time that the dinosaurs would be a lot more familiar with. Something that was kind of difficult to get my head around is the fact that some dinosaur species lived and died in a period before grass even existed. That’s why it’s important for games like Prehistoric Kingdom to recognise this, and allow the player that extra level of realism to really make the dinos feel at home. Now, enclosures feel more authentic, more visually diverse, and they more directly contribute to animal wellbeing. This sort of progression system through research gives the game a much stronger sense of long-term goals, rather than just feeling like a sandbox build.

[5] Health Systems

One of the most important additions in recent times is the expansion of the animal health systems. The new system brings in some more detailed welfare monitoring, meaning animals now require more thoughtful observation and care. Illnesses, injuries, and stress due to their environment all play a role in your park management now. You can take your animals away to be treated by vets in quarantine areas, and there are a bunch of different diseases they can catch due to sharing contaminated water, close contact, or other different aspects in their behaviours. These veterinary improvements tie nicely into the breeding and aging systems, creating a really, really complete animal lifecycle simulation.

[7] Performance & Stability

Keep your hats on, I know this is the section everybody gets excited for… performance and stability! I’m kidding, of course, but this may be the most important category. Performance and stability have improved noticeably over the past year. Frame rates are generally smoother, crashes are less frequent, and overall optimisation has improved. The game isn’t perfectly optimised. Believe me, I know – I literally play the game on cinema mode. However, especially with larger parks, the difference compared to maybe a year ago is really noticeable. Menus are more responsive, controls are smoother, and overall, the game feels so much more polished, and less fragile. I mean compare this to last time we played - I had my framerate on in all the recordings, and with all of the same settings in the same park, my framerates have increased from an average of 50-60 when moving around the park to 60-80, and from 60-70 in cinematic animal tracking to nearly 100. That’s an immense difference when you consider that the quality of the game has actually increased!

[6] Maps and stuff

Brand new starting maps have been added, giving you a lot more variety when beginning a new park. There’s now a bunch more different layouts and environments you can challenge your building skills with, adding replay value to the game. Just to really add to the game, they also added tranquilisation. This can help you regain control when things start to get a little bit out of hand, so is always nice to have.

Conclusion

So… has anything actually changed? Yes. Quite a lot, actually. Prehistoric Kingdom still isn’t a completely finished product, and there are still areas that need expansion. In particular, the simulation depth of guests and the long-term management aspects of the game. Even though these have had work to them, there’s still progress to be made. But the changes and ground covered over the last year and a bit are completely undeniable. The addition of breeding, aging systems, expanded research mechanics, veterinary care, improved AI, and overall performance improvements show genuine development momentum rather than just surface-level updates made to appease the community. The developers clearly care so much about this game, and it shows. One year ago, I gave Prehistoric Kingdom a 6.5 out of 10. Now? I’d comfortably raise that to an 8 out of 10. It’s no longer just held together by cellotape and dreams. It’s starting to feel like a genuinely strong contender in the park management genre. But more importantly, the game feels alive. I hope you enjoyed. I’d appreciate a like and subscribe, and if you would let me know your thoughts on Prehistoric Kingdom down below. Let me know if there’s anything I missed, like Nigel’s little tips as you play the game, and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye!