Welcome, Park Managers, to Update 14!

This monumental release adds the highly anticipated ontogeny system to Prehistoric Kingdom, unleashing seamless growth for over 50 species. Get up close and personal with the all new first person mode, or watch your animals create families and social bonds from a distance.

If you'd like to support us, the game is currently 30% off AND we've just launched a YouTooz plush! The plushie will be available from 3PM EST while stocks last, so be sure to order quick!





As a genre-breaking first, Prehistoric Kingdom now features seamless ontogeny, allowing players to watch their animals grow from baby to adult without model swaps or immersion-breaking size jumps.

These aren't just scaled down adults, however! Every species changes its physical proportions, skin, sounds and body features over the course of our realtime maturity simulation. This was an enormous task, but the team is extremely proud of what we were able to pull off despite our size.

Ontogeny is available for every species in the game apart from terrarium species like Archaeopteryx and Microraptor. And remember, this is just the beginning! We look forward to adding more baby animations and sounds in future updates.





So, how does it work? From the Animal Nursery, there are now two sliders: ontogeny and neoteny. Ontogeny determines the maturity than an animal starts at, while neoteny is the maximum maturity it will grow to. This allows players to keep their babies as babies forever, or even stunt growth to simulate animals not in the game like Nanotyrannus.

Players can also set their desired growth speed for newly bred animals: fast, normal, slow or realistic. We think realistic is pretty fun, as beyond being more accurate, we've found ourselves getting even more attached to animals as they grow.



You can find new tooltips in the Paleopedia that tell you how long it'll take for an animal to reach adulthood depending on your desired growth speed.



In Update 14, animals will now form social groups! Depending on the species, they’ll follow their group leader and synchronize behavior (eating, drinking, resting, etc.) to varying degrees. Some animals like Dryosaurus are super tight knit, while an Acrocanthosaurus is completely solitary.

If a social group is incomplete and needs more animals to be happy, the group leader will broadcast, making it clear they're looking for friends.




Animals will now properly socialise, too, driven by their new awareness system. This means that if they can hear or see each other without objects or solid fences in the way, they'll initiate a call and response to improve their social welfare. Typically this is more common for animals within the same social group, but there's a small chance for socialisation to occur across multiple species.

As an extension of this, animals that are suffering from poor welfare conditions will use sad and angry calls to make it clear that they're unhappy!



Excitingly, babies have some extra behaviors as well. Infants can be adopted by adult animals, though they won’t contribute to a social group until reaching adolescence. If infants cannot find an adult, however, they’ll stick together regardless depending on the species.

Babies also have a high chance of performing the play chase behavior, making two animals chase each other around a circular area. This behavior can also be observed in a few adult species, such as Coelophysis, Dryosaurus, Juxia, Leaellynasaura, Nasutoceratops, Ouranosaurus, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus (all), Scelidosaurus, Ugrunaaluk and Velociraptor.

Be sure to check the Paleopedia to see what animals form social groups or families!

Get ready to meet and greet your animals in First Person Mode! Accessible from the bottom right of the main HUD, this mode allows you to jump down to ground level as a human. Players are able to run, jump, crouch and even interact with specific modules such as binoculars, gates and benches.

We've also included a few settings in the options menu like FOV and disabling first person music filtering.






Animal incubation is now asynchronous, meaning creation will no longer be queued. In Challenge Mode, players will need to research additional slots to breed more animals simultaneously. Similarly, the cost of animal incubation has greatly increased due to the addition of ontogeny. Adult animals are now extremely expensive without the required research to bring them down.

Stats like the base rating and cost of an animal is now based on an animal's mass instead of vibes, creating a more organic and honest economy.

We've fixed an oversight pertaining to animal crowding, so habitats that previously housed lots of animals should more accurately report their fullness.

Tall animals such as sauropods and the Paraceratherium can now eat from ground feeders, though will prefer to use tall feeders. This change was made to accomodate baby animals which cannot reach tall feeders.

From the animal management menu in Park Services, players can now sell multiple animals at once. Selling an animal from anywhere in the game will also display a confirmation prompt with the potential income.

Species such as Edmontosaurus and various mammals can now be found in multiple dig sites. Increasing the funding for a dig site will also now improve the yield, making it quicker to get species with more money. As a side note, science teams are now unlocked automatically with each park rating.

Guests will now spawn and use only one contiguous park area, whichever is largest. Players can still put down multiple entrances/guest spawners, but only those which are connected to the largest area will be valid.

Previously it was possible to create multiple disconnected sections of a park, and guests would become confused trying to navigate to attractions in another area. This change affects module accessibility, the visitor navmesh preview, and the visitor areas used for Park Beauty calculation.

Want to see what animals are thinking? Or maybe you want to report an animal issue? Look no further than the animal debug tool, accessible by pressing Shift + B when an animal has been selected. We plan to keep this is in for a while to help players communicate any problems they've encountered.

• Issue: modular lighting is not recolorable during the day, but does work at night
  
• Issue: animal avoidance is currently broken, so animals can end up walking through each other
  
• Issue: animal animations in the Animal Nursery are currently broken due to the addition of babies, we will be fixing this
  
• Note: additive animations can trigger during one shots or right before animals go to eat/drink/rest. We would like to stop this from happening to prevent jank
  
• Note: we will be updating Paleopedia and Info Sign screenshots for animals that have received visual updates in a later patch

• NEW FEATURE: SEAMLESS ANIMAL ONTOGENY
  Animals can now be incubated in the Animal Nursery at any point in their ontogeny (growth cycle), and seamlessly grow into adulthood. Incubation gameplay has been re-balanced to make adult animals less economically viable in the early game.
  
  Throughout their growth, animals change in real time:
  
  • Proportions - younger animals are usually lankier, sporting larger extremities and facial features in rapport to the body
    
  • Skin & Coloration - all the baby animals have different patterning and colorations when young, gradually transitioning those into their adult colors. Some babies, like most theropods, are feathered even if the adults aren’t!
    
  • Animations - young animals move around differently, using their own bespoke locomotion animations. Most species even have specific play actions
    
  • SFX - animal sound scales with maturity, with infants sounding chirpier and higher pitched than their adult counterparts
    
  • Behavior - as babies, animals form clutches and follow their adopted family around the park
  Through the Animal Nursery and various game settings, players are now able to control:
  
  • Animal Neoteny
    
  • Animal Growth Speed
• NEW FEATURE: Animal Herding and Social Groups
  Animals now form social groups! Depending on the species, they’ll follow their group leader and synchronize behavior (eating, drinking, resting, etc.) to varying degrees. Infants can also be adopted by adult animals, though they won’t contribute to a social group until reaching adolescence. If infants cannot find an adult, they’ll stick together regardless, depending on the species.
  
  If a group leader is missing herd members (e.g. not enough males/females) they will broadcast across the park, making their presence known.
  
• NEW FEATURE: First Person Mode
  A first person mode has been added to the game, accessible from the camera menu (bottom right of the main HUD). This new game mode allows for two alternative play styles:
  
  • GUI ON: toggleable by having the game GUI on screen. This allows for the full creativity suite while in first person
    
  • Full interaction: normal Prehistoric Kingdom gameplay is disabled, while new interaction is unlocked: the player can interact with fence gates, seating, binoculars, and more!
• NEW CHANGE: Animal Locomotion v3
  Animal locomotion has been improved once more with the intent to tidy up and polish the movement introduced in Update 9. The following have been changed/added:
  • All animals now have trot animations
    
  • All animals now have baby animations
    
  • Animals will now move between walk, trot and run more discretely, preventing animation blending from happening for too long
    
  • Animals will now generally transition between all animations more seamlessly
    
  • Animals will now have a chance for zoomies, causing them to run around their paddock. This is more likely as a baby and varies per species
    
  • Animals are less prone to slowing down while moving forward
• NEW CHANGE: Animal Socialization and Awareness
  Animals of the same species will now talk to each other, issuing a call and response. This cannot happen if animals are unable to see one another. If their welfare is too low, animals will play a sad call. If their welfare is extremely low, they’ll play an angry call.
  
• NEW CHANGE: Improved Animal Sexual Dimorphism
  Many species such as Triceratops, Styracosaurus and the Mammoth now feature physical sexual dimorphism, giving females shorter tusks, horns and a more gracile appearance
  
• NEW CHANGE: Improved Animal Alt Species
  Updated the models and proportions for the following animals to make them more distinct:
  
  • Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus
    
  • Charonosaurus, Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus and walkeri
    
  • Juxia, Paraceratherium bugtiense and transouralicum
    
  • Psittacosaurus sp, sibiricus and mongoliensis
    
  • Smilodon fatalis and populator
    
  • Camarasaurus grandis, lentus and supremus
    
  • Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis, lakustai and perotorum
    
  • Elasmotherium and Sinotherium
    
  • Plateosaurus trossingensis and gracilis
• NEW BEHAVIOR: Animal Play Chase
  When an animal wants to socialise, there is a small chance to initiate play with another animal, chasing them in a circular area. This behavior is common in most babies, though can be observed infrequently on the following adults: Coelophysis, Dryosaurus, Juxia, Leaellynasaura, Nasutoceratops, Ouranosaurus, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus (all), Scelidosaurus, Ugrunaaluk, Velociraptor

• Gameplay
  • With the addition of animal ontogeny, we restructured the Biology research tree to account for various new animal features. The following research items were added:
    • Accelerated Ontogenic Synthesis - improves pricing and timing requirements for breeding full adult animals
      
    • Induced Androgenesis - ability to breed male animals in the Animal Nursery
      
    • Rapid Genetic Replication - multiplies the breeding speed of animals in the Animal Nursery by 100%
      
    • Hyper Genetic Replication - multiplies the breeding speed of animals in the Animal Nursery by 200%
      
    • Suppressed Ontogeny - enables stopping an animal’s growth at a chosen moment in its growth cycle
      
    • Ontogenic Regulation - enables modifying an animal’s growth cycle speed
      
    • Capacity Protocol #1 - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 10 slots
      
    • Capacity Protocol #2 - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 15 slots
      
    • Dynamic Replication Allocation - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 60 slots
  • Added new Park Issue for staff not being able to access an enclosure
    
  • Added new Park Issue for animals not having enough room to grow
    
  • Added new Park Issue for shops not having a cashier present
    
  • Added new Park Issue for not having a Compost Heap in the park
    
  • Checklist Park Issues now have click-through behavior to quickly place the required module
• Animals
  • Animals will now consider their vertical reach when deciding which feeders they can use (primarily affecting the Tall Feeder). This is influenced by their current size, so infant sauropods will need ground food to start out with. Animals which can access high food sources will prefer them
    
  • Added an idle shake and additive head throw animation to Megaloceros
• UI/UX
  • Added new report tooltips to the Park Rating and Visitor Satisfaction buttons on the bottom left of the main HUD, giving players information about their parks at a glance
    
  • Added activity description text to the animal tooltip and the animal item rects in the Animals Management Menu
    
  • Added an Enrichment tab to the animal Info Menu. Animal enrichment currently consists of Stimulation, provided by enrichment items, and Social Interaction, given by herd group members. At this moment, Stimulation is always maxed out until we can implement more enrichment items in Update 15
    
  • Added a Social tab to the animal paleopedia, detailing animal grouping information and family behavior
    
  • Added confirmation dialog before loading a game while in a save, notifying the player that any unsaved progress will be lost
    
  • Animals now use separate hero renders for the Animal Nursery
    
  • Animals now have dedicated skin thumbnails for the Animal Nursery
    
  • Animal portrait icons now better reflect the animal’s current visual state, with distinct icons for each skin, sex, age, and genetic skin mutation. This is applied throughout the entire GUI
    
  • Added a Biology panel to the Animal Info Menu, reporting current animal statistics such as age, maturity, length, mass, etc.
    
  • Added a Social panel to the Animal Info Menu, displaying information about the animal’s current social and family groups, if relevant
    
  • Added an icon to the Animal Info Menu header to indicate the animal’s sex
    
  • Added selection cycling buttons to the Animal Info Menu header, allowing players to quickly switch between animals of the same species if the animal isn’t contained, or animals of its exhibit if the animal is contained
    
  • Added a confirmation window that appears when selling animals, notifying the player of the refund sale price
    
  • Animal Management Menu: added the ability to select multiple animals and sell them with a single click
    
  • Animal Management Menu: added a ‘Most Popular Animal’ widget on the left sidebar, displaying brief information about your park’s most popular animal and focusing it on click
    
  • Animal Management Menu: the ‘Locate’ button on the habitat headers now actually selects and focuses the relevant enclosure/habitat
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Toggle First Person Mode’ set by default to LeftControl+T
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Switch Item Next’ set by default to RightBracket
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Switch Item Previous’ set by default to LeftBracket
    
  • Added onto and improved the Options Menu
    • Changed the visual style for the menu and re-ordered settings categories, based on immediate relevance
      
    • Added new first person setting in Audio - First Person Radio Effect, which can toggle a radio filter to the game’s music when using First Person Mode
      
    • Added new first person setting in Camera - First Person FOV
      
    • Added new first person setting in Camera - First Person Sprint Toggle, switching the control scheme for sprinting to use either a key hold, or a key press
      
    • Added new first person setting in Camera - First Person CrouchToggle, switching the control scheme for crouching to use either a key hold, or a key press
      
    • Added new first person setting in Camera - Hide Crosshair
      
    • Added new GUI setting in Interface - Temperature, switching the game’s temperature labels between Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin
      
    • Added new GUI setting in Interface - Distance, switching the game’s measuring labels between metric and imperial
  • Paleopedia articles:
    • Added Ankylosaurus description
      
    • Added Apatosaurus description
      
    • Added Brontosaurus description
• Audio
  • Added a number of new UI sounds to various buttons and sliders to improve the user experience, replacing many of the old sounds
    
  • Added ambient building sounds to the Fossil Depot, Research Station and Staff Center modules
    
  • Added growls to T. rex eat
• Music
  • Added dynamic variants to many tracks, changing the musical fullness/arrangement depending on the time of day, park rating, weather or building activity
    
  • Added dynamic and semi-procedural pause music (around 25 minutes of material that plays randomly and adjusts layers depending on player input and location)
    
  • Added 2 new Ambient tracks:
    • It’s Yours (2:52)
      
    • Night Life (3:56)
  • Added 2 new Building tracks:
    • Evolution (1:55)
      
    • World’s Greatest Potential (3:43)
  • Added piano variants to 2 Ambient tracks:
    • The New World (1:42)
      
    • Perniciem (2:10)
  • Entering first person mode will cause music to sound radio-like and filtered. This can be turned off in the game options

• Balance
  • Animals have received a substantial round of rebalancing:
    • All animal costs have been re-tuned, with a higher overall cost ceiling. Animal pricing is now fully automated, with costs being mathematically based on the animal’s mass and perceived popularity
      
    • Animal pricing is now plastic, changing in real-time over the animal’s age and taking into account the animal’s appeal. High appeal animals are now worth more in-game money, which is reflected when selling individuals
      
    • Rebalanced animal base appeal points to be mathematically based on the animal’s mass and perceived popularity
      
    • Animal base appeal now slightly varies for each individual, based on their current mass
      
    • Increased animal starvation and dehydration time by 2x and 1.5x respectively, making animals eat/drink less frequently
  • Base price for science projects (excavations, research items) is about x2 higher
    
  • Additional funding levels in the Excavations Menu now have a higher cost, but also a higher fossil yield
    
  • Demolishing modular structures now refunds you with half the original cost
• Gameplay
  • Excavation system: animals can now be found in multiple excavation sites. When a species is unlocked in a specific site, that will update in all the other sites that species is present in. This currently extends to:
    • Kökşetau Fm. has been replaced with Kozhamzhar Fm. where Elasmotherium and Mammuthus can be found.
      
    • Psittacosaurus mongoliensis is now found in Dushihin Fm. and Jiufotang Fm.
      
    • Edmontosaurus regalis is now found in Prince Creek Fm. and Horseshoe Canyon Fm.
      
    • Vilyuy River has been re-added to the game, containing Coelodonta
      
    • Yamal Peninsula has been re-added to the game, containing Mammuthus and Elasmotherium
      
    • Science Teams are now automatically acquired once their specific unlock rating is reached
  • Animal creation: each animal instance now progresses asynchronously in the Nursery Holder
    
  • Added the ‘Animal Aging’ gameplay setting: this can completely disable animal aging in Sandbox Mode
    
  • Added the ‘Animal Ontogeny Speed Multiplier’ gameplay setting: this is a global value that affects all
  • animal growth speeds in Sandbox Mode, as long as their growth speed isn’t set to ‘Realistic’
• Animals
  • Updated Torvosaurus - changed body morphology, skeletal proportion and animations. The new Torvosaurus should be more anatomically accurate and in line with the quality of the other animals in the game
    
  • Animal AI now has a more advanced planning and execution model, allowing them to “think” about new things while still performing their current state, which prevents them from constantly being interrupted by thoughts they can’t currently execute on anyway
    
  • Animals will perform animation one shots at the end of their pathfinding, rather than stopping randomly
    
  • Animal locomotion speeds more accurately reflect their raw animations, leading to overall faster and more alive feeling animals
    
  • Updated social needs for all animals
    
  • Adjusted the water affinity for many species, generally making them less water inclined
    
  • Edmontosaurus now opens its mouth wider when calling
    
  • Animals will now remain in a single move animation (Walk, Trot, Run) rather than sitting at an awkward blend between two
    
  • Updated neck posture for Megaloceros eating and grazing animations
    
  • Updated various locomotion animations for:
    • Coelodonta
      
    • Dilophosaurus
      
    • Coelophysis
      
    • Dryosaurus
      
    • Psittacosaurus
      
    • Edmontosaurus
      
    • Lambeosaurus
      
    • Iguanodon
      
    • Parasaurolophus
      
    • Nasutoceratops
      
    • Pachyrhinosaurus
      
    • Styracosaurus
      
    • Triceratops
      
    • Tyrannosaurus/Tarbosaurus
      
    • Acrocanthosaurus
      
    • Carcharodontosaurus
      
    • Torvosaurus
      
    • Deinocheirus
      
    • Paraceratherium/Juxia
  • Improved model weight painting quality for most animals
    
  • Improved estimated data for animal mass
    
  • Improved navmesh margins to reduce animals getting stuck on tight corners
    
  • Animal selection input is now far more accurate
    
  • Improved genetic color variance across all species, with more accurate albinism and melanism, and several new leucism coloration types
    
  • Increased maximum scaling for Tyrannosaurus
    
  • Increased maximum scaling for Edmontosaurus annectens
    
  • Edmontosaurus regalis now supports the temperate biome
• Staff
  • Staff move 1.75x faster when transporting goods
    
  • Humans generally move a bit faster
• Guests
  • Guests will now spawn and use only one contiguous park area, whichever is largest. Multiple spawners are still valid, but only those which are connected to this largest area. Previously it was possible to create multiple disconnected sections of a park, and guests would become confused trying to navigate to attractions in another area. This affects module accessibility, the visitor navmesh preview, and the visitor areas used for Park Beauty calculation
    
  • Guest paths are now visible
• Construction
  • Significant changes to modular construction: unless expressly blocked by gameplay logic, groups can be freely rotated and scaled, with the transformation being applied in perpetuity. This means that groups will now retain their local transformation axes upon being edited. This also means that group scaling and rotation is now registered in Undo/Redo
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Reduced the opacity of Habitat Markers, though we’d like to make them even less visible at night in the future
    Moved interact points for standard Kiosk modules back by 0.1 meters, addressing temperamental nav connectivity when walls and scenery were placed along the front side of the kiosk
• Environment
  • Improved distant terrain rendering quality by accounting for texture bump in the resampling mechanism: this means more distant ground textures will appear more detailed
    
  • Improved terrain texture fidelity, lowering the scale of most textures to look better next to babies and small animals. This may result in more tiling in specific circumstances, but we feel this is a worthy sacrifice
    
  • Desaturated wetland sand texture and adjusted the wetness of mud
    
  • Decreased visual clutter of snow particles
    
  • Reverted lighting clamping during the early morning and late evening
    
  • Night is now less overwhelmingly blue with better visibility in moonlight and while looking top down
    
  • All maps should now have a more consistent fog starting distance
• Foliage
  • Updated kapok and coconut palm impostors
    
  • Reduced alpha cutoff for distant coconut palms and tree ferns, allowing them to maintain their silhouette and better cast shadows
    
  • Slightly increased wind simulation intensity
    
  • Slightly adjusted Beech Tree 5 collision
• UI/UX
  • Reduced minimum brush size for terrain painting to 2, from 5
    
  • UI Transparency now can’t be accessed while the Management Menu is open
    
  • Improved sun lighting transition when going into the Management Menu
    
  • Issue state icons now have 1:1 parity with park issue notifications
    
  • Staff and Visitor inaccessibility park issues will not show up if there are no staff centers or visitor spawners
    
  • The Loading bay and Storage buildings will no longer generate Module Logistics Unfulfilled park issues
    
  • Increased minimum issue time for Needs Refill from 20 seconds to 180 seconds
    
  • Notification popups can now show over the management menu
    
  • Overview popup audio now only triggers the first time a new popup is created
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: clamped at the edges of the screen
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: further offset positioning so that the buttons don’t overlap with the gimbal editing axes
    
  • While placing or manipulating an object, it will now have an orange outline to help maintain visibility and better communicate that an action is taking place
    
  • Improved modular gizmo movement - massively reduced jitter, and reworked distance increment math to be based on the current translation axis
    
  • Adjusted the size and colors of the modular gizmo to make it stand out more from the environment.
  • There is also now a small dot in the middle of advanced rotation to indicate an object’s pivot point
    Improved modular gizmo visuals by removing unselected axes from view while dragging
    
  • The ‘Align to Slope’ toggle is now on by default, requiring fewer clicks for stacking/aligning behavior, which seems to be prevalent
    
  • Habitat Markers are now visible when selecting a habitat
    
  • Animal Paleopedia: the ‘Thoughts’ page now preview character voice lines
    
  • Animal Paleopedia: fixed enclosure size calculator, previously male/female inputs were flipped leading to inconsistency
    
  • Changed behavior of the bottom-left park stats buttons to open/close their relevant menus based on current context
    
  • Clearing all notifications in the Notification Menu now automatically closes the panel
    
  • Re-introduced Excavations Menu worldmap clamping, which was previously removed due to a math glitch that has now been fixed
    
  • Aviary animal breeding buttons are now greyed out if the relevant animal hasn’t been unlocked
• Post-Processing
  • Reduced SSR roughness, resulting in less-green foliage during rain
• Audio
  • Adjusted entire audio mix, resulting in an overall louder and more cohesive experience
    
  • Adjusted Nasutoceratops social response calls to better fit the animation
    
  • Drag sounds for fences, paths and modular objects are now more responsive
    
  • Park Services ambience is now ducked when assigning Science Teams to excavations/research or hiring staff
• Music
  • Extended 1 Ambient track:
    • The New World (1:53 > 2:23)
  • Updated the mix and arrangements of several tracks to match the styling of Volume 1’s soundtrack release. Most current in-game music will receive similar updates!
    • 4 Ambient tracks: All For Them, A Walk In The Park, Dawn Chorus, The New World, Perniciem
      
    • 3 Building tracks: Visitors On Main, Ingenuity, Build Sleep Repeat
  • Changed gameplay music algorithm to be entirely based within FMOD
    
  • Music now sounds more distant, echo-y and lacks low frequencies at nighttime
    
  • Music will not stop playing when entering the Park Services dashboard and will instead sound distant
    
  • Music will lower in volume when at ground level if the player is not building
    
  • Intro music will now fade in at a lower volume when starting or loading a game

• Critical
  • Fixed loading of the navmesh when the file is corrupt, now it handles this safely and regenerates the navmesh (may resolve crazy teleporting animal bugs and others)
    
  • Fixed a rare bug in path following logic that could mess up animal positions
    
  • Fixed a number of potential stability issues when creating certain animals in the nursery
    
  • Fixed a dangerous bug in the animal AI that could potentially allow animals to walk off the navmesh
    
  • Blocked placement of animals while the navmesh is recalculating
    
  • Animal placement is no longer allowed for animals that are still loading
    
  • Animal placement will also ensure the animal is actually placed at the proper position when you click
    
  • Fixed ambient audio duplicating itself upon specific circumstances, potentially crashing audio or the game
    
  • Fixed a critical GUI exception causing the staff management menu to not properly populate itself with staff entries, when certain staff members have null assignments
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the park name text in the Management View menu to default to “Prehistoric Kingdom” upon loading a save, instead of the saved park name
    
  • Fixed Path Planning not using accessible areas when validating path start and end points, causing animals and humans to be unable to navigate at all under certain circumstances
• Gameplay
  • Fixed staff placement rotation input not working if time is paused
    
  • Fixed certain Park Issues not correctly responding to sandbox settings such as disabling Logistics or Dung
    
  • Fixed a bug which would prevent a visitor spawner from being usable if it was placed on its own, even after being connected to path
    
  • Fixed an issue where unloaded animals in the Nursery would overlap with other animals
• Animals
  • Fixed an animal shader issue that could cause certain skins to wrongfully display iridescence
    
  • Fixed certain animals such as sauropods being unable to reach their max speed
    
  • Fixed Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus neck snap on its rearing animation
    
  • Fixed sauropod rolling animations extending longer than intended
    
  • Fixed Psittacosaurus eat exit animation
    
  • Fixed Pachyrhinosaurus snapping resting animations
    
  • Reduced wiggling animation inaccuracies on various animations
    
  • Fixed animals using high browsing eat animations when taking from ground feeders
    
  • Fixed animals not always being able to drink from shallow water
    
  • Fixed animals getting their needs drained significantly on first placement if you had previously sold other animals in the park
    
  • Fixed swims for certain dinosaur species transitioning awkwardly
    
  • Fixed Psittacosaurus and Coelophysis swimming in very shallow water
    
  • Fixed Ecology Bonus only using the first excavation for each species, eliminating otherwise legitimate ecology bonuses
• Staff
  • Deep rework of Staff Dispatch, which now keeps track of all “Job Sites” such as feeders, shops, enclosures etc. and continuously validates that the correct assignments are being sent out to staff. Should prevent the dreaded lazy staff behavior that has plagued them since their release
    
  • Fixed a logical error that allowed laborers to fill feeders if that was one stop in a multi-stop transport assignment
• Guests
  • Fixed guests getting stuck in a Donation Task if it wasn’t completable on the first try
    
  • The planned feature of visitors running to the bathroom, which never functioned, has been fixed
• Audio
  • Fixed guests getting stuck in a Donation Task if it wasn’t completable on the first try
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed selection collision for Research Station
• Construction
  • Fixed ‘Random Scale’ not taking newly placed objects into account
    
  • Fixed an undo bug that would cause grids to not be properly aligned to modular groups, when reversing group merging
    
  • Improved modular grid generation logic behind group splitting
    
  • Fixed Enclosure loading being too restrictive when trying to match the saved bounds to an existing fence polygon
• UI/UX
  • Fixed a collision problem on the coastal map causing the camera’s behavior to be unpredictable at certain positions and angles
    
  • Fixed camera jitter during zoom in/out while tracking a moving object
    
  • Fixed a timing issue causing certain GUI tooltips to stick on screen
    
  • Fixed a minor issue causing the modular style panel from not disappearing when opening the management menu from within modular selection
    
  • Fixed tooltip still being open in screenshots
    
  • Fixed tooltip text for the animal water preference bar reporting the incorrect preferred values
    
  • Fixed timesliced processing on animal breeding within the Nursery Holder, leading to more accurate animal creation timing
    
  • Fixed Shara Murun Formation being named Sharamuran Formation
    
  • Fixed Landscaping Menu issue causing the selected biome preset to not paint the correct foliage when the menu would be opened for the first time in a session
    
  • Fixed a weather menu bug causing the ‘Cycle Weather’ toggle to be auto-selected upon closing the menu
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: fixed first-frame-glitch effect when entering modular edit mode
    
  • Modular gimbal gizmo: fixed washed out graphics, restored full colors
    
  • Fixed layout refreshing in the options menu, when changing sandbox settings
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the options menu
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the screenshot menu
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the landscaping menu
    
  • Fixed Module Inaccessible park issues from showing up when a feeder or shop is simply empty
    
  • Fixed an instance of layout glitching for overview pop-ups
    
  • The Management Menu is now automatically closed when starting any user action, which should prevent some nasty GUI overlay
• Audio
  • Fixed numerous UI buttons with incorrect sound events
    
  • Fixed Carcharodontosaurus broadcast being inaudible beyond 64 meters
    
  • Fixed missing audio events for a few Triceratops, Velociraptor and Paraceratherium animations
    
  • Fixed offset audio events for Coelophysis
    
  • Fixed potential issue where multiple skin layers could repeat over themselves
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the modular ‘moving’ sound to be stuck on during grid placement
• Music
  • Corrected overly aggressive file compression for brass in The Miracle of Life, eliminating a ringing sound

• Decreased spikes to GUI rendering when accessing UI transparency and screenshot mode
  
• Improved physics engine performance related to animal selection
  
• Slightly improved modular processing CPU performance
  
• Made significant improvements to the Animals Management and Staff Management menus performance, with list creation being deferred over multiple frames
  
• Reduced a lot of unnecessary logging
  
• Slightly improved loading times for saves with many modular groups
  
• Staff Dispatch has been moved off the main thread, giving better frame performance when heavy planning is required

• Animals
  • Added ontogeny to Brachiosaurus
    
  • Added ontogeny to Argentinosaurus
    
  • Added ontogeny to Iguanodon
    
  • Added ontogeny to Muttaburrasaurus
    
  • Added ontogeny to Torvosaurus gurneyi and tanneri
    
  • Added ontogeny to Styracosaurus
    
  • Added baby one shot animation to Elasmotherium, Torvosaurus
    
  • Tarbosaurus chicks now have distinct visuals
    
  • Smilodon populator cubs now have distinct visuals
• UI/UX
  • Added activity description text to the animal tooltip and the animal item rects in the Animals Management Menu
    
  • Added GUI tooltips to the social tab of the Animal Info Menu
    
  • Added help articles for No Food, No Water and Growth Restricted
    
  • Paleopedia articles:
    • Added Ankylosaurus description
      
    • Added Apatosaurus description
      
    • Added Brontosaurus description

• Balance
  • Demolishing modular structures now refunds you with half the original cost
• Animals
  • Adjusted the water affinity for many species, generally making them less water inclined
    
  • Animals will now leave a group if they can’t navigate to the leader within 8 attempts
    
  • If a species defines a Leader Type (matriarch or patriarch) group formation will promote the first member of the appropriate sex to the leader position
    
  • Group State Cohesion (0 -1) can no longer drop below 0.33 based on needs, up from 0
    
  • Eat, Drink, and Rest will now search for interactables in a much tighter radius around the group as long as their needs aren’t desperate
    
  • During Play/Chase, the trailing animal will now slow down if it gets too close to the lead animal
    
  • Edmontosaurus regalis now supports the temperate biome
    
  • The following adult animals are now capable of play chasing: Coelophysis, Dryosaurus, Juxia, Leaellynasaura, Nasutoceratops, Ouranosaurus, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus (all), Scelidosaurus, Ugrunaaluk, Velociraptor
• Staff
  • Staff move 1.75x faster when transporting goods
    
  • Humans generally move a bit faster
• Guests
  • Guest paths are now visible
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Moved interact points for standard Kiosk modules back by 0.1 meters, addressing temperamental nav connectivity when walls and scenery were placed along the front side of the kiosk
• Environment
  • Made nighttime brighter to improve visibility without lights
    
  • All maps should now have a more consistent fog starting distance
• UI/UX
  • Increased minimum issue time for Needs Refill from 20 seconds to 180 seconds
    
  • Aviary animal breeding buttons are now greyed out if the relevant animal hasn’t been unlocked

• • Fixed a bug introduced with the last PTB patch, causing research projects to be completely un-researchable if a Fossil Depot wasn’t present in the park
    
  • Sitting during First Person Mode should now display a correct height relative to the seating item
• Animals
  • Fixed animals not being able to select beds when they needed to sleep
    
  • Fixed Ecology Bonus only using the first excavation for each species, eliminating otherwise legitimate ecology bonuses
• Staff
  • Fixed Clean Dung assignments ending immediately when the last mound disappeared, leading to no dung arriving at Compost Heaps
    
  • Fixed Shops not generating cashier or restock assignments when their sales tally was 0
    
  • Fixed staff dispatch trying to send the same staff member onto two different assignments within the same validation period
    
  • Fixed shops not submitting cashier assignments when uncompletable logistics assignments were also present
    
  • Fixed Staff Dispatch being able to select the same staff member for multiple assignments simultaneously
• Guests
  • Fixed visitors not using their own position as the center for nearby amenity searching
    
  • Fixed visitors not exiting move state early, causing them to clump at the interaction point for amenities before going to the end of an existing queue line
    
  • The planned feature of visitors running to the bathroom, which never functioned, has been fixed
• Construction
  • Fixed an undo bug that would cause grids to not be properly aligned to modular groups, when reversing group merging
    
  • Improved modular grid generation logic behind group splitting
    
  • Fixed Enclosure loading being too restrictive when trying to match the saved bounds to an existing fence polygon
• UI/UX
  • Fixed 9999 animal groups in the social groups calculator in the Paleopedia
    
  • The Management Menu is now automatically closed when starting any user action, which should prevent some nasty GUI overlay
• Rendering
  • Fixed binocular vignette effects sticking on screen after exiting first person binocular view through the screenshot GUI

• Optimized animal growth updating to run once a second for each animal
  
• Staff Dispatch has been moved off the main thread, giving better frame performance when heavy planning is required

Welcome, Park Testers!

This PTB release adds an updated Torvosaurus model, a new social tab to the paleopedia, smooths out animal locomotion and updates the social needs for all animals! We've also deployed fixes for issues pertaining to herding. Joining a herd will now interrupt an animal's current state, reducing the "scattering" effect reported by players. They will also no longer space themselves equally around the leader, congregating in a wider space instead.

A new behavior has also been added: play chasing! When an animal wants to socialise, there is a small chance to initiate play with another animal, chasing them in a circular area. This behavior is more common in babies than adult animals and only applies to more social or active species.

First Person Mode is also now accessed through a button next to the camera settings, making it easier to jump in and out. Of course, players can still use Control + T as a shortcut. Various fixes have also been deployed, so please give the full patch notes a read!


The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
   
2. Go to Properties
   
3. Betas
   
4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.

• Critical: modular lighting is not recolorable
  
• Issue: animal avoidance is currently broken, so animals can end up walking through each other
  
• Issue: additive animations can trigger during one shots or right before animals go to eat/drink/rest. We would like to stop this from happening to prevent jank
  
• Issue: animal animations in the Animal Nursery are currently broken due to the addition of babies, we will be fixing this

• NEW BEHAVIOR: Animal Play Chase
  When an animal wants to socialise, there is a small chance to initiate play with another animal, chasing them in a circular area. This behavior is more common in babies than adult animals and only applies to more social or active animals.

• Animals
  • Added baby and trot locomotion animations to Ankylosaurus
    
  • Added baby and trot locomotion animations to Dilophosaurus
    
  • Added baby and trot locomotion animations to Smilodon
  UI/UX
  • Added an Enrichment tab to the animal Info Menu. Animal enrichment currently consists of Stimulation, provided by enrichment items, and Social Interaction, given by herd group members. At this moment, Stimulation is always maxed out until we can implement more enrichment items in Update 15
    
  • Added a Social tab to the animal paleopedia, detailing animal grouping information and family behavior
    
  • Animals now use separate hero renders for the Animal Nursery
    
  • Animals now have dedicated skin thumbnails for the Animal Nursery
    
  • Added onto and improved the Options Menu:
    • Changed the visual style for the menu and re-ordered settings categories, based on immediate relevance
      
    • Added new first person setting in Audio - First Person Radio Effect, which can toggle a radio filter to the game’s music when using First Person Mode
      
    • Added new first person setting in Camera - First Person FOV
      
    • Added new first person setting in Camera - First Person Sprint Toggle, switching the control scheme for sprinting to use either a key hold, or a key press
      
    • Added new first person setting in Camera - First Person CrouchToggle, switching the control scheme for crouching to use either a key hold, or a key press
      
    • Added new first person setting in Camera - Hide Crosshair
      
    • Added new GUI setting in Interface - Temperature, switching the game’s temperature labels between Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin
      
    • Added new GUI setting in Interface - Distance, switching the game’s measuring labels between metric and imperial
  • Added new notifications for various events in the park:
    • Starting Welcome message directing players towards the playable tutorials
      
    • Notifications for animals reaching adolescence and adulthood
      
    • Negative park balance message
      
    • Insufficient funds for science projects (excavations or researches)
      
    • Park Rating star gain
• Audio
  • Added baby calls to Juxia, Paraceratherium, Smilodon, Acrocanthosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Deinocheirus, Plateosaurus, Velociraptor and Spinosaurus (includes the occasional crocodile chirp from the trailer) Baby appropriate growls will be added closer to U14's release

• Gameplay
  • First Person Mode: movement controls are now tied to the general movement keybinds
    
  • Park Issues should now be able to resolve while the game is paused
    
  • Science Teams are now automatically acquired once their specific unlock rating is reached
• Animals
  • Updated Torvosaurus - changed body morphology, skeletal proportion and animations. The new Torvosaurus should be more anatomically accurate and in line with the quality of the other animals in the game
    
  • Improved fluidity of animal locomotion generally
    
  • Animal groups will no longer try to space themselves equally around the leader, instead they will congregate in the widest navigable space within range of the leader
    
  • Animals will now interrupt their current state when joining a group, so they shouldn’t scatter so much when first placed together
    
  • Reduced frequency of Velociraptor calls and their wing flap + jump animation
    
  • Reduced zoomies frequency for Triceratops adults
    
  • Updated social needs values for all animals
    
  • Increased maximum communication interval for medium-large species, leading to less frequent calling
    
  • Edmontosaurus now opens its mouth wider when calling
• Buildings & Scenery
  • All decorative door pieces will no longer cut the nav mesh, allowing both animals and guests to walk straight through them. This does not apply to staff gates!
• Construction
  • Made advanced modular tool gizmos slightly thicker
    
  • Significant changes to modular construction: unless expressly blocked by gameplay logic, groups can be freely rotated and scaled, with the transformation being applied in perpetuity. This means that groups will now retain their local transformation axes upon being edited. This also means that group scaling and rotation is now registered in Undo/Redo
• UI/UX
  • Moved the ‘First Person Mode’ access button outside of the Camera Menu, to the bottom right of the main HUD
    
  • Input system change: any mouse orbit input will now cancel out any mouse panning input
    
  • Re-introduced Excavations Menu worldmap clamping, which was previously removed due to a math glitch that has now been fixed
• Audio
  • Gate sounds should no longer be muted when time is paused

• Critical
  • Fixed a dangerous bug in the animal AI that could potentially allow animals to walk off the navmesh
    
  • Blocked placement of animals while the navmesh is recalculating
    
  • Animal placement is no longer allowed for animals that are still loading
    
  • Animal placement will also ensure the animal is actually placed at the proper position when you click
    
  • Fixed human animation system call after a human instance was removed
• Gameplay
  • Fixed module accessibility not being respected by enclosures, causing certain park issues like No Accessible Food to get out of sync with the state of the world
    
  • Animal dung will no longer load in sandbox parks where dung is disabled
    
  • Fixed a bug in navmesh baking that was preventing open areas from being navigable under very specific circumstances
• Animals
  • Fixed an error in the animal AI that could potentially disable individual animal AIs’
    
  • Animal social groups should have an easier time forming outside of exhibits
    
  • Animal groups can no longer consist of less than two individuals
    
  • Fixed a bug causing animals to not sleep on haybeds
    
  • Fixed Nasutoceratops walk cycle arm snapping
    
  • Fixed various adult animals being able to play baby calls
• Guests
  • Fixed visitors searching for amenities near the map origin instead of their destination position
    
  • Fixed visitors clumping at shop interaction points when approaching from a distance
    
  • Fixed bug which was preventing visitors from running to the bathroom when their need is great
• Staff
  • Fixed staff trying to navigate on top of the Staff Center if there were no Visitor Spawners in the park
    
  • Fixed a staff dispatch error that could have been causing feeders and other logistics jobs to be ignored
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed strawbeds not prompting an enclosure module recalculation
• Foliage
  • Fixed a bug which prevented plants being removed from the ground-attached list when they were destroyed
• Construction
  • Fixed a bug introduced with the last patch, causing incorrect axis locking for the modular tool gizmo, leading to free rotation of items that shouldn’t allow it
• UI/UX
  • Interacting with gates in first person mode while the game is paused will now play the open/close animation
    
  • Fixed Animal Nursery grid appearing through the Keeper model

• Reduced a lot of unnecessary logging
  
• Fixed a source of performance deprecation over session time
  
• Slightly improved loading times for saves with many modular groups

Welcome, Park Managers!

To celebrate Update 14 releasing on April 24, we've partnered with Youtooz to release our very own plushie! Meet Crowny, the adorable crowned sauropod from our logo.


We absolutely love how she turned out and hope you're just as excited to take a little piece of our kingdom home with you. We'll be posting more info as we get closer to launch, so stay tuned and be sure to follow our socials!

- The PK Team

Welcome, Park Testers!

This PTB release adds ontogeny for Acrocanthosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus and Scelidosaurus while making adjustments to animal weight calculation, research and includes potential crash and animal teleportation fixes.

We have also been making improvements to the modular building system, improving the feel of our advanced tools with smoother precision and enhanced visuals. This includes adding a yellow outline to maintain visibility, hiding any unavailable axis and adjusting some behaviors such as Stack Objects to not reset your height. You can also now hold control to greatly slow the sensitivity of advanced tools. We want to know if these changes feel better or worse for you!



For this PTB we are looking for feedback in these specific areas:

• Growth speeds have been adjusted in the Animal Nursery. 'Normal' growth has been slowed by 20% and 'Fast' growth has been increased by 30%
  
• The modular system has received quite a few tweaks. Please read the full patch notes below, play the game and let us know if construction feels better or worse

Over the next few weeks, we will continue to add new baby animals, implement all of the ontogeny audio and improve reliability for herding. Thank you for all your feedback so far!


The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
   
2. Go to Properties
   
3. Betas
   
4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.

• Note: social group formation works best for animals that are contained within a habitat
  
• Critical: modular lighting is not recolorable
  
• Issue: herding cohesion is currently broken, so animals can end up standing too close together
  
• Issue: animal avoidance is currently broken, so animals can end up walking through each other
  
• Issue: animals in a herd can get stuck constantly getting up/down if they don't need to rest but their herd leader wants to. This should resolve itself eventually, however
  
• Issue: additive animations can trigger during one shots or right before animals go to eat/drink/rest. We would like to stop this from happening to prevent jank
  
• Issue: many species may have bad color variation or ugly mutations. We are currently going through them one by one using a new method which looks better
  
• Issue: animal animations in the Animal Nursery are currently broken due to the addition of babies, we will be fixing this
  
• Issue: the game may freeze every so often, we are currently investigating the cause of this issue

• Animals
  • Added Acrocanthosaurus ontogeny
    
  • Added Carcharodontosaurus ontogeny
    
  • Added Scelidosaurus ontogeny
    
  • Added baby animations to Ankylosaurus
    
  • Added baby and trot locomotion animations to Plateosaurus
    
  • Added baby and trot locomotion animations to Ouranosaurus
• UI/UX
  • Added confirmation dialog before loading a game while in a save, notifying the player that any unsaved progress will be lost
• Construction
  • Holding left control while dragging a modular gizmo now slows down movement for finer control
• Audio
  • Added baby calls to Leaellynasaura, Psittacosaurus and Ouranosaurus (still using adult growls for now)

• Balance
  • Changed starting Nursery capacity from 5 to 10
    
  • Buffed Capacity Protocol #1 and Capacity Protocol #2 research items to reward a higher Nursery Capacity cap
• Animals
  • Adjusted Nursery growth speeds so that ‘Normal’ growth is 20% slower, while ‘Fast’ growth 30% faster
    
  • Updated colorations for both Apatosaurus skins
    
  • Increased maximum scaling for Tyrannosaurus
    
  • Increased maximum scaling for Edmontosaurus annectens
    
  • Rebalanced animal mass estimation algorithm, generating more accurate animal weights
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Reduced the opacity of Habitat Markers, though we’d like to make them even less visible at night in the future
    
  • Slightly adjusted Beech Tree 5 collision
• Construction
  • While placing or manipulating an object, it will now have an orange outline to help maintain visibility and better communicate that an action is taking place
    
  • Improved modular gizmo movement - massively reduced jitter, and reworked distance increment math to be based on the current translation axis
    
  • Adjusted the size and colors of the modular gizmo to make it stand out more from the environment. There is also now a small dot in the middle of advanced rotation to indicate an object’s pivot point
    
  • Improved modular gizmo visuals by removing unselected axes from view while dragging
    
  • The modular height gizmo only appears if the player has manually adjusted an object’s height
    
  • The ‘Stack Objects’ toggle no longer resets manual height adjustments if ‘Align to Slope’ is off
    
  • The ‘Align to Slope’ toggle is now on by default, requiring fewer clicks for stacking/aligning behavior, which seems to be prevalent
• UI/UX
  • The modular grid visuals are now completely white and feature depth blending at their borders
    
  • Habitat Markers are now visible when selecting a habitat

• Crashes
  • Potentially fixed crashes related to viewing animals with no available ontogeny in the Animal Nursery
• Critical
  • Fixed loading of the navmesh when the file is corrupt, now it handles this safely and regenerates the navmesh (may resolve crazy teleporting animal bugs and others)
    
  • Fixed a rare bug in path following logic that could mess up animal positions
    
  • Fixed a number of potential stability issues when creating certain animals in the nursery
• Gameplay
  • Fixed an initialization bug related to research loading, which could cause certain research items to not completely unlock in older saves
• Animals
  • Fixed animal locomotion transitions happening suddenly
    
  • Fixed swims for certain dinosaur species transitioning awkwardly
    
  • Fixed Psittacosaurus and Coelophysis swimming in very shallow water
  Construction
  • Fixed ‘Random Scale’ not taking newly placed objects into account
• UI/UX
  • Fixed animal list not updating when animals are put in different enclosures
    
  • Fixed baby animals not showing up in the animal social group menu
    
  • Fixed keybind texts in building action tooltips and the Camera Menu
    
  • Fixed several cases of selection outlines conflicting, especially during management overlay views
    
  • Fixed overlapping text in Science Team Assignment items, if there are insufficient funds

Welcome, Park Testers, to this very special public testing update!

This early version of Update 14 includes baby animals, seamless growth, animal herding and first person mode. We are expecting to launch this update on April 24, so there'll be a lot of time for bug fixing and adding all the missing animations and sounds.

While this is all still very work in progress, we are looking for feedback in these areas:

• Animal growth speeds (too fast/slow?)
  
• Animal food intake (do babies eat too frequently/not enough?)
  
• Staff reliability (are staff doing their jobs?)

There's quite a lot that's changed, so be sure to read the full patch notes below to see everything that's new!



Up first, baby animals and seamless growth! This feature is available for 49 out 58 species with all of them at varying stages of completion.

Players can choose to breed animals at any age or even stunt their growth early, preventing them from maturing into adults. Various growth speed options further allow you to tweak just how long it takes for babies to grow up!




Animals are also now capable of creating herds and family units, moving together and following the group leader's actions. Until reaching adolescence, baby animals can be adopted by an older individual, following them until they're ready to join a social group.

This is especially enjoyable to watch with our work in progress locomotion V3, an enhanced movement system that aims to smooth out transitions and give every species a trot animation. Herding and locomotion are areas that we'll continue to work on until full release, so expect to see some oddities.


You can also get up close and personal with the brand new First Person Mode! Open gates, sit on benches and look through binoculars as you rediscover your park from a new perspective.





As of this release, the following animals do not have their ontogeny enabled. They will be added as their baby skins are finalized:

• Acrocanthosaurus
  
• Carcharodontosaurus
  
• Torvosaurus tanneri & gurneyi
  
• Brachiosaurus
  
• Argentinosaurus
  
• Muttaburrasaurus
  
• Iguanodon
  
• Styracosaurus
  
• Scelidosaurus

When it comes to audio, we will be working to give every animal unique baby calls and add their various chirps throughout the PTB. Adolescent animals have not been given much attention yet, so expect them to sound much like adults for now. Unique baby animations are also missing audio.

Broadly, here's a list of the various things that we want to add or change for the final Update 14 release:

• Retake Paleopedia/Animal Info Sign screenshots for alt species that have been updated
  
• Updating animal thumbnails to include babies, male/female skins and genetic mutations
  
• Updating genetic variation and mutations to look better
  
• Updating tutorials to include information about ontogeny
  
• Fix Nursery idle animations
  
• Fix swim animation speeds being overly fast for all species
  
• Add help articles for no food, no water and restricted growth park issues
  
• Add more detailed information about social needs and behavior in the Paleopedia

The Public Testing Branch (PTB) is a version of Prehistoric Kingdom that can be opted-into on Steam, containing experimental and potentially breaking changes. With the help of the community, we're able to hunt down various issues and gather feedback before pushing a an update to the public version of Prehistoric Kingdom.

1. Right click Prehistoric Kingdom in your Steam Library
   
2. Go to Properties
   
3. Betas
   
4. Select 'ptb_public_testing'

Please note that it is not recommended to play Public Testing Branch parks on earlier versions of the game. Please send feedback and bug reports to our Discord server's appropriate channel.

• Note: social group formation works best for animals that are contained within a habitat
  
• Critical: modular lighting is not recolorable
  
• Critical: animals are teleporting quite a lot according to early testers, please let us know if you can find steps to reproduce this reliably
  
• Issue: herding cohesion is currently broken, so animals can end up standing too close together
  
• Issue: animal avoidance is currently broken, so animals can end up walking through each other
  
• Issue: animals in a herd can get stuck constantly getting up/down if they don't need to rest but their herd leader wants to. This should resolve itself eventually, however
  
• Issue: animals can sometimes snap into their walk cycle or other animations instead of doing so organically
  
• Issue: additive animations can trigger during one shots or right before animals go to eat/drink/rest. We would like to stop this from happening to prevent jank
  
• Issue: many species may have bad color variation or ugly mutations. We are currently going through them one by one using a new method which looks better
  
• Issue: animal animations in the Animal Nursery are currently broken due to the addition of babies, we will be fixing this
  
• Issue: the game may freeze every so often, we are currently investigating the cause of this issue

• NEW FEATURE: SEAMLESS ANIMAL ONTOGENY
  Animals can now be incubated in the Animal Nursery at any point in their ontogeny (growth cycle), and seamlessly grow into adulthood. Incubation gameplay has been re-balanced to make adult animals less economically viable in the early game.
  
  Throughout their growth, animals change in real time:
  
  • Proportions - younger animals are usually lankier, sporting larger extremities and facial features in rapport to the body
    
  • Skin & Coloration - all the baby animals have different patterning and colorations when young, gradually transitioning those into their adult colors. Some babies, like most theropods, are feathered even if the adults aren’t!
    
  • Animations - young animals move around differently, using their own bespoke locomotion animations. Most species even have specific play actions
    
  • SFX - animal sound scales with maturity, with infants sounding chirpier and higher pitched than their adult counterparts
    
  • Behavior - as babies, animals form clutches and follow their adopted family around the park
  Through the Animal Nursery and various game settings, players are now able to control:
  
  • Animal Neoteny
    
  • Animal Growth Speed
• NEW FEATURE: Animal Herding and Social Groups
  Animals now form social groups! Depending on the species, they’ll follow their group leader and synchronize behavior (eating, drinking, resting, etc.) to varying degrees. Infants can also be adopted by adult animals, though they won’t contribute to a social group until reaching adolescence. If infants cannot find an adult, they’ll stick together regardless.
  
• NEW FEATURE: First Person Mode
  A first person mode has been added to the game, accessible from the camera menu (bottom right of the main HUD). This new game mode allows for two alternative play styles:
  
  • GUI ON: toggleable by having the game GUI on screen. This allows for the full creativity suite while in first person
    
  • Full interaction: normal Prehistoric Kingdom gameplay is disabled, while new interaction is unlocked: the player can interact with fence gates, seating, binoculars, and more!
• NEW CHANGE: Animal Locomotion v3
  Animal locomotion has been improved once more with the intent to tidy up and polish the movement introduced in Update 9. The following have been changed/added:
  • All animals now have trot animations
    
  • All animals now have baby animations
    
  • Animals will now move between walk, trot and run more discretely, preventing animation blending from happening for too long
    
  • Animals will now generally transition between all animations more seamlessly
    
  • Animals will now have a chance for zoomies, causing them to run around their paddock. This is more likely as a baby and varies per species
    
  • Animals are less prone to slowing down while moving forward
• NEW CHANGE: Animal Socialization and Awareness
  Animals of the same species will now talk to each other, issuing a call and response. This cannot happen if animals are unable to see one another. If their welfare is too low, animals will play a sad call. If their welfare is extremely low, they’ll play an angry call.
  
• NEW CHANGE: Improved Animal Sexual Dimorphism
  Many species such as Triceratops, Styracosaurus and the Mammoth now feature physical sexual dimorphism, giving females shorter tusks, horns and a more gracile appearance
  
• NEW CHANGE: Improved Animal Alt Species
  Updated the models and proportions for the following animals to make them more distinct:
  
  • Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus
    
  • Charonosaurus, Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus and walkeri
    
  • Juxia, Paraceratherium bugtiense and transouralicum
    
  • Psittacosaurus sp, sibiricus and mongoliensis
    
  • Smilodon fatalis and populator
    
  • Camarasaurus grandis, lentus and supremus
    
  • Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis, lakustai and perotorum
    
  • Elasmotherium and Sinotherium
    
  • Plateosaurus trossingensis and gracilis

• Gameplay
  • With the addition of animal ontogeny, we restructured the Biology research tree to account for various new animal features. The following research items were added:
    • Accelerated Ontogenic Synthesis - improves pricing and timing requirements for breeding full adult animals
      
    • Induced Androgenesis - ability to breed male animals in the Animal Nursery
      
    • Rapid Genetic Replication - multiplies the breeding speed of animals in the Animal Nursery by 100%
      
    • Hyper Genetic Replication - multiplies the breeding speed of animals in the Animal Nursery by 200%
      
    • Suppressed Ontogeny - enables stopping an animal’s growth at a chosen moment in its growth cycle
      
    • Ontogenic Regulation - enables modifying an animal’s growth cycle speed
      
    • Capacity Protocol #1 - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 10 slots
      
    • Capacity Protocol #2 - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 15 slots
      
    • Dynamic Replication Allocation - Increases the Animal Nursery capacity to 60 slots
  • Added new Park Issue for staff not being able to access an enclosure
    
  • Added new Park Issue for animals not having enough room to grow
    
  • Added new Park Issue for shops not having a cashier present
    
  • Added new Park Issue for not having a Compost Heap in the park
    
  • Checklist Park Issues now have click-through behavior to quickly place the required module
• Animals
  • Animals will now consider their vertical reach when deciding which feeders they can use (primarily affecting the Tall Feeder). This is influenced by their current size, so infant sauropods will need ground food to start out with. Animals which can access high food sources will prefer them
    
  • Added an idle shake and additive head throw animation to Megaloceros
• UI/UX
  • Animal portrait icons now better reflect the animal’s current visual state, with distinct icons for each skin, sex, age, and genetic skin mutation. This is applied throughout the entire GUI
    
  • Added a Biology panel to the Animal Info Menu, reporting current animal statistics such as age, maturity, length, mass, etc.
    
  • Added a Social panel to the Animal Info Menu, displaying information about the animal’s current social and family groups, if relevant
    
  • Added an icon to the Animal Info Menu header to indicate the animal’s sex
    
  • Added selection cycling buttons to the Animal Info Menu header, allowing players to quickly switch between animals of the same species if the animal isn’t contained, or animals of its exhibit if the animal is contained
    
  • Added a confirmation window that appears when selling animals, notifying the player of the refund sale price
    
  • Animal Management Menu: added the ability to select multiple animals and sell them with a single click
    
  • Animal Management Menu: added a ‘Most Popular Animal’ widget on the left sidebar, displaying brief information about your park’s most popular animal and focusing it on click
    
  • Animal Management Menu: the ‘Locate’ button on the habitat headers now actually selects and focuses the relevant enclosure/habitat
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Toggle First Person Mode’ set by default to LeftControl+T
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Switch Item Next’ set by default to RightBracket
    
  • Added new keybind: ‘Switch Item Previous’ set by default to LeftBracket
• Audio
  • Added a number of new UI sounds to various buttons and sliders to improve the user experience, replacing many of the old sounds
    
  • Added ambient building sounds to the Fossil Depot, Research Station and Staff Center modules
    
  • Added growls to T. rex eat
• Music
  • Added dynamic variants to many tracks, changing the musical fullness/arrangement depending on the time of day, park rating, weather or building activity
    
  • Added dynamic and semi-procedural pause music (around 25 minutes of material that plays randomly and adjusts layers depending on player input and location)
    
  • Added 2 new Ambient tracks:
    • It’s Yours (2:52)
      
    • Night Life (3:56)
  • Added 2 new Building tracks:
    • Evolution (1:55)
      
    • World’s Greatest Potential (3:43)
  • Added piano variants to 2 Ambient tracks:
    • The New World (1:42)
      
    • Perniciem (2:10)
  • Entering first person mode will cause music to sound radio-like and filtered. This can be turned off in the game options

• Balance
  • Animals have received a substantial round of rebalancing:
    • All animal costs have been re-tuned, with a higher overall cost ceiling. Animal pricing is now fully automated, with costs being mathematically based on the animal’s mass and perceived popularity
      
    • Animal pricing is now plastic, changing in real-time over the animal’s age and taking into account the animal’s appeal. High appeal animals are now worth more in-game money, which is reflected when selling individuals
      
    • Rebalanced animal base appeal points to be mathematically based on the animal’s mass and perceived popularity
      
    • Animal base appeal now slightly varies for each individual, based on their current mass
      
    • Increased animal starvation and dehydration time by 2x and 1.5x respectively, making animals eat/drink less frequently
  • Base price for science projects (excavations, research items) is about x2 higher
    
  • Additional funding levels in the Excavations Menu now have a higher cost, but also a higher fossil yield
• Gameplay
  • Excavation system: animals can now be found in multiple excavation sites. When a species is unlocked in a specific site, that will update in all the other sites that species is present in. This currently extends to:
    • Kökşetau Fm. has been replaced with Kozhamzhar Fm. where Elasmotherium and Mammuthus can be found.
      
    • Psittacosaurus mongoliensis is now found in Dushihin Fm. and Jiufotang Fm.
      
    • Edmontosaurus regalis is now found in Prince Creek Fm. and Horseshoe Canyon Fm.
      
    • Vilyuy River has been re-added to the game, containing Coelodonta
      
    • Yamal Peninsula has been re-added to the game, containing Mammuthus and Elasmotherium
  • Animal creation: each animal instance now progresses asynchronously in the Nursery Holder
    
  • Added the ‘Animal Aging’ gameplay setting: this can completely disable animal aging in Sandbox Mode
    
  • Added the ‘Animal Ontogeny Speed Multiplier’ gameplay setting: this is a global value that affects all
  • animal growth speeds in Sandbox Mode, as long as their growth speed isn’t set to ‘Realistic’
• Animals
  • Animal AI now has a more advanced planning and execution model, allowing them to “think” about new things while still performing their current state, which prevents them from constantly being interrupted by thoughts they can’t currently execute on anyway
    
  • Animals will perform animation one shots at the end of their pathfinding, rather than stopping randomly
    
  • Animal locomotion speeds more accurately reflect their raw animations, leading to overall faster and more alive feeling animals
    
  • Animals will now remain in a single move animation (Walk, Trot, Run) rather than sitting at an awkward blend between two
    
  • Updated neck posture for Megaloceros eating and grazing animations
    
  • Updated various locomotion animations for:
    • Coelodonta
      
    • Dilophosaurus
      
    • Coelophysis
      
    • Dryosaurus
      
    • Psittacosaurus
      
    • Edmontosaurus
      
    • Lambeosaurus
      
    • Iguanodon
      
    • Parasaurolophus
      
    • Nasutoceratops
      
    • Pachyrhinosaurus
      
    • Styracosaurus
      
    • Triceratops
      
    • Tyrannosaurus/Tarbosaurus
      
    • Acrocanthosaurus
      
    • Carcharodontosaurus
      
    • Torvosaurus
      
    • Deinocheirus
      
    • Paraceratherium/Juxia
  • Improved model weight painting quality for most animals
    
  • Improved estimated data for animal mass
    
  • Improved navmesh margins to reduce animals getting stuck on tight corners
    
  • Animal selection input is now far more accurate
    
  • Improved genetic color variance across all species, with more accurate albinism and melanism, and several new leucism coloration types
• Guests
  • Guests will now spawn and use only one contiguous park area, whichever is largest. Multiple spawners are still valid, but only those which are connected to this largest area. Previously it was possible to create multiple disconnected sections of a park, and guests would become confused trying to navigate to attractions in another area. This affects module accessibility, the visitor navmesh preview, and the visitor areas used for Park Beauty calculation
• Environment
  • Improved distant terrain rendering quality by accounting for texture bump in the resampling mechanism: this means more distant ground textures will appear more detailed
    
  • Improved terrain texture fidelity, lowering the scale of most textures to look better next to babies and small animals. This may result in more tiling in specific circumstances, but we feel this is a worthy sacrifice
    
  • Desaturated wetland sand texture and adjusted the wetness of mud
    
  • Decreased visual clutter of snow particles
    
  • Reverted lighting clamping during the early morning and late evening
    
  • Night is now less overwhelmingly blue with better visibility in moonlight and while looking top down
• Foliage
  • Updated kapok and coconut palm impostors
    
  • Reduced alpha cutoff for distant coconut palms and tree ferns, allowing them to maintain their silhouette and better cast shadows
    
  • Slightly increased wind simulation intensity
• UI/UX
  • Reduced minimum brush size for terrain painting to 2, from 5
    
  • UI Transparency now can’t be accessed while the Management Menu is open
    
  • Improved sun lighting transition when going into the Management Menu
    
  • Issue state icons now have 1:1 parity with park issue notifications
    
  • Staff and Visitor inaccessibility park issues will not show up if there are no staff centers or visitor spawners
    
  • The Loading bay and Storage buildings will no longer generate Module Logistics Unfulfilled park issues
    
  • Notification popups can now show over the management menu
    
  • Overview popup audio now only triggers the first time a new popup is created
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: clamped at the edges of the screen
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: further offset positioning so that the buttons don’t overlap with the gimbal editing axes
    
  • Animal Paleopedia: the ‘Thoughts’ page now preview character voice lines
    
  • Changed behavior of the bottom-left park stats buttons to open/close their relevant menus based on current context
    
  • Clearing all notifications in the Notification Menu now automatically closes the panel
• Post-Processing
  • Reduced SSR roughness, resulting in less-green foliage during rain
• Audio
  • Adjusted entire audio mix, resulting in an overall louder and more cohesive experience
    
  • Adjusted Nasutoceratops social response calls to better fit the animation
    
  • Drag sounds for fences, paths and modular objects are now more responsive
    
  • Park Services ambience is now ducked when assigning Science Teams to excavations/research or hiring staff
• Music
  • Extended 1 Ambient track:
    • The New World (1:53 > 2:23)
  • Updated the mix and arrangements of several tracks to match the styling of Volume 1’s soundtrack release. Most current in-game music will receive similar updates!
    • 4 Ambient tracks: All For Them, A Walk In The Park, Dawn Chorus, The New World, Perniciem
      
    • 3 Building tracks: Visitors On Main, Ingenuity, Build Sleep Repeat
  • Changed gameplay music algorithm to be entirely based within FMOD
    
  • Music now sounds more distant, echo-y and lacks low frequencies at nighttime
    
  • Music will not stop playing when entering the Park Services dashboard and will instead sound distant
    
  • Music will lower in volume when at ground level if the player is not building
    
  • Intro music will now fade in at a lower volume when starting or loading a game

• Critical
  • Fixed ambient audio duplicating itself upon specific circumstances, potentially crashing audio or the game
    
  • Fixed a critical GUI exception causing the staff management menu to not properly populate itself with staff entries, when certain staff members have null assignments
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the park name text in the Management View menu to default to “Prehistoric Kingdom” upon loading a save, instead of the saved park name
• Gameplay
  • Fixed staff placement rotation input not working if time is paused
    
  • Fixed certain Park Issues not correctly responding to sandbox settings such as disabling Logistics or Dung
    
  • Fixed a bug which would prevent a visitor spawner from being usable if it was placed on its own, even after being connected to path
    
  • Fixed an issue where unloaded animals in the Nursery would overlap with other animals
• Animals
  • Fixed an animal shader issue that could cause certain skins to wrongfully display iridescence
    
  • Fixed certain animals such as sauropods being unable to reach their max speed
    
  • Fixed Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus neck snap on its rearing animation
    
  • Fixed sauropod rolling animations extending longer than intended
    
  • Fixed Psittacosaurus eat exit animation
    
  • Fixed Pachyrhinosaurus snapping resting animations
    
  • Reduced wiggling animation inaccuracies on various animations
    
  • Fixed animals using high browsing eat animations when taking from ground feeders
    
  • Fixed animals not always being able to drink from shallow water
    
  • Fixed animals getting their needs drained significantly on first placement if you had previously sold other animals in the park
• Staff
  • Deep rework of Staff Dispatch, which now keeps track of all “Job Sites” such as feeders, shops, enclosures etc. and continuously validates that the correct assignments are being sent out to staff. Should prevent the dreaded lazy staff behavior that has plagued them since their release
    
  • Fixed a logical error that allowed laborers to fill feeders if that was one stop in a multi-stop transport assignment
• Audio
  • Fixed guests getting stuck in a Donation Task if it wasn’t completable on the first try
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed selection collision for Research Station
• UI/UX
  • Fixed a collision problem on the coastal map causing the camera’s behavior to be unpredictable at certain positions and angles
    
  • Fixed camera jitter during zoom in/out while tracking a moving object
    
  • Fixed a timing issue causing certain GUI tooltips to stick on screen
    
  • Fixed a minor issue causing the modular style panel from not disappearing when opening the management menu from within modular selection
    
  • Fixed tooltip still being open in screenshots
    
  • Fixed tooltip text for the animal water preference bar reporting the incorrect preferred values
    
  • Fixed timesliced processing on animal breeding within the Nursery Holder, leading to more accurate animal creation timing
    
  • Fixed Shara Murun Formation being named Sharamuran Formation
    
  • Fixed Landscaping Menu issue causing the selected biome preset to not paint the correct foliage when the menu would be opened for the first time in a session
    
  • Fixed a weather menu bug causing the ‘Cycle Weather’ toggle to be auto-selected upon closing the menu
    
  • Modular gimbal GUI: fixed first-frame-glitch effect when entering modular edit mode
    
  • Modular gimbal gizmo: fixed washed out graphics, restored full colors
    
  • Fixed layout refreshing in the options menu, when changing sandbox settings
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the options menu
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the screenshot menu
    
  • Fixed slider handles in the landscaping menu
    
  • Fixed Module Inaccessible park issues from showing up when a feeder or shop is simply empty
    
  • Fixed an instance of layout glitching for overview pop-ups
• Audio
  • Fixed numerous UI buttons with incorrect sound events
    
  • Fixed Carcharodontosaurus broadcast being inaudible beyond 64 meters
    
  • Fixed missing audio events for a few Triceratops, Velociraptor and Paraceratherium animations
    
  • Fixed offset audio events for Coelophysis
    
  • Fixed potential issue where multiple skin layers could repeat over themselves
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the modular ‘moving’ sound to be stuck on during grid placement
• Music
  • Corrected overly aggressive file compression for brass in The Miracle of Life, eliminating a ringing sound

• Decreased spikes to GUI rendering when accessing UI transparency and screenshot mode
  
• Improved physics engine performance related to animal selection
  
• Slightly improved modular processing CPU performance
  
• Made significant improvements to the Animals Management and Staff Management menus performance, with list creation being deferred over multiple frames

Welcome to the March Development Update!

This month, we released our trailer for Update 14, showing off a variety of baby animals coming to the game. This update will be arriving April 24th, with the Public Testing Branch (PTB) version coming to Steam on April 2nd.



As always, the PTB version is intended to catch various issues and get feedback on new features. Not all animals will have ontogeny and the content itself will be in various stages of completion, lacking sounds, animations, skins and other things.




It’s officially 24 days until Update 14 is properly released and yet all of the features are effectively done! For the next few weeks, it’s a matter of finishing the content, polishing, bug fixing and making various tweaks to get this update exactly where we want it.

While there’s a list of changes we’ll be working on until release, one of our favorites is an expansion to our animal thumbnails, with an aim to include renders for babies, sexual dimorphism and genetic mutations. Especially with ontogeny, this is going to make it a lot easier to find specific animals! It also works for the Animal Holder, so you’ll know if you have an albino before it’s even in the park.





It’s a new month, so it must be time to show off more baby animals. Today, we’ll be sharing a bunch from our Discord, starting with the highly requested Spinosaurus! These tiny croco-saurs lack many of the features found in the adult versions, such as their tall crests and giant sails.

Adorably, they even move around with their tails raised, demonstrating how much more nimble the young ones are.




The sauropodlets of Camarasaurus grandis, however, are what you might expect! With proportionally shorter necks and softer features, these babies sport similar coloration to the adults with banded faces and more abundant patterning.



Next, Ankylosaurus has to be one of our favorites! Despite their size, these grumbles are still miniature tanks, though that iconic tail club hasn’t grown in yet. This is also one of the few species that we’d like to create a baby-specific sculpt for, removing various wrinkles and smoothing out their osteoderms. Keep an eye out for that in the future!



Plateosaurus gracilis is another favorite of ours. With the adult having clown-like face colors, we wanted to make the juveniles equally bold. Their cookies and creme patterning evokes a similar vibe to the adult, while making us slightly hungry, too!



Finally, here’s a look at our Sinotherium! Like their modern relatives, the horn on this baby rhino is yet to grow in, leaving a small protrusion on its head.



That’s right, animal herding is coming to Update 14 - surprise!!! You thought it was the next update, but we actually snuck it in for this one.

So, how does it work? Animals that are adolescents or older will be eligible to join a social group. At random, the game will pick a group leader, allowing them to decide where the herd will go or what they’ll do. For example, if the group leader decides to rest or drink, herd members will follow and attempt to do the same thing.

This level of herd cohesion is something that we can vary per species, making animals like Dryosaurus very tight knit, while a pair of T. rex are more independent from each other.



To check if your animals are in a social group, we’ve added a new tab to the animal information panel! Here, you can find the group leader, group members and see how many babies are associated with this group.



Rather than taking up slots in a social group, baby animals are instead adopted by adults, creating a more realistic herd structure. Within these new family units, babies will follow their parents until reaching adolescence, eventually disbanding to find a proper social group. While growing up, though, they’ll do their best to stick near an adult. It’s pretty cute watching them cluster up!


Non-final thumbnail renders!

In the case that babies cannot find an adult (oh no), they’ll cleverly form their own clutch, following a leader much like a regular social group.

Finally, we’ve implemented the first version of animal awareness. In this update, animals will be able to speak to one another, offering a call and response. They’ll prioritise group members, but can occasionally call to other species or animals outside of their group. This behavior can only happen if the animals can see or hear each other.

Animals will also use sad calls when they have unmet needs, or if their welfare is really low, let out an angry bellow. For our fearsome Leaellynasaura, it’s more like an angry rat.



In the future, we want to introduce look-targets/head IK that would allows animals to look at each other, making it more obvious who they’re talking to. We also want to reuse the sad and angry calls as a way for animals to react to each other e.g. “get away from my herd!”

You probably want to see all this in action, so we’ve prepared a short video showcasing a couple of species and different scenarios. In this video you can also catch a glimpse of animal locomotion V3, an update focused on smoothing out movement and adding a trot animation for every animal! It’s still very much work in progress, so we’re hoping to improve it more by April 24.





So, since we managed to sneak herding into Update 14, what’s the plan for 15? Well, while we can’t get too specific just yet, our goal is to further enhance the animals with new behaviors and animations to make them even more lively.

Notably, this includes expanding the social and herding behaviors to feature a more dynamic social hierarchy with things like threat displays. There’s a lot that we can do, and we’re excited to finally begin exploring this side of Prehistoric Kingdom. With that said…

There’s a new species on the horizon and they’re, uh, flocking this way. It’s everyone’s favorite chicken mimic, the Gallimimus!





Although the first ornithomimid in Early Access may have been Deinocheirus, Gallimimus has had an even longer history with Prehistoric Kingdom, namely being part of our first two demos ever! It’s certainly been a while, but we’re overjoyed to see Gallimimus finally come home. We’ve missed you!



Let’s take a look at even more paleobotany arriving in Update 15! Below, you’ll find the last few foliage species coming to the Scrubland biome. This includes a relative to the modern monkey puzzle tree, araucaria!




When you combine all the Scrubland plants together, you get a pretty cool environment! All that’s missing is a Stegosaurus hiding amongst the cycads.



With Scrubland out of the way, our attention turns to a different type of land, the Wetland! For this biome, we have a lot of plants that are intended to sit in shallow waters or on top of the water’s surface.







In addition to the water-based plants above, we’re also going to have giant horsetails! This plant is quite a bit larger than its modern counterpart that’s currently in the game. Think somewhere between reeds and bamboo.



This brings us to our final plant for today and it’s a peculiar one! It’s not a palm nor a mangrove, but actually a fern. We especially love this one and hope you will, too!





To close out this Dev Diary, we have a new terrarium species to share with you! Meet the adorable Simosuchus, a tiny crocodilian from the Late Cretaceous. This armored pug is believed to have been herbivorous due to its short snout and unique teeth! We’d still suggest keeping your hands away from its mouth, though, they’re quite nippy.





Created by W3


Created by ASSASSINSPINO


Created by W3


Created by Alkhan




Thank you for reading March’s dev diary!

To recap, Update 14’s PTB is on April 2nd while the actual update comes out April 24th. We hope you’re excited to finally play it and await your feedback!

- The PK Team

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Update 14 is coming next month on April 24!

An early version of this release will be available on the Public Testing Branch starting April 2, allowing the team to gather bug reports while we polish Update 14 and add the last few assets.




The headline features for Update 14 are the brand new baby animals and their seamless growth systems, allowing players to watch their animals morph and change in real time!

It was important to us that babies weren’t simply scaled down adults. Throughout their life, they’ll adjust their size, proportions, colors, sounds and even behavior over time. We’ve been working hard to create a new set of animations and sounds exclusively for use by the babies.

Seamless growth will be available for all of our current and future species, excluding any Mini-Exhibit or Terrarium bound creatures like the tiny Archaeopteryx and Microraptor.

• INCUBATION
  From the Animal Nursery, players can choose to incubate their animals from any age, easily allowing them to create babies, adults or anything in between.
  
  You can also pick the maximum maturity of an animal, too! This means that as an animal grows up, it can continue to look young despite its age increasing.
  
  
• BABY BEHAVIORS
  Depending on the species, babies will instinctively seek out a parent to adopt them! They’ll try to stick close to their guardian, or if unable to find one, stay with other unadopted babies as a clutch.
  
  At the end of Early Access, we would like to include breeding as a mechanic that adult animals can use to create natural offspring.

First Person Mode allows players to experience their park from a whole new perspective, dropping down to the eye level of a human.

In this mode, players can run, jump and crouch like you’d expect from any other first person game. We even added a few interactions like sitting in benches, opening/closing habitat gates and looking through binoculars to see what your guests see!



The full patch notes will be available once the update goes live.

See you soon, park managers!

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Welcome to the February Development Update!

It’s almost been 65 million years since the last blogpost! Or has it? Thanks to your support, we’ve been releasing mini-status reports every Wednesday over on our Patreon. These reports include exclusive baby reveals, concept art and weekly information about what we’re working on. While some of the Patreon content will be shown in this Dev Diary, there’s still a few things that we won’t be showing here.

To touch on when we last spoke about our financial situation, we wanted to take a moment and thank you for your help. Your support on Patreon has not only helped us immensely, but shown us just how important our project is to this community. If you can help spread the word or afford to offer a donation, the team would appreciate it greatly.

For now though, Prehistoric Kingdom is not going extinct. ♥





It’s been all hands on deck this last month preparing Ontogeny for Update 14. In terms of art, around 40 of the 58 babies are in advanced stages of completion. Most of the remaining production time will be spent on finishing their skins, animations and sounds.



On the technical side, every day presents a new challenge to overcome. Since we change the physical proportions of our animals as they grow, this has a huge impact on various animations like sitting and walking around. Our amazing programmers have been developing new tech to help support our seamless growth systems, allowing us to:

• Correct limb IKs with age
  
• Reposition the vertical offset of young animals while resting, rolling and sleeping
  
• Reproject root motion to better sync movement speed to their new leg lengths
  
• Swap between navmesh sizes as animals get bigger
  
• Prevent animals from growing if a space is too small
  
• Swap locomotion and key animations as animals age up

We’ve also improved the way we handle animal selection with an optimized set of colliders that scale and stretch based on age. This lets us keep the selection accurate regardless of an animal’s current growth stage.



Thinking about all the implications that come with seamless growth, there’s a good reason why games haven’t really done this before! It has to scale, it has to react and it’s a big technical hurdle to solve. But, we’re giving it our best shot and are proud of the results thus far.

If you’d like to learn about how we’re approaching audio for ontogeny, be sure to check out a free blog post we put up on our Patreon last month! It outlines the problems, requirements and the solutions needed to keep asset development and implementation scalable.



Once we’ve gotten Update 14 in a more playable state, we’ll start to push early versions to the Public Testing Branch on Steam. While we’re not quite ready to begin this yet, you can expect to hear more next month as we get closer to Update 14’s release window in late April.

With how big this update is, we want to give ourselves some decent runway to ensure there aren’t any babies missing from the update. It’ll also be just in time for our Early Access anniversary!



This month, we’re pleased to unveil even more babies! These are but a handful of the animals already shown on Patreon, so if you can’t wait for Update 14, go check that out.

Up first is the massive Paraceratherium and its much smaller relative, Juxia. These little ones are almost like a baby rhino and tapir rolled into one with their prehensile lips and big ears.




Next up are the fan favourites Parasaurolophus and Charonosaurus. Each species has a unique pattern to help them transition into their adult coloration, making them quite distinct from one another. If you look close, you can even spot a tiny nub on their head!



Finally, the most scrungly one of all, Deinocheirus! We knew from the start that Deino simply had to have baby bird energy. Our artists looked at animals like juvenile pelicans, roseate spoonbills and flamingos to find the perfect level of freak. What a funky fellow!



With the baby Deinocheirus ready, one of our artists, Ida, was able to recreate her classic meme with PK flavoring.



If you’re looking for something really cute, though, we also shared the babies for the woolly rhino, Dilophosaurus, Dryosaurus and Velociraptor on our socials!







We’ve also refined the Megaloceros fawn since its reveal earlier in the month. There are some fur fixes that we stilll need to make, but it looks more like a young deer now. Thank you for your feedback!





To cap off this section, let’s take a look at some seamless growth! Please note that any stuttering is due to processing time steps since the increased speed is unrealistically fast. During normal gameplay, this effect is imperceptible.





Thanks to recent tech advancements, we’re also taking the time to improve the visual differences of alternate species in Update 14. This means corrected proportions and more accurate shapes for many animals, such as the two Smilodon species.

Below, you can see that populator is much more robust than fatalis with its bulkier build. Fatalis is sleek with a skinnier face, limbs and reduced shoulders. We even gave it cheek ruffs from the original concept art!




We’ll be reducing the fur length on populator’s ears!

In the case of Camarasaurus, each species will have a different head shape and silhouette. From left to right, grandis is the skinniest species with a rounded head. Supremus almost resembles a Brachiosaur with a bulbous skull, short neck spines and a thick neck. Lentus maintains much of the current Camarasaurus, acting as a middleground between the three.




Of course, you can expect to see similar changes for all the other alt species like the Parasaurs, Pachyrhinosaurus and others. Some changes may be less extreme than others, but the team is excited to get these animals feeling more unique.

Since we initially revealed the prototype last month, we’ve seen a lot of great comments about this feature. We’re happy to say that not only is first person mode now functionally complete, but we even had time to sneak in a few object interactions, too!

While running around the park, players will be able to sit on benches, swap between seats, look through binoculars and open/close gates to enter habitats. Any music that’s currently playing will also be given a radio-like effect!



Eventually we’d love to include some simple park management gameplay and make animals respond to the player in first person, but for Update 14 we think this is already a lovely little feature. It helps to appreciate a park from new perspectives!

Rounding out our progress on U14, we’ve been making a few targeted gameplay adjustments now that ontogeny is coming to the game.

• Animal Creation
  Animals are now incubated asynchronously in the Animal Nursery. This means that rather than waiting for one after the other, all incubating animals will progress at the same time. We’ll likely lengthen adult incubation times a little to compensate, but it definitely feels better to have a group of animals be ready together.
  
• Animal Points
  The base appeal of an animal has been rebalanced so that it’s calculated on an animal’s current mass and perceived popularity. This will help make things a little more objective when it comes to balancing, as we previously made the numbers up based on vibe.
  
  As a side effect, base appeal now slightly varies for each individual due to their differences in mass. A small adult T. rex will be slightly less appealing than a large one, for example.
  
• Excavation System
  Widespread animals such as Edmontosaurus regalis and various mammals can now be found in multiple dig sites. Excavation progress will be carried between all the other dig sites a species is present in. We’re also looking to retune excavation costs and speeds to make them feel like more of a long term investment.
  
• Staff Dispatch Improvements
  
  The way staff are automatically assigned to tasks has been improved to hopefully make job completion more reliable. Back to work, slackers!

To wrap up this Dev Diary, let’s take a look at some of the other paleo plants that’ve been worked on. As a reminder, don’t forget that paleobotany will be coming after Update 14!

Below, you’ll find a coastal biome conifer from throughout the Mesozoic, Elatides! This tree will come with a bunch of variations, including one that splits off into two trunks.




Next up are two scrubland plants from the Jurassic, Kimuriella and Korallipteris! We think these two go well together, giving off an arid yet somewhat alien vibe.





Finally, here’s a quick look at one of the oldest plants in the world, the cycad! This family has been around since the Permian, almost 300 million years ago. Despite this, many species can be found all over the world today.





Created by W3


Created by ASSASSINSPINO


Created by Emerson Hul (@ps_arts_official on Instagram)




Thank you for reading February's dev diary!

We’ll be back again at the end of March for our next dev diary. Each week until then though, we’ll continue posting to our Patreon to provide small status updates as work continues on Update 14.

- The PK Team

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Welcome, Park Managers!

In this small fix patch we are targeting a couple of the more egregious animal bugs, leaving the game in a more stable state until the next major update (Update 14) is released. Enjoy!

• Critical
  • Fixed a systemic bug that caused the following bug after removing any animal:
    • Animals to either step in place or walk through things
      
    • Animal LOD to be incorrect
      
    • Animal needs to stop being updated
  • Fixed a bug in the animal animation system that could cause animals to use the wrong animations (this could affect which direction and how animals moved)
    
  • Fixed navigation settings being set wrong causing some areas not to register as navigable incorrectly (This will cause a nav rebake on load for most people!)
    
  • Fixed corrupted animal animation data that would cause some animals to get stuck swimming
    
  • Fixed a regression in animal path following that would cause them to get stuck often
    
  • Fixed a GUI tooltip exception that could have caused downstream effects
• UI/UX
  • Fixed structure menu tag button text spelling ‘Action’ when opening the menu for the first time

Welcome to the January Development Update!

It’s a fresh year with new features on the horizon. We’ve been steadily working on improving the animals behind the scenes with work on ontogeny, sociality and combat for 2025. The thing is though, we actually need your help.

As a niche indie project, development funding can be hard to access, especially through the Early Access period when most potential customers understandably hold off from buying the game until it's complete.

Currently, the majority of our funds are generated during major Steam sales, but revenue can otherwise leave us spread too thin to have the financial security necessary to pay the entire team or commission new work from our artists. This has put us in a tough position, having to weigh our vision for the game against what's financially viable.

We currently have an active team of around a dozen people all in different roles, with some of our core members voluntarily taking staggered or reduced payment to keep us moving forward. This isn’t sustainable, and is why we’re looking to Patreon.



By opening a Patreon, we’re hoping to help ensure that development remains stable throughout the remainder of Early Access. As of this Dev Diary, we have 7 major updates left to complete before we can consider the game ready to leave Early Access.

Beyond keeping the game alive, the main benefit of becoming a patron will be access to exclusive polls, sneak peeks and our weekly development summaries that provide an informal look at what we’ve been up to. Our monthly Dev Diaries won’t be going anywhere, but certain things from the Patreon will be kept exclusive.

If you are in a position to help support the longevity of Prehistoric Kingdom through Patreon, we would be incredibly grateful. We appreciate everything the community has helped us build over the years, whether it was Kickstarter, buying our game during Early Access or even cheering us on from the sideline. You helped us get this far. Thank you!


As a final note, Volume 1 of the Artbook and Soundtrack are now available to purchase as standalone products on Patreon if you don’t use Steam. They’re also included in certain Patreon membership levels!






Assuming we’re able to secure more funding, we’ve updated our roadmap to Early Access release with an emphasis on animals. It can’t come all at once, but step by step we plan to incrementally improve the animals until they are properly completed. This begins with Ontogeny, coming in Update 14.



Update 14 will feature the first iteration of ontogeny, bringing baby animals to Prehistoric Kingdom. Using an age slider in the Animal Nursery, players will be able to preview the growth of a species and create animals at a specific age. When placed in the park, they’ll grow from a baby to an adult!

Here’s a sped-up demonstration of how growth works, using the Mammoth as an example. Note how there are no model swaps or sharp transitions! Instead, its proportions, shape and skin seamlessly change over time.



We’re still working on the little guy, but here’s an upclose look at the current baby Mammoth. They’re certainly different without their massive tusks!



To make babies extra cute, they’ll have their own locomotion to make them bouncier and more wobbly than the adults. It definitely makes the T. rex much less intimidating!



Babies like those of the cave lion are especially adorable! We love how these little kittens came out with their soft faces and massive paws. We bet they just can’t wait to be king.



On a technical level, we’re implementing ontogeny so that upcoming behaviors such as sociality and combat can factor it in from the start. It also allows us to observe how babies fit into the gameplay loop before more advanced features such as breeding are added at the end of Early Access.



As mentioned in a previous diary, one of the benefits of this approach is enhanced sexual dimorphism. For things like mammoths, we can stop their growth early to give females shorter tusks. It’ll certainly make herds look even more diverse!



This highly requested feature will let players explore their park from the eyes of a human: walking, running and jumping their way around the zoo!



We’d really like for players to be able to interact with attractions such as binoculars and in a later update, incorporate basic managerial tasks such as refilling feeders or cleaning dung in exchange for an upfront cost. We feel this would not only increase the sense of Prehistoric Kingdom being your zoo, but provide a more active way for players to engage with the park itself alongside staff.



Most of sociality will revolve around herding and how animals respond to each other. Depending on things like competitiveness or the territoriality of an animal, this can result in social behavior like friendly communication, scaring off competing herds and running away from threats.

Long term, we want to focus on the herd structure and how animals move up/down the ranks. Seeing herd leaders challenged in competitive species, or animals playfully chasing each other in more social ones.



“Mixed herds” is a concept where small species would essentially magnetize to larger ones, as long as they’re compatible. They’re still totally independent social groups, but it mimics the commensalism that you’d find in the real world.



A question we often see is if Prehistoric Kingdom will have “social animations”. This refers to the idea of a highly choreographed/synced animation between two animals, usually showcasing some sort of “canned” physical interaction.

At this stage, we will be focusing on social behavior (animal AI) instead. Not only are social animations out of our current budget, but they have problems with seamless ontogeny and individual size variation that can only be solved with a heavy tech investment. Regardless of those circumstances, we view social animations as more of the “cherry on top” and should not form the basis for sociality in Prehistoric Kingdom.


Above animations are triggered manually to test how threaten behaviors could look!

Combat is being designed as a dynamic system, making use of triggerable attacks and additive animations. This would allow animals to injure each other while moving around and perform actions such as biting or horn stabs.

It’s important for us to prioritize not only the scalability of aggressive interactions across species, but to consider the size of our team, too. Going dynamic means we can build something that’s variable and potentially more reactive for a lower cost, rather than something built around hundreds of cinematic but ultimately predetermined animations.

With that in mind, here are some mockup images using our current library of prototype animations. They depict an incoming attack, bite and hit reaction.




Below is a short animation test demonstrating how a threaten pose could be combined with locomotion and various attacks to create the appearance of an angry animal. Keep in mind that combat is in such early pre-production that we’re not worrying about polish or making it overly sophisticated yet. We just need animations to test with!



There’s a lot to research, trial and develop before we find a definitive path forward that’s achievable for us, so we ask to keep your expectations for combat and hunting measured.



It may not surprise you, but a lot of prehistoric plants are only known from leaves! We’ve been working with Tom Parker (scientific illustrator and author, worked on Saurian!) to ensure that our interpretations are scientifically plausible. For many species, Prehistoric Kingdom will be the first time some of these plants have been recreated in 3D.

All 8 in-game biomes will offer paleobotany, though the majority of species will be going towards scrubland, tropical, wetland and coastal.

Paleobotany is currently planned to feature around 30 extinct species of foliage when it’s finished, including fan favorites such as Araucaria (monkey puzzle), Kimeriella (Zamites), and Gingkos. Below, you can see some of our first assets created for the Coastal biome.






For the Ginkgo trees, we have two different species: one from the Jurassic (Ginkgo yimaensis) and one from the Cretaceous (Ginkgo adiantoides). It’s incredible to think that Ginkgo’s date all the way back to the Carboniferous, before the dinosaurs!

We decided to give them unique growth habits to better align them to the Coastal and Temperate biomes, with the added benefit of increasing their visual diversity.




In terms of gameplay, we plan to create unique dig sites specifically for paleobotany. They’d be scattered across the world, much like our animals are. Placing compatible paleobotany within a habitat would not only provide enrichment for the animals, but increase their Animal Points rating, too. We will continue to show more plants coming with paleobotany as the year progresses!





Terrariums are an upcoming set of modules that will replace the existing Mini-Exhibit system, acting as a rebrand of sorts. Like before, these facilities will house simplified versions of animals that would be otherwise difficult to include in regular habitats, typically due to their size, unique locomotion or ontogeny requirements.

Our goal with terrariums is to better integrate them into regular gameplay, expand their customization options and revisit their pipeline so it’s easier to setup new species.



Terrariums will have 3 configurations to switch between: amphibious, arboreal and terrestrial. Each configuration will change the inside of the tank, making it more comfortable for your chosen species.

• Amphibious
  Features a shallow pool and terrain for semi-aquatic animals
  
• Arboreal
  Features a set of trees for arboreal animals to perch on or jump between
  
• Terrestrial
  Features elavated terrain with viewable burrows for animals to hide in

Each of these configurations will have a small (4x8) and a large (8x12) version to replace the current Mini-Aviary. The small version will be especially great for custom reptile houses or adding little installations throughout the zoo.


Very early mockup, not the final design!

Players will need to set terrariums to use the right substrate, climate setting and provide enrichment in order to satisfy their terrarium animals. Beyond these few options, we’re planning to keep the insides sparse so that players can go crazy adding their own foliage and create dedicated terrarium prefabs. There will also be null styling for further flexibility, allowing players to visually “combine” multiple terrariums or sink them into the ground.

In terms of management, Keepers will need to supply terrariums with food and clean them in order to keep your animals happy and healthy. When disease is added, terrarium animals would get sick, too.

Regarding animals, Archaeopteryx and Microraptor will be joined by Compsognathus, Tiktaalik and Yi, with more being revealed later in the year. Since these critters are being rebranded to terrarium animals, it certainly opens the door for some larger species!





Inspired by real world zoos and fun fairs, we’ve begun looking into potential flat rides to add to Prehistoric Kingdom. These researchable modules would add a significant amount of Attraction Points to the park rating, giving guests something to do when they’re not watching animals behind fences.

In particular, we’ve been considering a Ferris Wheel, Theater and a Hot Air Balloon that would float straight up to give guests a good view of the park. If you had any suggestions that would fit the game’s tone, we’d love to hear them!

Creative Commons Reference Photos (with authors)





Created by Green Godzilla


Created by W.B.


Created by Roundtable




Thank you for reading January’s dev diary!

As you can see, there’s a lot of great stuff in the works but the future of Prehistoric Kingdom is uncertain. Any extra support we can get would be extremely appreciated to keep the game going. In the mean time, we will be releasing progress summaries on Patreon, with the next Dev Diary releasing at the end of February. Thank you again for all of your support thus far.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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