Welcome, park managers!

Update 1 is now available! In this patch, we’ve added a number of new features and quality of life changes to help improve the state of the game. This is only the beginning of our journey through Early Access as there will be many more changes to come.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get this update out earlier due to engine related technical issues. Previously hidden problems with Unity have only just revealed themselves due to a significantly larger playerbase with highly varied machine specifications.

Though we are continuing to fight Unity’s rediculously poor loading and memory related management, we’ve made good headway in optimizing the game and implementing custom workarounds. This will be an ongoing process that’s an unfortunate reality of making a game this large in a brittle and archaic engine.

Feeding System
Feeders can now empty after usage, leading to an ever-growing animal feeding demand as your park grows. Use the Animal Overview Menu (found in the Management Dashboard) to place new orders, passively increasing your available supply of feeding types.



Feeders can be manually refilled individually through their respective piece panel or in bulk through the enclosure info menu.

Notifications
Notifications will now appear inside the new Park Status window, alerting players to various problems in their zoo. You can click alerts to go directly to the closest issue!



Alerts can be muted or customized to highlight exactly what you’d like to know.

Habitat Markers
Create invisible paddock boundaries with the Habitat Marker! Unlike regular fences, animals are not held back by Habitat Markers and will require the usage of terrain, rocks or other methods to keep creatures inside the pen.



Habitat Markers are invisible during regular gameplay and will only appear when building or selecting a habitat.

Animal Nursery Sizes
In Update 1, we’ve added a small and medium Nursery Module. Each Nursery size has its own holding capacity and breeding size limit. Use larger Nurseries to breed and release bigger animals.



Bug Report Tool
In the pause/escape menu, players will now find a dedicated Bug Report Tool. This tool replaces manual GitHub reports by directly sending us a full report containing a game screenshot, a title, description, and full error log.



A big highlight for Update 1 is all the new scenery pieces! Over 50 new items and props have been added to the game, with some highlights including topiary, hedges and recolorable animal silhouettes.



We also switched over to a new weather/sky solution to improve performance. This does however mean that weather and map specific ambient lighting will be unavailable until we can reimplement those features.



Due to pathfinding related issues, the water troughs shown in our last blog post have been moved to a future update.

If you’d like to find exactly what’s been added, changed or fixed, please continue on to the full patch notes below!

• NEW: Feeding System
  • Feeders can now empty after usage, leading to an ever-growing animal feeding demand as your park grows. Use the Animal Overview Menu (found in the Management Dashboard) to place new orders, passively increasing your available supply of feeding types
    
  • Feeders can be manually refilled individually through their respective piece panel or in bulk through the enclosure info menu
• NEW: Notifications
  • Notifications will now appear inside the new Park Status window, alerting players to various problems in their zoo. You can click alerts to go directly to the closest issue
    
  • Alerts can be muted or customized
• NEW: Habitat Marker
  • Create invisible paddock boundaries with the Habitat Marker!
    
    Unlike regular fences, animals are not held back by Habitat Markers and will require the usage of terrain, rocks or other methods to keep creatures inside the pen
    
  • Habitat Markers are invisible during regular gameplay and will only appear when building, selecting a habitat or in the Management view
• NEW: Animal Nursery Sizes
  • Added 2 new Nursery Modules: Nursery Small & Nursery Medium
    
  • Each Nursery size has its own holding capacity and breeding size limit. Use larger Nurseries to breed and release bigger animals
• NEW: Bug Report Tool
  • Added a dedicated Bug Report Tool which can be accessed through the Pause window. This tool replaces manual GitHub reports by directly sending us a full report containing a game screenshot, a title, description, and full error log

• Animals & AI
  • Added grazing to Dryosaurus and Coelodonta
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added 24 silhouette pieces, picked from a wide array of animal and plant species in the game
    
  • Added 3 new Tropical Lamps, perfect for housing fire FX
    
  • Added 12 Topiary pieces, ranging from hedges to animal shapes
    
  • Added Chainlink Arch piece
    
  • Added 2 new styles to the Flat Feeder - Wood and Stone
    
  • Added the remaining feed types to the Flat Feeder - Fish and Insects
    
  • Added 5 Tropical Banners & 3 Tropical Tarp props
    
  • Added 3 Tropical Pot clutter props
    
  • Added 2 Tropical Mask wall decorations
    
  • Added a wooden Tropical Wall Sculpture wall prop
    
  • Added 2 Tropical Basket clutter props
    
  • Added 2 new Tropical Benches
    
  • Added 3 Tropical Bins
    
  • Added 3 Tropical Doors
    
  • Added 3 Tropical Windows
    
  • Added 5 Tropical Paint-Stripped Wooden Beam & Arch pieces
• UI/UX
  • Added: exhibit & modular camera tracking
• Audio
  • Added new foley when animals eat from fruit, fish and insect feeders
    
  • Added sounds to Deinocheirus additive animations
    
  • Added growls to Coelodonta, Dryosaurus and Psittacosaurus when increasing nourishment
    
  • Added new terrain-based surface interaction sounds for when some animals lay down
    
  • Added dawn chorus and additional birds to UK temperate ambience
    
  • Added opening and closing audio events to the dialogue box
    
  • Added completion sounds to animal breeding completion

• Buildings & Scenery
  • Updated junction distance for concrete and glass fences
    
  • Updated Chainlink piece texture fidelity - better visuals as well as improved tiling on angles.
    
  • Fixed a variety of reflection artifacts on several misc modular items & modules
• Save/Load
  • Crashes during saving should no longer corrupt that save
    
  • Added saving failure notifications to let players know if something has gone wrong
    
  • Expanded economy saving: loan progress is now saved and loaded, and the finances history now carry over saves
    
  • Added nursery animal state saving/loading - bred animals contained in a nursery but not yet released will now be saved and loaded
    
  • Added special exhibit saving/loading - mini aviary settings and animals now carry over saves
    
  • Weather menu preferences are now registered over different save games, provided they are in Sandbox mode
• UX/Balance
  • Foliage items are now categorized by their biomes within the Building Menu
    
  • Changed animal-derived park rating behaviour: global species rating will now only change when an animal is successfully placed, and will go down if no more animals of that species are present in the park
    
  • Camera tracking can now be triggered even when the cursor is over a GUI element
• GUI
  • Changed behaviour of the Nursery shortcut button inside the Nursery Holder to open up the closest nursery to the camera, instead of the first nursery ever placed
    
  • Added keybind support to the Excavations Menu worldmap panning and scrolling
    
  • Applied background blur to the save/load menu
• Rendering
  • Fixed rendering for the UK level ocean
    
  • Improved particle effect rendering
    
  • For performance reasons, we’ve switched to a completely new weather/sky rendering solution, which should be easier to render, while providing a higher graphical fidelity:
    • Cloud and fog graphics have been completely overhauled
      
    • Introduced sun shafts and improved atmospheric volumetrics
      
    • Introduced cloud shadows
      
    • Brightened general nighttime ambience
      
    • Slightly neutralized lamp lights
  • Improved distanct rendering for several path materials
• Audio
  • Added support for unique animal audio per skin and integument
    
  • Adjusted timing for day, night and dawn chorus transitions to match new weather systems
    
  • Changed wind sound when at higher elevations
    
  • Wind rips will now be more frequent at high elevations
    
  • Updated footsteps and terrain sweeteners for Coelodonta

• Critical
  • Fixed memory disposal related crashes
    
  • Fixed a Modular deletion bug that could cause both ‘ghost pieces’ and failed deletions.
    
  • Fixed Saving issue that could cause science points to reset at 1,000 on save load
    
  • Potentially fixed an issue that could contribute to excavations sites not unlocking at the right rating level
    
  • Fixed an event failure that caused enclosures to not refresh their data when new feeders were placed within their perimeters
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused random modular objects to occasionally disappear when an exhibit’s dung was cleaned
    
  • Fixed various GUI events that caused modular group power information to not update at the right times
• 
  Buildings & Scenery
  
  • Fixed an issue with the Mini-Aviary lights - the lights should now be fully recolorable
    
  • Fixed the amenity module lights being turned on throughout the day
    
  • Fixed metal fence post LODs
• Rendering
  • Fixed selection outlines rendering artifacts
• UX/GUI
  • Fixed an issue causing the terraforming actions to have a staggered/slow effect
    
  • Improved dynamic scaling ratio of GUI canvases
    
  • Fixed an inaccurate labeling of the time spent on individual saves. Overwriting any of the old saves should now update the labeled metadata with a more accurate time
    
  • The object tooltip now displays the correct genus name when hovering an animal (i.e. the tooltip will now display “Tarbosaurus” instead of “Tyrannosaurus”)
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the excavation site selection highlight to not turn on during selection
    
  • Fixed issue that caused the management menu to stay open when double clicking on the main board management buttons
    
  • Fixed bug causing the exhibit donations to be timescale-independent
    
  • Fixed GUI bug that prevented the correct month and year from displaying in the Finances Overview
    
  • Fixed layout issue that prevented the last save slot in the save/load menu from being deleted
    
  • Fixed Special Exhibit animal welfare bars
    
  • Fixed a minor issue that caused the new game map pins to not promptly display their tooltips
    
  • Fixed a minor layout issue with the breeding progress bar not filling up fully
• Audio
  • Fixed Management Dashboard ambience loop “pop”
    
  • Fixed an audio issue where the audio wouldn't pause within the Screenshot Menu if the timescale was 0
• Dialogue
  • Corrected missing words from Brachiosaurus intro subtitle
    
  • Fixed Nigel repeating a Pachyrhinosaurus line
    
  • Fixed Nigel repeating a Protoceratops line

• Animals are now loaded in as needed, resulting in a small amount of time where no animal preview is visible in the Nursery
  
• Minor CPU optimizations for modular processing
  
• Significant GPU optimizations for lighting and weather
  
• Optimized loading times significantly
  
• Massively optimized selection rendering for large modular groups

• Due to edge cases introduced by the new features, we decided to temporarily disable the Tutorial. This scenario will be back at a later date
  
• As the current weather system integration is still a Work In Progress, the lighting orientation slider within the Screenshot Menu has been temporarily disabled
  
• Cloud shadows may display a sharp "cut" edge. This is something we are investigating
  
• Water troughs have NOT been included in this patch due to pathfinding related issues

Welcome to the May Update!

In this month's post we’ll be taking a brief look at what we’ve been up to over the last couple of weeks as well as sharing some statistics from the first month of Early Access launch.



May was a great month for the team. Having just released into Early Access, we were able to reach brand new audiences (hello!) and read a lot of constructive community feedback. Every bit helps us understand what we could improve and what people would like to see in the future!

Currently, we are working on the game’s first Minor Update - a small patch that introduces quality of life improvements and a smattering of content while we work on our much larger quarterly updates. Memory management and loading issues inherent to Unity prevented us from releasing the patch earlier, however we expect it to drop in the next week or so.

Sort of like a sibling to the state icons currently in the game, Notifications will alert players to things they should take a look at. Customizable in nature, players can pick exactly what they want to get notified for.


UI Concept Art

Management is an area of the game that we are determined to flesh out as the project develops further. As a small start, Mau worked on our new food production mechanics. Unlike at launch, feeders will now empty requiring them to be refilled.

As you place new feeders and refill old ones, the park’s dietary supply will decrease. Keep an eye on your inventory from the Animal Management menu and order new shipments to meet the demand.



With this new system in place, we’ve added Fish and Insects to the flat feeders to provide additional options for you and your animals. Players can also find two new styles available for the flat feeder: wood and stone.



Nathan, our hard surface artist, created a large and small water trough for animals to drink from. These new items will allow animals like desert dwelling Protoceratops to drink without the need of a lake in their habitat.


Work in progress water visuals.

In May, our concept artist Ida developed new designs for a medium and small Animal Nursery - significantly shorter (and more affordable!) than the large variant currently in the game. These smaller modules will allow for less intrusive facility building.



Given the creative tools available in Prehistoric Kingdom, it was only a given that the community would want a way to create fully custom enclosures. So, we’d like to introduce… Habitat Markers!

These are a new type of fence that define an invisible paddock boundary. Unlike regular fences, animals are NOT held back by Habitat Markers and will require the usage of terrain, rocks or other methods to keep creatures inside the pen.

As they’re so visually different to many other items in the game, creating and noodling around with a custom shader was a real treat. Despite their rambunctious aesthetic, Habitat Markers are invisible during regular gameplay and will only appear when building, selecting a habitat or in the Management view.




We've got plenty of new scenery items in the new patch, too, including tropical lantern posts, customizable animal silhouettes and beautiful topiaries to decorate your parks. There are so many beautiful concept designs yet to be added, we really think you’ll love what we’re cooking up behind the scenes.

A blog post will be released once the update is live to show off all the new items. Here's our sneak peek from social media earlier this month:




...

The Early Access launch was certainly an exciting event for the team! We had a peak of over 2,500 concurrent players with over 40,000 total unique players in the first month.

Three hotfixes were released that included general bug fixes, improved memory performance, and small rendering improvements that were especially notable on low end machines - but the optimization doesn’t end there!

We've still got some further room for memory optimization, and after extensive testing on all of our rendering systems, we were finally able to pin-point the heaviest GPU hitters. This has allowed us to create internal optimization plans so that we can work towards more performance improvements alongside the planned content updates.

Part of this effort includes the removal of our previous weather package in favour of one that not only looks better, but has shown significantly improved rendering performance on some of our test systems (+15-50%). Please make sure to try out different graphical presets to find what works best for your system.



With Early Access out in the wild, we have begun putting more resources into improving animal movement which is the backbone of developing better AI. You will see more from this in the future as the locomotion overhaul is currently slated for our first major update (July).

This month we also started streaming regularly on Twitch. Every Monday members from the team go live to share behind the scenes exclusives, announce new updates or just play some Prehistoric Kingdom and chat with you all! We’re planning future key giveaways and competitive build-offs with the devs, so tune in to watch the chaos unfold!

...

The first species announced for the quarterly update in July is… Dilophosaurus! With its signature double crests acting as a flamboyant mohawk, this carnivore is ready to make an entrance in every prehistoric park!

One down, two more to reveal… what could they possibly be?



Upclose look at some of the detailing on our Dilophosaurus.

You can view our Public Roadmap on Trello that highlights some of the new upcoming features & improvements that we have planned for Early Access.





Created by Cesar Creates.

Created by Black Heron.

Created by Aresuft.

Created by PoisonBlade.

Created by Moral_.

Created by AtakGames.

...

Thank you for reading May’s dev diary!

We’re ecstatic to have so many players enjoying our game and waiting for new updates. Everyone here at Blue Meridian is extremely excited to continue the journey through Early Access and build a great experience.

We’ll be releasing an FAQ in June to try and answer the community’s most burning questions.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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• Discord
  
• Reddit
  
• YouTube

Hello Park Managers!

The May update needs about a weeks more prep time before the patch goes live - We're workin' hard to get the update out ASAP, and we'll keep you posted throughout the week.

- The PK Team

Welcome, Park Managers!

We’ve been working around the clock to fix some of the main issues regarding performance, and while that’s going to be an ongoing task for us, we’ve located some of the main hotspots regarding high memory usage. This performance improvement update targets some of them by integrating more efficient engine memory utilization, substantially reducing RAM and VRAM across the board. This is going to be especially notable on low end machines, as we hope the game’s going to be less prone to crashing and generally easier to load up.

These are not going to be the last of our efforts on that front, as we’ve still got some further room for memory optimization going forward, as well as some more memory leaks to completely iron out (at the moment most notable by loading in and out of main menu repeatedly).

The good news doesn’t end here! We’ve been religiously testing all of our rendering systems, and were finally able to consistently pin-point the heaviest GPU hitters, allowing us to set in motion realistic optimization plans! We’re going to be addressing these changes in performance patches to be released throughout the month, in parallel with the gameplay updates currently laid out on our Trello roadmap.

Thank you for your patience!

• Audio
  
  • Added incoming phone call to contextualize Nigel ending the tutorial
• Options
  
  • New ‘Cinematic’ quality level

• Foliage
  
  • Terrain Foliage is now repositioned properly after undo/redo
• Rendering
  
  • Improved Shadow Rendering
    
  • Improved general AA stability and reduced jitter
• Audio
  
  • Adjusted music mix for mammoth cinematic in the tutorial
• Input
  
  • Reduced vertical camera movement speed

• Critical
  
  • Fixed critical mammoth placement check that could cause the tutorial to get stuck
    
  • Fixed several exceptions that could seldom cause crashes or impact performance
• Construction/Landscaping
  
  • Water brush undo/redo no longer create artifacts around updated area
    
  • Water brush remove no longer creates “jello” artifacts
    
  • Foliage brush no longer removes poop
• Rendering
  
  • Fixed an issue that could sometimes cause shadows quality to degrade
    
  • Fixed a color masking issue on the Animal Nursery
    
  • Mitigated texture bleeding on the AC unit pieces
    
  • Changed color masking for windowed doors
• UX/GUI
  
  • Fixed Landscaping Menu vegetation tooltips not displaying the right plant height and continent information
    
  • Fixed an issue that caused tutorial/scenario progression to not register

Performance

• Optimized Memory Use of Prefab Previews
  
• Optimized UI Background Blur Rendering
  
• Revised Quality Settings for Increased Scalability
  
• Improved Memory Management - shaved off around 1GB RAM on average

Notes
Due to introducing a Cinematic setting to the Options Menu, some of your current settings might be defaulted to that. Upon opening the update, please ensure that your settings aren’t higher than they should be.

We are aware of several issues with scenario objective completion, exhibit data registering and savegame stability. Those are high on our priority list and are going to be addressed as soon as possible. Thank you again for your patience.

Hi everyone, thank you for your invaluable feedback and patience with the many current glitches. We've done a new round of general fixes, and added a much requested input feature: re-bindable camera controls. Over the next few days, we're gonna address the biggest performance and stability issues, as we're targeting to lower the game's general RAM and VRAM usage.

• Options
  
  • Added bindable camera panning and rotation options

• Input
  
  • Improved option menu keybind input while setting custom keybinds

• Critical
  
  • Fixed a critical initalization issue that caused the options menu to get stuck in the main menu, preventing the game from being loadable
    
  • Fixed a couple of critical UI-related bugs that contributed to creating gameplay issues downstream
    
  • Fixed one of the critical issues that was severely affecting framerate
    
  • Fixed some tutorial unlock events, generally making the tutorial scenario more stable. Still more work to be done on this front.
• Buildings & Scenery
  
  • Fixed texture tiling on tropical wooden roofs
    
  • Fixed color masking on modern railing and metal beams
• Rendering
  
  Fixed a loading issue that prevented the right shader for loading up for the ocean water, as a result, the reflection graphics have improved for the ocean material
• UX/GUI
  
  • Removed borders from the excavation menu world map
    
  • Fixed rare edge cases where the box selection would still render while panning/rotating the camera

Patched out some stability issues for the tutorial that caused it to get stuck

The time has finally arrived - Prehistoric Kingdom is now available in Early Access for $29.99 USD! Thank you to everyone who has shown their support along the way, we can’t wait to continue this amazing journey with you all.



Prehistoric Kingdom's Early Access release offers 23 prehistoric animals, 3 playable maps, animal welfare, basic economy management and more!

To read a full breakdown of what's currently on offer, check out the Launch Features recap on our official blog.




As this is an Early Access title, the game will require a number of large updates before it’s ready to leave the program. Like stated on the store page, we currently expect 18-24 months of ongoing development after launch to get the game up to its full potential.

To start, you can find out what’s in store for the next year of Prehistoric Kingdom by visiting our official Trello page. Though everything is subject to change, we highly recommend checking in to see what is on the horizon.

• Major Updates (Quarterly)
  Arriving at the start of every quarter, Major Updates can include new animals, large gameplay systems and new, exciting locations to build your next park in.
  
  These are the biggest updates during our time in Early Access and will add the most significant content to the game experience.
  
  
• Minor Updates (Monthly)
  Arriving once a month, Minor Updates bring quality of life improvements, new items and small features to the game.
  We intend for these updates to act as supplementary content drops while we develop the larger updates in the background.

You can see how this scheme fits into the rest of 2022 below:

• Q2 2022
  April: Early Access Launch (Today!)
  May: Minor Update
  June: Minor Update
  
  
• Q3 2022
  July: MAJOR Update
  August: Minor Update
  September: Minor Update
  
  
• Q4 2022
  October: MAJOR Update
  November: Minor Update
  December: Minor Update

It’s important to note that this update scheme does NOT include hotfixes! The team will be working to resolve pressing issues and bugs where we can to improve the games stability.
 
If you are experiencing issues or would like to leave constructive feedback, please let us know via our Github page here. We will be releasing hotfixes over the next week to address a number of issues present in the game.

Critical

• Saving the game CAN fail as a very rare occurrence! We've added an auto-save feature, but PLEASE create multiple saves or backups during a play session.

Performance

• FPS may drop randomly during a play session. This can be resolved with a restart, but the team is actively investigating the issue.

Animals

• Animals may get stuck sometimes. Moving the animal to a new location can help them.

Guests

• Guests can be prone to various pathfinding issues when removing paths or modular pieces.

Gameplay

• There is currently no undo/redo for paths.
  
• There is currently no undo/redo for painted foliage.
  
• Mini-Exhibit animals do not currently save.
  
• Animal Nursery incubation does not currently save.
  
• Loan repayment does not currently save.

Modular

• Modular prefab icons may load up white. This is purely icon related and does not affect the prefab itself.
  
• Deleting multiple pieces can sometimes leave unselectable “ghost” pieces behind. Saving and reloading will remove them.

Visuals

• Selection graphics when selecting pieces do not render correctly, resulting in an x-ray like appearance.

Welcome, Park Managers!

The wait is almost over! Prehistoric Kingdom Early Access release offers 23 prehistoric animals, 3 playable maps, animal welfare, basic economy management and more!

Before we delve into what’s available, we’d like to remind everyone that this is simply the start of our journey through Early Access. There’s a lot of exciting content yet to come and we hope you’re eager to see what comes next!

• Dinosaurs:
  Acrocanthosaurus, Argentinosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Camarasaurus, Deinocheirus, Dryosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Iguanodon, Lambeosaurus, Nasutoceratops, Pachyrhinosaurus, Protoceratops, Parasaurolophus, Psittacosaurus, Torvosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus and Styracosaurus.
  
• Mammals:
  Coelodonta (Woolly Rhino), Smilodon and Mammuthus (Woolly Mammoth).
  
• Mini-Exhibits:
  Archaeopteryx and Microraptor.

Listen in awe as these amazing beasts each have their own sounds harmonising throughout the park. Every animal is unique in its size, variation and saturation value with various animations for every species. Watch them bring life to your park as they: walk, run, graze, sleep, eat, drink and even poop! Some animals like the Psittacosaurus even have alternate species to find and collect.

That's not all, folks! Additional animations and interactions between animals will be included in notable updates after Early Access launch, and the animal menagerie will continue to expand as more remarkable species join Prehistoric Kingdom.



Each map has specific tailored soundscapes, colour grading and ambient lighting so that players can enjoy the different environments in each of their parks around the globe!

Challenge
Take the role of Park Manager and grow your economy by developing the infrastructure to care for your animals. Maximise your potential Exhibit Score by improving the state of habitats to increase Science Points production and park donations from guests.

Breed new creatures and revisit old ones to hear a variety of facts delivered by Nigel Marven - your park supervisor and head of zoological developments!



Science Points can be collected passively at each enclosure and are based on the current Exhibit's Score. Use these points to unlock new dig sites and animals to showcase at your zoo.

(You can unlock animals in the Excavations Menu, found in the Management Dashboard.)



Sandbox
Modify the game settings to your liking or reach your full creative potential and design your dream park with no limits.

• Customizable settings include:
  
• Starting Cash (includes infinite toggle)
  
• Starting Science Points (includes infinite toggle)
  
• Infinite Power
  
• Animal Habitat Welfare
  
• Animal Dung
  
• Unlock All Animals
  
• Character Dialogue

(More options will be added to Sandbox as new mechanics are introduced.)



Scenario
A fully narrated Tutorial by the wonderful Nigel Marven is available to play and can be accessed via the Main Menu. Although intended for newcomers to the game and genre, this helpful guide is a joyful park managing experience for all players!



Developing these goal-driven features has been a great introduction for the team to apply narrative-based game objectives to Prehistoric Kingdom, with more Scenarios to follow in the not so distant future.

Build and decorate your dream park using an array of powerful creative tools.

Terraforming
Grow jungles, carve rivers and raise mountains across the enormous playable area that each map has to offer using the Terraforming Suite.

• Carve terrain with six distinct tools to shape the land: raise, lower, level, erode, roughen & smooth.
  
• Get your feet wet with up to three paintable water materials: calm, rough & muddy
  
• Adjust the water depth intensity to your liking to carve shallow rivers or form monumental lakes across the map.
  
• Paint terrain and forests with 6 paintable biomes: Tropical, Wetland, Scrubland, Temperate, Coastal and Boreal.
  
• Use the brush intensity to create subtle and stylish gradients between textures to add more realism to your park.

The Desert and Grassland biomes are still in the works and will be added in future updates!



Paths & Fences
Choose from 15 fences and 11 path materials using an intuitive spline-based construction system and enable terraced fence placement to create a uniquely staggered look!

Modular Items
Get custom with over 600 modular items including: wall structures, roofs, doors & windows, lights, props, scenery items, trees, shrubbery, plants, rocks, sticks, and even VFX fire, smoke and water). A selection of modular shapes are also available to create fully custom pieces in your park.

If that’s not enough, ALL decorative modular pieces can be scaled to increase or decrease its size, allowing for more creative customisation!




Custom Modular Prefabs
Players can save their creations for repeated use around their park or in other saves. Though it is not yet linked to the Steam Workshop (coming soon), prefabs can be shared locally by finding them on your computer and uploading them online or in our Discord. We can’t wait to see what you make!

Animal Welfare
Every species in your park has needs, and it's up to you to care for them!

They require ideal fencing, paddock size, water, forest & cleanliness! You can view these stats by clicking on the Habitat category in the Animal Info box.



Your prehistoric animals will poop after eating, lowering the cleanliness of the habitat! Place a Dung Beetle Nest near poop piles to automatically clean them or select the clean command from the bottom of an exhibit’s menu.



Much like regular animals, Mini-Exhibit species will soon have welfare needs too. This will be introduced in a later update, but for now, you can still place and build a habitat for your beautiful aviary creatures.

(Tip: To remove the fencing around the Mini-Aviary, simply select the exhibit and click “Edit Group”. Use the Styling Toolbox to remove the shell or create your own!)



In the future, low animal welfare will lead to illness and eventually... death. These repercussions will be introduced in a later update.

Exhibit Score, Donations & Science Points
Players can improve the state of habitats by watching out for animal welfare and working to maximise their potential Exhibit Score. This will increase passive science points production and park donations from guests.

Soon we’ll be looking into guests interacting with buildings. For now, we've added a simulated economy for amenities and exhibit donations that will add some complexity to the economy management in your park.

To find your Exhibit Score, simply select the perimeter fence of a habitat.



Science Points are used to unlock new dig sites and animals. Players can collect science points passively by each enclosure, based on the enclosure’s current exhibit score.

Basic Power Management
Certain infrastructures will need electricity! In the Park Infrastructure category, utilities such as; solar panels or wind turbines can be placed next to buildings to power your park.

...

Early Access is a huge achievement, but by no means is it a finished game. With continued development and support, many more features are expected to be released in future updates so that players can truly build the ultimate prehistoric zoo of their dreams!

If you’re interested in seeing what’s in the works for Prehistoric Kingdom, you can visit our Trello page to view the biggest content updates coming in the next few months.



If you are an eligible Kickstarter Backer, please make sure you have set up a Crytivo account using the exact email you used to back the game on Kickstarter to ensure you receive your Early Access key on time.

For those of you who purchased Early Access via the Crytivo store, you will be receiving new Steam keys upon Early Access release. Any existing keys you may have used will be revoked as new ones are going to be automatically assigned to your account.

If you have any further questions, please be sure to contact Crytivo’s support at support@crytivo.com or get in touch with us through Twitter, Facebook or Discord.

...

We started this game as a small-scale project all the way back in 2014. After all this time, we must thank our wonderful community once again for their outstanding support over the years! We hope you all enjoy what we have so far.

Until next time,

- The PK Team

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Bring extinct creatures back to the world with PREHISTORIC KINGDOM Early Access, arriving APRIL 27TH 2022! Featuring 23 animals at launch, 3 playable maps & an array of powerful creative tools to build the park of your dreams.

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Welcome, park managers!

This update has taken longer than we initially expected. We wanted to make sure we could reasonably polish new game mechanics while working on Early Access release features, and marketing in parallel. We apologise for the delay and hope you all enjoy the new update.

• NEW: Challenge & Sandbox Mode
  • Challenge and Sandbox are now separately available through the ‘New Game’ button within the main menu. Players are also able to create and set completely custom Sandbox games.
    
    A map selection screen has been added under the ‘New Game’ menu.

• NEW: Animal Welfare
  • Animals will now poop after eating, lowering the Cleanliness of the habitat.
    
  • Animals now require ideal paddock size and crowding, water, forest, biomes and cleanliness.

• NEW: Exhibit Score, Donations & Science Points
  • Improve the state of your habitat by watching out for animal welfare and working to maximize its potential Exhibit Score, increasing donations and science points production.
    
    To find an exhibit’s score, simply select the perimeter fence of a habitat.
    
  • Science points are used to unlock new dig sites and animals. You can collect them passively over time. Improve your habitats to improve science points production.

• NEW: Habitat Maintenance
  • Place a Dung Beetle Nest (found in Animal Care > Enrichment) to automatically clean paddocks.
    
  • Manually clean habitats by selecting the perimeter fence of an exhibit and pressing the clean action at the bottom of the menu.

• Animals
  • NEW ANIMAL: Iguanodon
    
  • NEW ANIMAL: Brachiosaurus
    
  • Added new additive animations to all the existing rigs
    
  • Brought back sleeping, grazing, broadcasting and running behaviors for all animals
  
  
• Levels
  • Added a new playable temperate map set in the UK
  
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added a new wooden fence: Tropical Bamboo
    
  • Added 1x1, 1x2 and 1x4 wall pieces
    
  • Added pillar wall pieces
    
  • New Prefab: Large Planter Modern 1 - found in Modular Pieces > Gardening
    
  • New Prefab: Large Planter Natural 1 - found in Modular Pieces > Gardening
    
  • New Prefab: Large Planter Natural 2 - found in Modular Pieces > Gardening
    
  • New Prefab: Large Planter Tropical 1 - found in Modular Pieces > Gardening
    
  • New Prefab: Animal House Backstage - found in Animal Care > Housing
    
  • New Prefab: Large Animal Stables - found in Animal Care > Housing
  
  
  
  
• Foliage
  • Arrowwood (x1)
    
  • Field Elm (x2)
    
  • Oak (x2)
    
  • Paper Birch (x4)
  
• Construction
  • Added the Path replacement feature
• UI/UX
  • Added state icons tied to various gameplay elements (e.g. lack of power in the park, animal placement, etc.)
    
  • Added ability to set the park name through the Management Menu, in the Overview section
    
  • Clicking on a biome icon in the animal habitat menu or enclosure habitat menu will automatically open the Landscaping Menu with the right biome settings
• Audio
  • Added night and dawn chorus ambience to the Scrubland map
    
  • Added Elephant family sounds to Mammoth
    
  • Additional vocal sfx and foley for Sauropods
    
  • Additional vocal sfx variation for Protoceratops
    
  • Additional modular sfx variation for wood materials
• Music
  • Added dynamic layering to certain music tracks; layers will come in or out based on the time of day, construction frequency, and animal proximity.
• Options
  • Added Anti-Alias Options: Off, FXAA, SMAA, TAA and CTAA
    
  • Added a ‘Controls’ section to the options menu, allowing users to set custom key bindings for the game’s controls

• Animals
  • Reduced vitality needs drain speeds for most species
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Adjusted vegetation color for plant feeders
    
  • Adjusted Concrete Path coloration
    
  • Adjusted emissive sign brightness
• Foliage
  • Painted foliage now adapts to terraforming changes, aligning to the underlying terrain
    
  • Every click or brush stroke will now place at least 1 foliage element
    
  • Adjusted amazonian and water lily colors
    
  • Adjusted kapok colors
    
  • Adjusted translucency of birch, sabal palmetto, coconut palm, kapok and samanea trees
  UI/UX
  • Overhauled game economy - decreased structure build and upkeep costs where applicable, while tying in exhibit donations and amenity income to the overall park balance. Hopefully these changes are going to make running a Challenge mode park a much more enjoyable experience
    
  • Players can now carry terraforming operations while having items selected
    
  • Improved animal navmesh visuals
    
  • Improved background visibility for the Options Menu
    
  • Slowed item scrolling speed in the building toolbox
    
  • Added a smoothing effect to the start of item rotation, allowing for finer degrees rotations
    
  • Canceling a spline (fence/path) action while building a segment doesn’t completely disable the action, but instead will start a new action for a smoother experience
    
  • Removed ability to select modular pieces from separate groups while editing a group - only the pieces within the edited group are now selectable
    
  • Saved games can now load the correct month progress, which was previously overwritten
    
  • Reworked progress bar logic on the loading screen. This should more accurately display how close you are to finishing loading
• Rendering
  • Generally improved ambient coloring and color grading - color grading especially is now map specific, with the default scrubland level receiving a much warmer overall coloration
    
  • Vastly improved night and sunset rendering
    
  • Vastly improved shadow quality at most quality settings
    
  • Improved SSR Scaling at lower settings
    
  • Improved water depth interpolation - dramatically reduced sharp lines on the water’s surface where it shines, and in shallow water
    
  • Warmed up default sunlight colors
    
  • Tweaked quality presets to improve perf/quality balance
    
  • Increased post-processing vignette
    
  • Increased grass brightness in shaded areas
    
  • Improved loose rain streaks appearance when overlaying water shores
    
  • Rolled grass graphics back to Alpha level (purely a cosmetic change, with no major impact to gameplay or performance). Grass graphics are something we’re still playing with, so expect these to change and improve over time
    
  • Auto exposure now updates regardless of time scale, resolving over-exposed shots
    
  • Rocks now get glossier during rainfall
    
  • Improved glass fence reflectivity
• Audio
  • General mix adjustments
    
  • Entity sounds while in Management View are now louder with flatter dynamics
    
  • Time speed up audio cue now fades away
    
  • Updated sfx for small and medium plant placement
    
  • Updated sfx for dead, medium and large tree placement
    
  • Random bird calls on modular tree placement are now based on level biome
• Input
  • Re-binded right click drag to camera panning, whereas it was previously set to camera rotation

• Critical
  • Fixed a save/load bug that caused save times to always default to Year 1
• Animals
  • Fixed Camarasaurus not being able to eat from the tall pole feeder
• Foliage
  • Fixed selectability for Scots Pine 2 and 3
• UX/GUI
  • Fixed several selection graphic events conflicting with management view
    
  • Fixed nursery menu scrollbar defaulting to lowest available position
    
  • Fixed main board GUI sliding animation issues
    
  • Fixed a new game initialization issue that prevented the help menu from showing up
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused the animals to not play their walking animation within the nursery preview
    
  • Fixed nursery menu sort order, now displaying the nursery menu in front of any selected GUIs
    
  • Disabled access to incomplete land value management view
    
  • Fixed water intensity always defaulting to its max value, now the landscaping intensity slider will remember the last set amount
    
  • Fixed Loading Menu masking issue with loading buttons
    
  • Fixed spelling mistakes on various text elements and tooltips
    
  • Fixed a coloring menu issue where copying a color into the hex input field would result in a slightly different color
    
  • Fixed an indexing issue that caused the management overview menu’s labels to break after the first year
    
  • Fixed main menu GUI scaling issues
    
  • Fixed excavations world map jitter issues
• Audio
  • Fixed sky wind audio not looping
    
  • Fixed group placement audio not including foliage sounds
    
  • Fixed Camarasaurus not playing walking growls
    
  • Fixed Camarasaurus not playing foley while eating
    
  • Fixed Deinocheirus not breathing while sleeping
    
  • Fixed rain impact layers playing on animals not near the camera
    
  • Fixed Edmontosaurus and Lambeosaurus Nursery audio
    
  • Fixed action canceling sound event only triggering for modular actions
• Music
  • Fixed nursery theme not playing while in the nursery menu

• Massively optimized fence rendering
  
• Significant GPU optimizations for prepass rendering
  
• Small CPU optimizations for selection rendering
  
• Slight CPU optimizations for general rendering
  
• Fixed GUI related bug that caused massive lag spikes at certain times of day while having a group selected
  
• Slight rendering optimization for rain particle effects
  
• Considerable optimization for guest AI calculations
  
• Optimized sunset and sunrise rendering speed

• If you are working with an OLD SAVE, please read the following:
  
  • Due to the addition of exhibit statistics, old paddocks will need their perimeter fencing rebuilt
    
  • A new navmesh has been added for giant animals like the Brachiosaurus. Old saves do not have this mesh which will result in giant animals walking through visually innaccessible areas
• Brachiosaurus can have issues drinking. We are looking into this.
  
• A number of additive animations and returning behaviours do not have audio. This will be addressed in hotfixes and the launch update
  
• There is a known issue that unrealistically lowers the game to 10-15 FPS. If this occurs, please restart the game.
  
• There is a known issue that causes prefab icons to load empty or white (this does not affect the actual prefabs!). If this occurs, please restart the game.

A hotfix patch will be arriving in a few days to address various issues.

Thumbnail screenshot from Discord user Grimnir.