Video Game / Prehistoric Kingdom

Build. Manage. Grow.

Prehistoric Kingdom is a Paleontology themed zoo simulation indie game by Black Raven Studios and Blue Meridian. The goal of the game is to build, manage and grow the ultimate zoo for extinct animals as a fully fledged Prehistoric Kingdom. Narrated by Nigel Marven, (whom has some experience with the extinct animals and with prehistoric parks), the game differs from similar park builders like Jurassic World: Evolution by focusing much more heavily on paleontological accuracy as opposed to spectacle; as well as including a large assortment of non-dinosaur prehistoric animals like charismatic Pleistocene fauna, such as the Woolly Mammoth. The game was released in Early Access on April 27, 2022.

Previews: Official Early Access Announcement Trailer. Early Access Launch Trailer.

---

This game provides examples of:

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: To encourage players to use the renewable powers sources you gain from research, renewable and non-renewable generators have their mechanics reversed from real life, with the former having high output and reliability while the latter are cheaper.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: While it bares more than a passing resemblance to Jurassic World: Evolution, the focus on scientific accuracy, general zoo handling, and creative freedom regarding structures and exhibits makes Prehistoric Kingdom much closer to Planet Zoo.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Handled realistically — small animals in game (such as Dryosaurus, Protoceratops, and Psittacosaurus) have vibrant green and red coloration alongside drabber brown, but in a way that would still allow for camouflage. Hadrosaurs and ceratopsians, meanwhile, lean toward either green or grey except around their crests and frills, which are made for display. Finally, while large carnivores like Torvosaurus or Tyrannosaurus can be rather vibrantly colored (red for the former, and either green, red, or a mix of black and white with a touch of blue for the latter depending on the skin), they're faded enough that the creature could still conceivably camouflage itself.
• Anti-Frustration Feature: The game may focus on accuracy, but it still has considerations for players.
  • While animals will care about what plants are in their exhibits, soil composition does not affect their biome happiness. This allows players more artistic freedom, like giving a cave lion or Tyrannosaurus a snowy exhibit so long as the plants within come from, say, grassland (lion) or coastal (rex).
  • As in Planet Zoo, animals aren't restricted to a single biome, with even the choosiest creatures having two biome options while some, including T. rex, can live happily in five. Combined with how only plants affect said biome preferences, and you can do things like create an exhibit for a Triceratops that goes from scrubland to temperate forest and then swamp to simulate a bayou.
  • Another trait Prehistoric Kingdom shares with Planet Zoo is that one of the fence types you can build, the habitat marker, allows you to mark an exhibit without actually building a fence, letting you use mountains, rocks, or buildings as borders for your habitats.
  • The game heavily encourages you to make your own modular buildings, but it includes a few prefabricated structures, both for getting started and as jumping points for further modular design.
  • Guests have pathing AI that allows them to go outside of established paths if necessary. This also allows you to build bridges without having to worry if guests will use them.
  • The biome tool allows you to specify which biomes you want to remove the plants of, avoiding the hassle of removing every plant from an exhibit if you need to mix the foliage to appease its inhabitants.
• Author Appeal: Two minor examples.
  • The Tyrannosaurus is the only dinosaur in the game without lips, and the reason for this is solely because the game's creators thought it looked better that way.
  • Inversely, Dryosaurus lacks the brow ridges it had in reality, because they detracted from the cuteness of the animal in-game.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: In addition to prefabricated structures, you can also create modular buildings with different functions, ranging from simple additions (adding more binoculars to viewing platforms) to original structures (combining walls, empty buildings, and shopping kiosks to create a gift shop, for example).
• Divergent Character Evolution: A few examples.
  • While Tarbosaurus is classified as a skin for Tyrannosaurus in-game, it has differences beyond color (Tarbosaurus has a dewlap, is more social, and prefers scrubland over coastal environments).
  • Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum differentiates itself from the other two species in the game by a. having a shaggy coat of feathers and b. having a preference for Boreal environments that the others lack.
  • Downplayed between Paraceratherium bugtiense and P. transouralicum, which are very similar and have relatively minor model differences (P. transouralicum is slightly smaller, darker, and has small skin nodules like a rhino). However, the third skin is a different, far smaller and earlier genus named Juxia, and it looks quite different from its relatives.
  • The Eurasian Cave Lion has sandy colored coat and thick short mane, with thick fur running across its underbelly. In contrast, its North American cousin American Lion has semi-fading spots and thick patch of fur hanging from its neck, which gives a impression of beard.
  • The Sinotherium skin is a bit smaller than the Elasmotherium, and is portrayed as largely hairless, rather like a modern rhino. The Sinotherium itself is an ancestral relative that lived from the late Miocene to the early Pliocene across central Asia.
  • Saurophaganax, at least according to the artbook, was deliberately given small but noticeable Spikes of Villainy along its back to differentiate it from the three Allosaurus species in the game, and is also larger than the rest of them.
• Extinct Animal Park: The game is a zoological park management simulator that intentionally apes the gameplay of Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, but with a much stronger focus on accuracy over spectacle and the inclusion of Cenozoic megafauna. The narrator of the game is also Nigel Marven, who certainly knows a thing or two about managing a park of prehistoric animals...
• Gentle Giant: Most of the large herbivores count, even if they are far from defenseless. In addition to large sauropods like Argentinosaurus and huge hadrosaurs like Edmontosaurus, mammalian megafauna such as the Woolly Mammoth or Paraceratherium are notable.
• Mascot: Crowny, a green-silhouetted, unspecified sauropod wearing a crown and the mascot of the Prehistoric Kingdom franchise in-universe.
• North Is Cold, South Is Hot: Going off the maps usable for parks, the cooler biomes show up as the starting ones the further north you go, ranging from Grassland (Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania) and Tropical (Costa Rica) to Boreal (the Yukon). Somewhat justified in that Boreal climates don't exist in the Southern Hemisphere due to the areas they would show up in being comprised entirely of ocean.
• Pale Females, Dark Males: Generally speaking, female animals are paler than their male counterparts. They may also lack certain other features (female Edmontosaurus regalis lack the male's wattle, while female ceratopsians lack the frill patterns that males have).
• Palette Swap: Most species have alternate colour variations, although they do differ in much more than just colour alone, and in some cases represent different species. For example, the Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum differs from the other species by its shaggy coat and preference for boreal habitats.
• Panthera Awesome:
  • Both Smilodon fatalis and the even bigger Smilodon populator feature, with the bios noting they require fences of comparable strength to those needed to contain large theropods
  • Update 10 adds a Eurasian Cave Lion (Panthera Spelaea) and American Lion (Panthera Atrox) to the game.
• Raptor Attack: Averted. The dromaeosaurids are accurately portrayed, down to the feathering.
  • Lampshaded in the Velociraptor spotlight video - Nigel says that the guests arriving to the park expect the Velociraptors to look exactly like the ones from Jurassic Park, while in reality they're small and feathery.
• Real Is Brown: Mammals tend to have drabber designs than dinosaurs, with the developers noting in the artbook that "there's only so much color a mammal this large can have" in the entry for Paraceratherium. That being said, many still have impressive patterns on their skin/fur that keeps them from being too drab.
• Refining Resources: The mechanics for food production and dung recycling are handled in this manner - the initial amount of food you import is fed to animals, which will eventually excrete it, making their exhibits dirty. Keepers will clean the mess and take it to a compost heap, where it will then be converted into fertilizer. Fertilizer, in turn, is taken to a produce station, where it will be converted into new food for animals, allowing the cycle to start anew. Mastering this is important for your finances, because not only does producing your own food cut down on your expenses, excess food can be sold off at a profit.
• Rule of Cool: Somewhat - while the game strives for accuracy over wow factor, the developers ended up replacing several animals originally intended for the game with ones that were roughly similar in size/niche but more visually striking. For example, Tenontosaurus was replaced with Muttaburrasaurus, which is both larger than the former and more visually distinct due to the sacs on its nose.
• Shout-Out:
  • Nigel Marven being involved in the running of a park full of prehistoric animals is a clear reference to his role in Prehistoric Park, with him even stating in one of his quotes about Triceratops that he “prefers names beginning with T” for the genus, in reference to Prehistoric Park’s resident Triceratops Theo. He also has a Microraptor in his portrait, likely a reference to the one he essentially adopted in the third episode of the series. Other references include saying that he wouldn't like to see a lonely mammoth, which was a major issue the park faced in the second and sixth episodes of the series.
  • The Torvosaurus’ Volcanic skin has colourations very similar to the Torvosaurus from Dinosaur Revolution, particularly in the head region
  • There are, of course, numerous references to Jurassic Park and the rest of the Jurassic franchise:
    • One of the maps just so happens to be on Costa Rica
    • Among the messages that flash by on the loading screens - next to "Ruffling feathers..." and "Going back in time..." is "Sparing no Expense..."
    • The first Early Access trailer shows a Tyrannosaurus escaping it's enclosure at night.
    • One of Nigel Marven’s quotes about Tyrannosaurus states that “your favourite dinosaur movie” depicted T. rex as having poor eyesight.
    • One of the three Dilophosaurus skins is a yellow-patterned leopard-like one reminiscent of the animal's description in the original book, with crests near-identically shaped to the ones seen in the movies.
    • The film version of Dilophosaurus is also alluded to in one of Nigel's commentaries, where he expresses his opinion that the real animal looks much more dignified without the "fancy frills and baubles" (while familiarly describing Dilophosaurus as a "beautiful, but deadly" creature).
    • For one Halloween update, the Devs released a trio of in-game posters of trick-or-treating dinosaurs in Halloween costumes. They include a Psittacosaurus in Classical Movie Vampire garb, a Deinocheirus dressed as a Bedsheet Ghost… and a Dilophosaurus wearing a very familiar yellow raincoat.
    • Nigel Marven’s advisory role in this game is highly reminiscent of the park staff from Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis and Jurassic World: Evolution and its sequel.
    • The Velociraptor spotlight video has Nigel saying that the guests arriving to the park are expecting to see "a big, boxy, featherless raptor", and are always shocked to see how slender and feathery these dinosaurs really are.
  • The Brumal skin for Tyrannosaurus is strikingly similar to the creature's design from the original Walking with Dinosaurs, with the only changes being the feather coat and the blue areas on the head.
  • Canadian map being added in ice age-themed Update 10 (due to featuring Elasmotherium, cave lion, american lion and Stone Age theme) might be a reference to last episode of Walking with Beasts and second episode of Prehistoric Park which were set during the ice age, and filmed in Yukon, Canada.
  • One of the images that shows new Canadian map has woolly mammoth walking next to Stonehenge-like rock circle.
  • The shirt wored by coming in Update 11 keeper staff member, looks similar to uniforms wored by Prehistoric Park staff.
• Shown Their Work: The developers making a point to be as up to date as possible for their creatures; to the point of updating finished animals mid-development to shore up details later paleontological studies clarified.
  • Smilodon is correctly portrayed as being stocky and almost bear-like in physique. This is made more noticeable by how true bigs cats, the cave lions, are also present and have the standard big cat physique.
  • Psittacosaurus sibiricus has the enormous horny growths on its cheeks that the real animal possessed. The other two species in the game, meanwhile, have quills on their tails.
  • Dryosaurus and Coelophysis both have a feathered skin, since fuzz appears to be basal to dinosaurs.
  • Unlike nearly all popular dinosaur media, this game makes a point to differentiate the different species of dinosaurs within a genus, such as Torvosaurus having two distinct species, which also differ in location of origin as they were in real life. This also applies to mammals, with both Smilodon fatalis and Smilodon populator being in-game.
  • Close inspection on the sauropods shows they have keratinous sheaths on their mouths forming into pseudo-beaks.
  • Scelidosaurus is depicted as bipedal based on recent studies.
  • Hadrosaurs have their forefeet based on a mummified specimen of Edmontosaurus, with a large hoof on the third finger and a spade-like claw on the second.
  • Muttaburrasaurus and Ouranosaurus are depicted as mainly bipedal, but capable of crouching in a quadrupedal pose.
  • Spinosaurus is based on modern interpretations of the animal, with short hindlegs, a dip in the middle of its sail, and a paddle-like tail. It also walks bipedally on land, in contrast to outdated 2014 depictions that show it as a knuckle-walking quadruped (although it will crouch on this stance).
  • Unlike most paleo-media, it's correctly acknowledged that the Hell Creek area wasn't a barren wasteland with sparse plant growth, but actually something closer to the Florida Everglades - all dinosaurs that come from the Hell Creek formation have Wetlands among their preferred biomes. In fact, as the devs noted, many cretaceous fossil sites resemble wetlands, so most of the dinosaurs in-game (being drawn heavily from the Cretaceous) can live happily in a wetlands enclosure.
  • While grass is only known from fossils at the very end of the Cretaceous, teeth wear patterns on some dinosaurs indicates that they were eating it in the Early Cretaceous. Thus, several dinosaurs can live perfectly well in grasslands.
  • Leaellynasaura is correctly given an extremely long tail, which most depictions tend to forget.
• Solid Gold Poop: Besides selling it off as compost, you can use the composting bin to convert dung into feed, which can then be used at a produce station to create more food for your animals. This creates a self sustaining process once the animals excrete the newly created food.
• Starter Mon: You're given a varying number of starting animals depending on difficulty, ranging from four on Easy to just two on Hard. The first two animals fit this trope best, as they are invariably one star creatures meant to bring in guests early on without blowing your budget.
• Stone Punk: Update 10 adds Stone Age theme, which is inspired by paleolithic and neolithic architecture, and will include leather walls, Stone Age tools, hanging leather, cave paintings and Stonehenge inspired monoliths.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay:
  • Unlike other games featuring Extinct Animal Parks that involve Fossil Revival, such Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis or the prehistoric expansions for Zoo Tycoon, you cannot raise all prehistoric creatures using a single building/lab - some are just too big to fit into your basic nurseries upon adulthood and require larger nurseries before they can be created, even if you have their entire genome.
  • While the game has donation boxes as a way to get additional funds for your park, unlike virtually every other zoo game in existence, these boxes actually have a donation capacity, and will stop accepting money once full. You're thus encouraged to research larger boxes so that you can avoid losing extra donations.
• Take a Third Option: In the case of the large coelurosaur dinosaurs in game, rather than make them scaly or feathered (there is evidence for both), there are scaled and feathered skins available in game, meaning you can have both. Somewhat humorously, this trope is almost literal for T. rex, as its feathered skin is the third skin it has in game.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: Tyrannosaurus is a five-star dinosaur, being one of the most popular and expensive animals to have in the game as well as being among the most formidable and dangerous towards prey and inspiring awe towards guests. Tarbosaurus is also featured as a variant alternative to T. rex.
• Tutorial Level: The in-game tutorial has Nigel Marven guiding the player around the basics of park management, as they clean up and do some light renovations in a British park.
• Wintry Auroral Sky: Canada map (added in Update 10) will often develop auroras in the sky at night.