Welcome, Park Testers!

This release aims to address some of the issues reported by users on our Discord server and adds the last staff type for Update 11, Cashiers! These workers will manage the register at kiosks around the park, changing shift when additional cashiers are available. They are real, physical staff, just like Laborers and Keepers.

By default, Cashiers will be auto-hired from the Staff Center when the game detects kiosks that have no one assigned to them. This behavior can be disabled from the Park Services menu, or players can choose to manually hire Cashiers, just like the other staff types.



We've also finalized the Staff Gate design, adding 3 recolorable styles and height variations to support 1m and 6m fences. More styles will be added in the future!


Additional improvements have been made to modular building, including better rotation behavior free moving, aligning to surface and allowing for the advanced scaling or rotation of groups that do not contain modules.




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.

• NEW STAFF TYPE: Cashiers
  Cashiers work at kiosks, interacting with visitors. After a while, cashiers will need to change shifts if other cashiers are available.

• Animals
  • Added behavioral one shot animations to Plateosaurus species
• Staff
  • Added the ability to move staff
    
  • Laborers and Keepers now have unique uniform hats
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added Staff Gate 1m, 6m and 3 new styles

• Gameplay
  • For the time being, visitors will be deleted from the park when loading a save from previous versions
    
  • Jeep Depot, Research Station, Staff Center, Nursery Large, Nursery Medium and Nursery Small can now only be placed once in every park, due to being tied to specific game mechanics
• Animals
  • Decreased overall sizes of all Plateosaurus species
    
  • Female Plateosaurus are now smaller than their male counterparts
    
  • Removed Edmontosaurus dialogue from Ugrunaaluk until new lines can be recorded
    
  • Fixed misspelling of Ugrunaaluk (previously Ugrunaluuk)
• Staff
  • Slightly buffed movement speed when jogging or transporting goods
• Guests
  • Improved guest interaction positioning
    
  • Eyes now reflect their environment
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Adjusted Arid Cobblestone path to improve tiling
• UI/UX
  • Further changes to the VO dialogue box design
    
  • Decreased scroll sensitivity in the Animal Nursery gallery
    
  • Improved save/load menu UX
    
  • Made several improvements to the modular placement system:
    • Rotation deltas are now always calculated based on the adjacent normal up axis, never the object’s up axis: this means objects will be rotated vertically no matter their local orientation
      
    • Scaling and rotation checks are much more robust, the game shouldn’t allow you to scale and rotate pieces which aren’t meant to. This fixes the ability to create huge/tiny modules (e.g. Aviary, Kiosks, etc.)
      
    • Scaling is now allowed in group placement actions, being completely consistent across the board
  • The animal holder menu now automatically comes up when breeding new animals through the Nursery
• Rendering
  • Improved and optimized shadow quality across all settings

• Critical
  • Fixed a crash when hiring a new staff member
    
  • Fixed errors that prevented any saves containing visitors from loading properly
    
  • Adjusted save system to prevent players accidentally deleting all of their saves by saving with no input name (UI block as well as additional checks to ensure a save target is actually correct!)
    
  • Fixed a couple different crashes when closing the game
    
  • Fixed an animal holder duplication bug that occurred when canceling animal placement
    
  • Added a potential fix for a bug that would cause animal previews in the Nursery Menu to not dispose/load correctly, leading to duplicate previews
• Gameplay
  • Fixed the animal placement action not registering an animal back into its enclosure if it was being moved, but subsequently the action was cancelled
    
  • Fixed the animal placement tooltip not correctly updating its text validity state
• Animals
  • Fixed a common issue that could leave animals stuck until game reload
• Staff
  • Staff will now check if the destination for a resource is accessible before starting an assignment to transfer that resource
    
  • Improved staff gate navigation precision
    
  • Laborers should no longer ping-pong resources back and forth between warehouses where the stock is disabled
    
  • Fixed Keepers getting stuck on dung mounds and returning to the compost heap in between every mound cleaned
    
  • Adjusted animations on various staff assignments to better fit the action taking place
    
  • Numerous fixes for props
    
  • Fixed staff props being left around in some cases
    
  • Fixed data for held props breaking on reloading the game
    
  • Fixed staff not being fireable if time is paused
    
  • Staff will no longer jog when they shouldn’t be
• Guests
  • Guests will now use binoculars more accurately
    
  • Fixed visitors not getting satisfied after using an amenity
    
  • Fixed guests needs not properly computing
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed donation box recolorability
    
  • Fixed several shop related modular items not rendering correctly
    
  • Fixed bathrooms disappearing on minimum graphics
    
  • Fixed various materials using the wrong shader version
    
  • Fixed waterfall particle cutoff and reduced overall opacity, added depth fade to remove billboard artifacts when intersecting with geometry
    
  • Fixed Loading Bay having out of range delivery times
    
  • Fixed Loading Bay not respecting the disabled stock settings
    
  • Fixed FX pieces being walkable by guests
• Water
  • Fixed light/color flickering on painted water
    
  • Fixed shadow settings not being applied properly, resulting in worse GPU performance on lower settings
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused constant shadow flickering when time of day is enabled
• UI/UX
  • Fixed the animal preview in the Animal Nursery
    
  • Fixed the Modular Styling menu not being interactable in all relevant circumstances. It should now be accessible whenever a modular object with styles is being edited/placed
    
  • Cannot access the save game button, if the current save name input is empty
    
  • Fixed save/load menu scroll content not properly updating on search
    
  • Fixed a bug where save previews would all break if a single save had a corrupt or invalid save preview
• Audio
  • Fixed inaudible Plateosaurus trossingensis broadcast
    
  • Fixed an issue where overlapping animal breaths got cut short
    
  • Fixed background static not getting destroyed when returning to main menu during dialogue

• Fixed a memory leak
  
• Optimized human rendering
  
• As mentioned above, shadow rendering has been optimized across the board

Welcome, Park Testers!

This latest patch for the PTB introduces staff, random excavation events, and two species of Plateosaurus! We've written some basic guides below to help players find their way around the new mechanics while we renovate the help menu, notifications and park issues. For a detailed look at staff and their new buildings, check out the latest Dev Diary.

Over the next few weeks, you'll be able to see Update 11 take on its final form as we continue to round out issues, improve gameplay clarity and reintegrate features.

1. Build a Staff Center found in the Infrastructure category.
   
2. Open the Staff Management menu by selecting your new group or by pressing the Park Services button (hexagon icon) in the bottom left of the main HUD.
   
3. When inside the Staff Management menu, players can see a hiring list for all roles or specific roles.
   
4. Hired Keepers and Laborers will emerge from the Staff Center.
   
5. At this stage in development, staff are very hands off. As long as you have enough people and the correct facilities, they will do their best to restock the park and clean habitats.

All buildings/modules below are found in the Infrastructure > Logistics category!

1. To get resources into the park, build a Loading Bay.
   
2. Resource distribution can be improved by building Goods Storage or Produce Storage modules in key areas. Laborers will take resources to kiosks and storage modules while Keepers will take resources to animal feeders.
   
3. To clean habitats, build a Compost Heap for Keepers to deliver poop. Any poop stored inside will be converted into compost.
   
4. To create your own animal feed, build Produce Stations. These must be fueled by compost (transferred by Laborers) to efficiently create food.

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.

• We are in the midst of overhauling notifications and park issues. Once complete, this will have a massive impact on game feel and clarity for both staff and excavations!
  
• Cashiers are not implemented as a staff type yet. This will not impact the functionality of your kiosks as they will continue to work without staff for now.
  
• The 'Call Staff' button on various UI panels are not yet functional.
  
• Many of the old UI elements have not been updated.
  
• Visitor clothing color variation has not been developed yet.
  
• Donation boxes are currently not recolorable, we are working on a quick fix. The shop signs rendering is also glitched, which we are addressing in the same hotfix patch.

• NEW ANIMAL: Plateosaurus trossingensis
  
• NEW ANIMAL: Plateosaurus gracilis
  
• NEW FEATURE: Logistics Loop
  Place the Loading Bay and hire staff to get started. Spread the park inventory with storage facilities and grow your own food with Produce Stations using the compost from Compost Heaps!
  
• NEW FEATURE: Staff
  Hire staff to manage the needs of guests and animals.
  • NEW STAFF TYPE: Laborers
    Laborers refill guest facilities and transfer both goods and produce to storage facilities around the park.
    
  • NEW STAFF TYPE: Keepers
    Keepers refill animal feeders and clean habitats, transporting dung to Compost Heaps.

• Gameplay
  • Added the Trossingen Formation
    
  • Added the Löwenstein Formation
    
  • Added monthly RNG excavation events! These events will affect each excavation’s cycle time, cost, and even fossil yield rate
    
  • Added negative land value influence to bathroom modules
• Animals
  • Added detail maps to most animals, offering subtle surface detail upon close inspection
• Guests
  • Added appropriate clothing for each map climate
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added empty states for the enrichment feeders, Blood Pumpkin, Fruit Block, and Termite Mound
    
  • Added black fades to the bathroom modules, Fossil Depot, Visitor Spawner & Staff Structure entry points
    
  • Added Silhouette Signs for Plateosaurus & Leaellynasaura
    
  • Binocular modules are now useable by guests
• UI/UX
  • Added guest and staff selection, with a dedicated selection panel showing relevant information for each
    
  • Added interaction point visualization on any and all modules that sport animal/human interaction points. These helpful arrows are available during construction actions
    
  • Lighting within modular groups can now be turned on during the day by switching on the ‘Always Keep Lights On’ in the lighting tab of each group’s selection menu
    
  • Added a dedicated Excavations section to the Paleopedia
    
  • Added paleopedia pages for Microraptor and Archaeopteryx
    
  • Added paleopedia page descriptions for Edmontosaurus regalis, Edmontosaurus annectens, Ugrunaluuk, Triceratops prorsus, Triceratops horridus
    
  • Shops now display a ‘missing stock’ state icon when low on stock
    
  • Added a ‘Remove Vegetation’ toggle to the modular building toolbox. If disabled, players will be able to place modular items without automatically removing vegetation
• Audio
  • Added a “woosh” when the camera is moved or rotated at high speeds

• Balance
  • Rebalanced animal ratings across the board
• Gameplay
  • Rebalanced fence strengths across the board, with more fence types being available in the early game
    
  • Halved occlusion multiplier for Park Beauty, making it a bit trickier to completely negate negative land value
    
  • The research system now shares the excavation system’s science teams, employing said teams to unlock research projects
• Animals
  • Sinotherium is now correctly assigned to the Neogene period
    
  • Adjusted social and exhibit space needs displayed in the paleopedia for all animals
    
  • Adjusted animation speed on the unique Protoceratops idle animation
    
  • Improved nasal seam on Pachyrhinosaurus species
    
  • Adjusted Leaellynasaura skin color variation
• Construction
  • Can no longer place fences shorter than 2 meters. Does not limit snapping or intersection behavior
    
  • Fence placement snapping now scales with distance to the camera, will make building large enclosures much easier
    
  • Enclosures are now selected after they are completed for the first time
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Adjusted organic prop coloring on Flat Fruit Feeder and Produce Stations
    
  • Minor piece texture changes/improvements across the board, including adjustments to reflectivity of many metal pieces and props to be less blinding/wet looking.
    
  • Replaced Brick visuals in the Basic theme with a higher fidelity texture.
    
  • Rotated Arid Benches 180 degrees for parity with the rest of the benches (May affect some prefabs, apologies in advance!)
    
  • Converted most light sources into spotlights to reduce light leak and potentially improve performance. Those that use spotlights now feature a cookie (makes it look like light is emitting from a bulb!). This will impact how lighting appears in your prefabs!
    
  • Reduced light emitted from halloween candles
    
  • Simplified collision on a number of lighting props
    
  • Adjusted collision on staff and logistics modules
    
  • Added shop visual fill effects
• Environment
  • Adjusted Boreal map lighting
    
  • Adjusted Desert map lighting
    
  • Adjusted Tropical map lighting
    
  • Adjusted scattering atmospherics to further reduce overblown sunrise/sunset
    
  • Shortened Grassland biome grass rendering distances
• UI/UX
  • Completely overhauled the modular group and piece selection menus, with a heavy focus on widget access and modularity. The main function of each relevant module can now be accessed at every level of the modular selection
    
  • To provide an improved user experience, the paleopedia picture now switches off whenever a user action is running, switching back on afterwards, provided the ‘Show Picture’ option is enabled
    
  • Side quick access menus (Weather & Time, Paleopedia, etc) now show up in front of the Management Menu
    
  • Changed the shape of state icons and changed the inaccessible module icon to show blocked guests
    
  • Updated the voice line panel, and gave Nigel different outfits based on the map that’s currently being played on!
    
  • Temporarily disabled the Help Menu while we work on brand new help articles
• Rendering
  • Improved frustum and occlusion culling for wall/roof pieces
    
  • Addressed culling issues for a variety of pieces
• Audio
  • Extended or reduced audible distance on various animal sounds
    
  • Adjusted surface interaction sounds to randomize volume and lowpass for additional variation
    
  • Adjusted small herbivorous dinosaur eating sounds
    
  • Adjusted field reverb, distance attenuation and distance model to better serve tycoon gameplay and allow for easier game mixing. This may result in overall louder animals!
    
  • Feathered and furred bodies will emit rain impact sounds during a storm, but not as much as scaled or leathery animals
    
  • Changed placement material sounds for new logistics/infrastructure buildings, donation boxes, blood pumpkin and moss roof style

• Critical
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when closing the Time & Weather Menu
    
  • Further fortified the research system’s initialization, adding extra safeties and checks
    
  • Fixed a crash when terraforming near the edge of the map
    
  • Fixed two crashes in nav queries
    
  • Fixed a few cases of new features breaking loading
• Animals
  • Fixed Coelophysis, Leaellynasaura, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus and Velociraptor getting stuck while eating or drinking
    
  • Fixed Camarasaurus species using flat plants feeder
    
  • Fixed Argentinosaurus and Brachiosaurus social call animation
    
  • Fixed Tyrannosaurus eating exit animation
    
  • Fixed Paraceratherium broadcast not playing
    
  • Fixed animals placed outside an enclosure not registering as an escaped animal
    
  • Fixed a seam on the Muttaburrasaurus belly
• Guests
  • Will now choose nearby interaction points more intelligently
    
  • Fixed exploration behavior, previously could generate giant crowds at particular locations.
    
  • Fixed guest needs flickering
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fence shadows fixed
    
  • Fence demolition red highlight has been restored
    
  • Fixed normals on plant and fruit feeders
    
  • Fixed feeders not having their visuals set when first placed and infinite food is turned off
    
  • Fixed enrichment feeders not being loaded as feeders, having no fill amount
    
  • Binocular modules have their visibility cones turned back on
    
  • Fixed various bugs related to Animal Information Signs not detecting nearby enclosures
    
  • Fixed LOD rendering for Bathroom Sign Square
    
  • Fixed a rare error causing the selection outline to not work on certain modules, if their style was changed
• Construction
  • Fixed animal containment bugs when updating enclosure layouts
    
  • Intersecting fence placements can no longer override the max fence length limit
    
  • Fixed a bug where it was possible to create fences with the same start and end point
    
  • Improved enclosure detection, will now correctly handle situations where the main fence posts form a polygon outside the enclosed area
    
  • Fixed a potential issue that could have been causing animals to be lost when enclosures were modified
    
  • Fixed fences not costing any money
    
  • Fences loaded from legacy saves are now put through a more sophisticated version upgrade algorithm, addresses issues with enclosure detection
    
  • Visitor entrance collision now correctly updates when loading legacy saves
• UI/UX
  • Fixed several GUI initialization errors
    
  • Fixed one issue causing the camera to accidentally restrict zoom behaviour
• Audio
  • Fixed brick walls using wood placement sounds
    
  • Fixed offset audio on Protoceratops unique idle animation
    
  • Fixed alt species specific sounds for Juxia
• Misc.
  • Fixed fly particle rendering

• CPU Optimizations
  
• Numerous Memory optimizations
  
• Visitor rendering performance improvements

Welcome to the May Development Update!

n this blog post, we’ll be detailing our current progress on Update 11 and talking about our plans for the next few updates.





Plateosaurus AND staff will be coming to the Update 11 PTB soon!

The next PTB release will include access to an early version of staff gameplay - featuring laborers and keepers! Their visuals are still a heavy work in progress, featuring non-final animations and materials, but their gameplay is mechanically functional.

Although we explained how staff and logistics work in a previous dev diary, we’ll quickly go through it again here with new in-game screenshots and gifs.

It all begins with the Loading Bay - a module that imports resources for animals and guests. This building can only hold a small amount of items, relying on staff to distribute supplies throughout the park.



When resources have been collected by staff, a truck will depart to replace your missing inventory, returning later in the month. Downtime between deliveries can be improved by purchasing up to two additional trucks per Loading Bay.



Since the Loading Bay can run out of room, you’ll need to eventually expand your storage. Storage modules for goods and produce can be strategically placed around the park to shorten delivery times in the long term.



In Prehistoric Kingdom, this is a physical process. Laborers will walk from the Loading Bay to storage modules, transporting the required goods. There is no global “park-wide” resource pool, each storage building has its own internal stock and demands physical interaction from a Laborer or Keeper in order to retrieve a resource.



Players can selectively block certain resource types when selecting a storage module, allowing you to flexibly customize how things are stored without having to clinically micro-manage everything. Blocking a resource that’s already in storage will have it removed by a Laborer.



The Laborer’s primary role is to transport resources around the zoo, taking meals and merch from the Loading Bay or Goods Storage in order to restock kiosks, restaurants and gift shops so that visitors have products to buy.

As mentioned, these staff members also take the responsibility for moving resources between storage modules. They like to move it, move it!



Keepers take produce from the Loading Bay, storage modules or Produce Stations. They’ll enter habitats via the new Staff Gates and restock feeders, providing your animals with food.



You can see a work in progress refill below! We intend to make Keepers push wheelbarrows once it’s all finished.



Seeing staff running around exhibits really gives us an appreciation for how big these animals were (and highlights how massive these feeders are!).



Of course, after animals have eaten, they’ll also poop! Keepers ensure habitats stay clean by taking dung to the nearest Compost Heap for conversion into compost.



Compost is delivered to Produce Stations by Laborers. It’s with these modules that players can grow their own food supply, converting compost into edible plants, fruit, meat, fish or insects for the animals.



Without compost, Produce Stations will continue to generate food, but will do so at a heavily reduced rate. You’ll need a decent amount of poop to keep these things going, but the gains are worth it!

Once staff go live on the PTB, we’ll be taking notes on balance while development continues on Update 11. We aren’t expecting to have them absolutely perfect out the gate, and there’s a lot of work still to be done on guiding players through this entire system.

One of the funny quirks that staff currently have is that they’ll freely navigate wherever they want. They’ll always take the quickest path to their destination, even if it means going off-road. This is something that we’d obviously like to improve, but regardless, they’ll get the job done even if it means wandering through a desert for now.



Another thing we’d like to quickly draw attention to are the staff gates! These are modular objects that can be used anywhere, they are not exclusive to fences. This means that you can create functioning staff-only areas which can be essential for maintaining high park beauty.



On that note, we absolutely love seeing staff move about the zoo. It completely changes how we build and makes us want to spend more time constructing backstage areas.

As part of our ongoing UI improvements, we’ve completely revamped the interface for selecting modular groups and items. It’s refreshed, minimalized and highly contextual to the group’s contents or selected pieces.

Clicking on a group now shows all the module information inside, allowing players to easily view things like Loading Bay contents, storage modules or change an animal information sign. You can collapse each widget individually or hold the shift key to collapse all the widgets at once.





These widgets will show up while editing a group, too! Simply select the item you want to view and the widget will appear, exactly like on the group menu. No more jumping back and forth.



When selecting a group with lights, you’ll be able to access a brand new lighting tab. From here, players will have the option to permanently toggle their lights on, regardless of the time of day. Indoor exhibit builders, rejoice!



Since the last dev diary, we’ve added the Paleopedia to the PTB. This can be accessed at any time from the left side of the screen, making it perfect for habitat construction or learning more about your creatures.



From the home page, players can filter the search results by biome, time period, continent, diet and even animal size.



In the future, we will be expanding the Paleopedia to include articles for dig sites and eventually paleobotany! It’s important to learn more about our prehistoric world and we hope the Paleopedia can be a resource for that with time.

As a small improvement to the animal visuals, we’ve added detail maps to almost every species. This is a subtle layer of bumpy skin and scratches that sit on top of the existing art assets. It’s not noticeable at a distance, but helps greatly when observing animals up close.



Beyond the expected polish needed for staff, there’s a few things we’d like to do. For one, we’ll need to do a lot of work on funneling/teaching players about the new mechanics. We’ve been designing a new help menu with updated articles to detail how everything in the game works and will also be revamping the game’s notification system to be more helpful, providing suggestions and better information about what’s wrong.

In terms of staff, we still need to implement cashiers and then focus on balance until we’re out of PTB. Keep your eyes on our socials to find out when Update 11 will be ready!



Update 12 will be a content focused release, acting as a development buffer while we work on Update 13. It’s going to include a new map, building theme and include three animals: Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus and Hell Creek’s very own armored tank, Ankylosaurus!



This update will have a focus on making visitors smarter and properly utilize our suite of new animations to make guests feel more lively. We’ve had to upgrade our animation tech for Update 11, so it’ll be great to properly stretch its muscles here.

As a continuation of staff management, we’ll be adding another new mechanic - messages! Through this menu, players will be able to negotiate employee salaries, try to keep staff onboard and interact with the administration team. We feel that this’ll be a great way to humanize staff and make their lives more than just a UI element. Check out the concept art below!





Like Update 11, this will be a large mechanical update focused on the animals! We’re aiming to improve their AI and behaviors with awareness, sociality and herding. There’s not too much else to say at this stage but we can’t wait to share more.



Created by Incog


Created by luci257


Created by f95_mo



Thank you for reading May’s dev diary!

We cannot wait to finish Update 11 as even in its current state, you can see it coming together. The team especially feels that with the next few major updates, the game will really begin to feel cohesive thanks to ongoing UI revamps and continued development into management mechanics.

- The PK Team

• Facebook
  
• Twitter
  
• Discord
  
• Reddit
  
• YouTube

Welcome, Park Testers!

This PTB release fixes a number of player reported issues with continued polish made to the current PTB features.

It also introduces a work in progress version of the Paleopedia - an encyclopedia featuring animal information and habitat statistics! A lot of information is either missing or temporary (e.g. paddock calculator, social needs, animal life cycle stats) so don't worry about that too much.


Some improvements have been made to the behaviour of fence gates, but please let us know if you run into other issues with the fence system.


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.

• Due to splitting the animal species into their own genera, some info sign screens might load up with the wrong animal on display. Simply resetting the animal screen and saving should resolve the issue.

• UI/UX
  • Added the Paleopedia (please note a lot of the values and stats are temporary!)

• Balance
  • Enclosure Size and Crowding requirements for animals have been readjusted
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added a Gates section to the Enclosures menu
    
  • Gate to fence snapping improvements
    
  • Gate to fence group snapping (any gate!)
    
  • Added support for gates to play open and close sounds
• UI/UX
  • Updated graphics and coloring to the animal info panel

• Critical
  • Fixed hard crash when placing objects near the edges of the map
    
  • Fixed hard crash relating to visitor visualization
    
  • Hardened how some systems initialize so that they work consistently
    
  • Fixed multiple exceptions that broke various tools and menus
    
  • Fixed various modules being unplaceable
    
  • Fixed logistics memory errors
    
  • Fixed a temporary deadlock issue (would cause the game to pause for 1 second, when changing feeder type)
    
  • Revised fence placement logic to make enclosure detection much more reliable
• Gameplay
  • Re-enabled nursery holder animals saving/loading
    
  • The tutorial was disabled again, after being mistakenly left available. We are currently working on a more intuitive tutorial system, about which we will be sharing more details in the future!
• Animals
  • Fixed Leaelly IK
• Guests
  • Fixed a bug that caused guests to use incorrect textures
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed fence terracing
• Construction
  • Habitat Markers are now correctly made invisible when loading a game
    
  • Fixed fence terracing
    
  • Can no longer place fences intersecting a gate module
    
  • Can no longer place fences that exit the map boundaries
• Rendering
  • Glass rendering happens later to render VFX pieces through it, may improve visuals, please give feedback :)
• UI/UX
  • Fixed the Nursery Holder animal elements’ animations not updating with different time scales
    
  • Fixed overview settings button not properly toggling off once entering the pause menu
    
  • Fixed buggy module placement after placing a gate
    
  • Fixed layouts in the structure filter menu not refreshing correctly
    
  • Fixed main menu bugging out upon exiting a save[
    
  • Fixed Animal Info Signs not detecting nearby species after loading a save
• Misc.
  • Fixed _TEMPSAVE string stacking multiple times on save files

• Minor optimizations and stutter reduction
  
• Loading performance improved
  
• Modular memory usage reduced

Welcome, Park Testers!

An early, in-development version of Update 11 is now available to opt-into on the Public Testing Branch! This release includes the adorable Leaellynasaura and many work in progress changes to the game. Staff, logistics and in-depth Excavations ARE NOT included and will be added to the PTB once their systems have developed further.

We're aiming to make continued use of the PTB throughout 2024 so that players have a way to check out what we're working on, even in a basic state.


Here are some specific things that we'd like to get feedback and bug reports on:

• PTB Save Directory: The Public Test Branch will save games to a separate directory ('__PTB__') in order to reduce potential save conflicts. We've made some other changes to the save system, so please report ANY issues that you encounter!
  
• Fence Rework & Staff Gates: Fence placement and mesh generation has been overhauled to allow for the addition of staff gates. Enclosures are very work in progress as a result, potentially to leading to cases where they may fail to register or don't appear in the animal overview menu.
  
• Excavations System: The basic version of our new Excavations system allows players to unlock animals. Please let us know if any issues are experienced, though given its primitive state we don't expect much here.
  
• GUI Updates: New UI elements have been added with more coming throughout the PTB. We've disabled notifications which means inexperienced players may have difficulty navigating the game and some elements such as the Weather menu are in a different location. The Animal Nursery can be accessed from the Park Services menu, but there's temporarily less visual feedback when creating animals (we are working on new notifications!). There's a lot of work to be done in restoring game feel and guiding the player experience!
  
• Guest Art: Some of the updated guest art is in! These are still very much a work in progress, currently lacking clothing color variation and male visitors (we're working on their animation set!).

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.

• We're anticipating some potential crashes from loading old parks. If this is discovered, please send your crash logs to our Discord server's appropriate channel.
  
• All staff and logistics buildings are NON-FUNCTIONAL! This is intended until we add staff and logistics.
  
• Enclosures from existing save files are not yet registering as valid exhibits. We are working on this!
  
• The staff gates feature temporary art and will be updated in the future.
  
• The UI is a massive work in progress, featuring old and new panels.
  
• Many UI features such as notifications have been temporarily disabled while we rework them.
  
• When incubating an animal, there's no visual feedback. We intend to show a small notification entering the Animal Holder, but this is not implemented.

As always, we kindly thank you for your patience!

• NEW ANIMAL: Leaellynasaura

• Gameplay
  • Added the Eumeralla Formation
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Added new basic fence: Basic Chainlink Fence
    
  • New Staff Management & Logistic modules (non-functional!):
    • Staff Gate 2.5m
      
    • Staff Gate 4m
      
    • Staff Center
      
    • Loading Bay
      
    • Goods Storage Small
      
    • Goods Storage Large
      
    • Produce Storage Small
      
    • Produce Storage Large
      
    • Compost Heap
      
    • Produce Station (Mix Feed, Plants, Fruit, Meat, Fish, Insects)
  • New Park Management modules:
    • Fossil Depot
      
    • Research Station
  • Added over 19 new basic/backstage props!
    • Liquid Barrel
      
    • Plastic Bowl
      
    • Cooling Box
      
    • Plastic Box
      
    • Plastic Box Tub
      
    • Wooden Box
      
    • Construction Cone
      
    • Construction Floor Sign
      
    • Dry Erase Board 1
      
    • Dry Erase Board 2
      
    • Keeper Spade
      
    • Ladder 1
      
    • Ladder 2
      
    • Shipping Container
      
    • Shipping Crate
      
    • Shipping Pallet
      
    • Staff Shelf 1
      
    • Staff Shelf 2
      
    • Staff Sink
• Audio
  • Added Nigel dialogue to the following animals:
    • Charonosaurus
      
    • Elasmotherium
      
    • Juxia
      
    • Leaellynasaura
      
    • Muttaburrasaurus
      
    • Panthera atrox
      
    • Panthera spelaea
      
    • Tarbosaurus
      
    • Sinotherium

• Animals
  • Updated default expression for Panthera atrox and spelaea
• Guests
  • Fully reworked art (work-in-progress)
    
  • Human animation system reworked from the ground up (work-in-progress)
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Updated the ‘Prehistoric Kingdom Visitor Entrance Stone Age’ prefab to not contain tropical themed pieces
    
  • Updated several Fence visuals
• UI/UX
  • Updated layout, flow and functionality for several pieces of the GUI (wip)
    • Main Action Board
      
    • Management Menu and all its sub-menus (e.g. excavations, animal menu, etc.)
      
    • Modular Editing Overlay
      
    • Weather Menu
      
    • Animal Nursery Holder
  • Moved the Animal Nursery Menu into the Management Menu
    
  • Terraforming menu now displays updated biome icons to match animal info panels
    
  • Huge improvements across the board when it comes to GUI layout updating and refreshing
• Audio
  • Adjusted Nigel’s VO processing
    
  • Selecting Panthera in the Nursery will play the lion roar instead of Smilodon

• Critical
  • Fixed a bug that caused loading to break when Documents/Prehistoric Kingdom/Modular Prefabs folder was not creatable or accessible
    
  • Added a fix for size limit on modular save files
    
  • Fixed a rare crash when animals would check for a place to stand
    
  • Fixed a rare crash in pathfinding
    
  • Fixed a blackscreen issue that would persist through reloading a save, now those saves should be recoverable!
    
  • Fixed a rare animal unlock load bug that would break loading
    
  • Fixed a crash that occurred during Mac emulation
• Buildings & Scenery
  • Fixed a selection issue with the Rock Basalt 1 piece
• Terraforming
  • Fixed numerous issues with modular undo/redo, particularly terrain flattening logic
    
  • Fixed a bug with the water remove brush where it would generate horrific janky edges near the shoreline
    
  • Fixed a bug where undo/redo would just delete a huge chunk of water
• UI/UX
  • Fixed a typo in the Elasmotherium info sign
    
  • Fixed an issue that would cause Screenshot Mode to remain open when opening a building menu

• Loading performance has been improved with additional multi-threading
  • This especially affects the Canada map or any save with a lot of pieces
• Improved modular system performance in a few areas
  • Primarily addressed slowdowns when working with pieces that had many tens or hundreds of thousands of instances on the map (trees on canada for instance)
    
  • Memory efficiency improvements
• Save system upgraded with better read/write performance and a fix for having too many files in a save (caused workshop upload issues)
  
• Save/load menu performance improved
  
• New human animations are more memory efficient
  
• New fences are more efficiently rendered and consume considerably less memory

Welcome to the April Development Update!

In this bite-sized blog post, we’ll be providing more information about the Update 11 PTB (Public Test Branch) and showcasing some important changes to the fence system. If you’d like to learn more about Update 11 as a whole, be sure to check out last month’s development diary!



To keep it brief, development on Update 11 is going well! The logistics system is essentially complete but pending integration with staff and more UI elements. Staff themselves are coming along with a lot of work being done on their models and animations. Although staff and logistics won’t make the initial PTB release for Update 11, we’re pleased with how they’re developing and look forward to sharing more with you soon.

The first version of Update 11 will be hitting the Steam PTB on May 10th. This build will contain the following features:

• New species: Leaellynasaura
  
• New modules
  
• New basic/backstage props
  
• Improved fences & staff gates
  
• Improved Excavations system
  
• Improved GUI flow

We’ll be rolling out logistics and staff related gameplay to the PTB as their development continues. In the meantime, players will have access to the new staff related modules such as the Loading Bay, Staff Center and Fossil Depot to prepare parks and create custom prefabs.

One of the other changes we’ve made is to the Animal Nursery. Like the Fossil Depot, there will only be one Animal Nursery module per park, with the menu now accessible from the Park Services menu. The current module designs will eventually be converted into props, with a new building and Nursery UI revamp coming down the line.


The current Nursery menu will be found in the same place as Excavations, Research and Finances!

As always, the PTB will include experimental changes and won’t reflect the final Update 11 release. The team will be working to add more content, polish and progressively finalize the update. This year, we’re aiming to utilize the PTB more frequently so that players can check in to see what we’re up to, even if it’s in-development.



Over the years, fences and enclosures have accumulated a lot of tech debt due to having some of the oldest code in the game. They were so old, in fact, that they actually predate the modular building system! With staff needing to access enclosures pretty soon, we had two options:

1. Bandaid gates onto the old code and rework fences down the line.
   
2. Rework fences now but delay Update 11’s PTB to May 10th.

We chose the second option, and in a little over a week, our awesome programmers not only rebuilt the fence system from the ground up, but improved performance AND added support for modular staff gates. On the technical side, these new fences are way less rigid to work with and have allowed the team to add some excellent quality of life improvements for our users.

For example, when placing fences, they’ll now collide and snap to existing sections rather than clipping through them.



The maximum segment length has been increased, making it easier to create circular habitats. There’s also a new line indicator that appears once the max length is reached.



If touching an existing segment, angle snap now uses its local direction, rather than defaulting to the world grid. This means that if you’ve been building fences at a strange angle and decide to use angle snap (e.g. 45°, 90°), the game will automatically account for it.




When replacing fence designs, the preview is now real time! You can see an example below (ignore our debug dev material).



Modular staff gate modules can be attached to fences, updating in real time (temporary gate art). These will eventually allow staff to pass into enclosures once they are included in Update 11.



All of this is on top of fences not only rendering faster, but taking up waaay less memory too! Thanks to this new infrastructure, it’s going to be so much easier for us to tackle things like fence maintenance and animal breakouts in the future. These improvements have been needed for a long time and we couldn’t be happier to finally get it out of the way.

In Update 11, we’re adding a bunch of new backstage props as part of the basic theme. With staff coming soon, we wanted to provide a few more items to help make the zoo feel more real!




Looking to the immediate future, everything discussed below will not be available in the initial Update 11 build coming to the PTB, but will instead be added progressively.

During the Update 11 PTB, a new sauropodomorph will be marching its way into your parks! Please welcome the broad lizard, Plateosaurus.



Unlike its younger relatives currently featured in the game, this Triassic dinosaur was bipedal, featuring short forelimbs with sharp claws. Our scientists have observed extreme size variation in adult specimens of Plateosaurus, making this species a particularly diverse bunch to look at!

Plateosaurus will be released later in an Update 11 PTB patch.



During the Update 11 PTB, we’ll be overhauling the Animal Nursery with a fresh design and new behavior.

Our goal is to move away from showing a general or ‘default’ specimen and aim to instead display the actual individual that’ll be bred. This means that you’d be able to see potential mutations, size and skin variation prior to creation. Each time you create an individual, the next one will appear different.



As you can see in the UI concept art above, all of the habitat stats are missing! That’s because everything you need to satisfy your animals has been moved to the Paleopedia, an upcoming database that can be accessed from anywhere in the park.



Since a lot of the species descriptions are currently being written, we’ll be adding them into the Paleopedia at a later date. Here’s an early look at how that looks, though!





Created by Incog


Created by luci257


Created by gemini98



Thank you for reading April’s dev diary!

Don’t forget that the initial PTB for Update 11 goes live May 10th! We’re excited to have you with us on this journey and look forward to continuing development on Update 11.

- The PK Team

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Hey, Park Managers!

Over the last week, we've been hard at work revising our fence system to account for future features like staff gates and breakouts.

We are now looking at May 10th for our first PTB release focused on some of Update 11's basic features.

These features include:

• Leaellynasaura
  
• New Modules & Backstage Props
  
• Improved Fences & Staff Gates
  
• Improved Excavations System
  
• Improved GUI flow

So, what about staff and logistics?

These mechanics actually hinge on the improvements we're making to the fence system! Without a better framework, it'll be difficult to add gates and breakouts. Due to this, staff and logistics will arrive in a PTB update.

We're trying to approach Update 11 iteratively, so even though we'll be working on it for a while, players will be able to play it and watch it improve. We'll have more info in the Dev Diary, but we can't wait to have you with us on this journey!

Welcome to the March Development Update!

In this blog post, we’ll be detailing some of the things you can expect to see in Update 11, talking about new game mechanics and more.



Before jumping into the bulk of our Update 11 coverage, we wanted to quickly touch base on a few things.

The first is that we are working on another recording session with the brilliant Nigel Marven! Not only are we doing dialogue for the species that currently lack it, but we’re retroactively adding an introduction and fact to animals that are now an alternate genus (Tarbosaurus, Charonosaurus, etc). It feels strange to say, but soon we’ll have lines for almost every animal that we’re planning to release during Early Access!



Secondly, we’ve revised the American Lion and Cave Lion’s base animations to fix up their thousand-yard stare. We’re not sure what horrors they might’ve experienced, but relaxed cats are on their way in Update 11!






In case you missed it, we dropped the Supporter Bundle in early March to help fund development and provide access to Volume 1 of our digital art book and soundtrack! We are incredibly proud of how these turned out and wanted to thank everyone for their warm reception.

The art book provides a 200 page look at animal concept art, environment renders and concept sheets for the hundreds of building pieces available in-game, whilst offering development insight into our choices and why things were designed that way. It was important for this to feel like it was more than just a picture book!




We also released a soundtrack, featuring 25 minutes of music and 4 exclusive bonus tracks if purchased on Steam or Bandcamp. The album is also now available on streaming, too! You can find the OST on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music and pretty much any other platform you might prefer.





In late April, we’ll be rolling Update 11 out onto the Public Testing Branch on Steam so that we can gather feedback and continue developing this update. This release is going to massively change how the game is played, so it’s important that we have the community provide feedback during production. So, in the mean time, here’s a broad look at what’s coming soon!

Update 11 will be introducing two new animals, the first of which is the squirrel-like dinosaur from down under, Leaellynasaura!

(pronounced Lee-ell-in-a-sore-a)



As southern parts of Australia were located within the Antarctic circle during the early Cretaceous, it’s possible that sunlight would have been highly variable. With this animal potentially going weeks without sunlight, we’ve chosen to highlight the various levels of cold tolerance Leaellynasaura might’ve had through varying lengths of plumage per skin.

Unlike the other small, herbivorous dinosaurs in Prehistoric Kingdom, these ones have quite the frightening dentition!




Now, that leaves one unknown species for Update 11, and before anyone rushes to speculation, this is not another theropod. Enjoy!



Going forward into Update 11, all animals in the game will be properly split by their species in the UI. This means that when you’re in the Nursery or Excavations menu, you’ll find distinct buttons for each species, rather than lumping them all under one umbrella. We will be extending this functionality to the Animal Info Signs, too.



As far as the game was concerned, each species was already considered unique, and this change simply makes the UI consistent with that. To reflect this upcoming change, we have updated our website’s Animal Gallery!

The Nursery will be receiving a big UI overhaul down the line to better accommodate these changes, so please stay tuned for that!

In this part of the Dev Diary, we’re going to walk you through what to expect from logistics and the overall gameplay loop it presents.

When Update 11 releases, we’ll only have keepers and laborers available as they are the most essential at this stage of development. The remaining staff types (janitors, engineers, security, vets) will be added as their gameplay systems become relevant.



As you begin to build your park in Update 11, you’ll notice that feeders and kiosks are now empty when placed. In order to actually work, they must be stocked by staff members. This is where our logistics gameplay begins.



To get resources into the zoo, players will first need to build a Loading Bay. Upon the initial first-time placement, players will receive an immediate shipment of goods to help get the park up and running. After that, your Loading Bay will continue to import guest meals, merchandise and a small amount of animal feed every 15 minutes (time not yet finalized) via box truck.

Players can purchase up to 2 additional box trucks for their Loading Bay to speed up delivery times or place additional Loading Bays around the park if they need more shipments.



Once the resources have arrived, players will need staff to transport them around the zoo. Laborers can carry the meals and merchandise to guest facilities, while keepers are needed to refill feeders with animal feed.

To access the staff hiring menu, players will need to build a Staff Center. Of course, like any module, these new structures can be built over or recoloured with the modular building system! Just ensure any access points (i.e. doors) remain accessible.




While out in the park, staff are intended to be very automated. You can call staff to complete specific tasks like refilling a certain feeder or transporting goods, but with the scale of Prehistoric Kingdom, the expectation is that they should just do their jobs.

We believe your primary role as park manager should focus on who you hire, how many people you hire and how you layout the park’s logistics infrastructure rather than micromanaging where your staff are and what they are doing. If jobs aren’t being done, you likely don’t have enough people or your layout stinks.

Picture this: you’ve got a few habitats, the zoo is expanding, but so is the distance between your Loading Bay and the park.

It’s time to introduce some Goods Storage and Produce Storage modules! These warehouses come in small or large variants, allowing logistics staff to move stock from the Loading Bay into their respective storage spaces. This means that if a feeder needs refilling or your restaurant needs more meals, staff can simply travel to the nearest storage module that has what they need rather than walking all the way back to the Loading Bay.



These warehouses are planned to have a few basic UI options that dictate how they should be filled up (e.g. stop ‘Fruit’ from being delivered to this Produce Storage module) but we were aiming to make them more contextual, so a Produce Station near a meat feeder is naturally going to have more meat delivered to it than the Produce Station that’s next to a herbivore paddock. That’s all a bit more theoretical, though, just sharing how we’d like them to work.

When animals eat, they eventually… excrete! Without a place to dump their dung, keepers can’t clean habitats. This is why you’ll need to invest in a couple of Compost Heap modules.




After cleaning dung piles, keepers will transport the poop from a habitat to the nearest Compost Heap. Once delivered, the stored poop will convert to ‘Compost’ over time - a resource that’ll become invaluable when making your own animal feed.

This module can have a pretty negative impact on Park Beauty, so you’ll want to keep it hidden from guest view!

After a certain amount of park growth, the measly amount of animal feed you get from the Loading Bay isn’t going to be enough. Thankfully, this is where the Produce Station comes in.

A Produce Station is able to passively create food for your animals by converting the compost in your park into feed. As long as staff can keep delivering compost, you can keep making produce!




Produce Stations can be specialized to cultivate a specific dietary type (plants, fruit, meat, fish, insects) or produce ALL dietary types for a lower yield per compost conversion. As your Produce Station fills up, laborers will transfer it out and place the feed into the Produce Storage modules around the park.

In the event that you have no storage modules, your Keepers will instead take food directly from Produce Stations when going to refill feeders.

Looking at everything we’ve just discussed from a very high-level view, we end up with a loop like this!



As a final side note, we’d like to mention that since the last Dev Diary, our plans for ‘generalist staff’ have changed. We now intend for cashiers to simply be part of kiosk modules (and their upkeep costs) rather than being separate entities that can be hired/fired like keepers or laborers.

Because of this change, the idea of janitors and laborers temporarily taking on other jobs has been scrapped. This potentially makes the role of staff in the game a lot more clear cut and should make it more obvious when something in the park isn’t working out. Not a huge change in our opinion, but notable enough where we want to keep you in the loop!

Excavations are what allows Prehistoric Kingdom to bring extinct animals back to life, scowering the globe in search of viable genetic materials. In the current game, however, the Excavations mechanic really is nothing more than a glorified shopping menu. With Update 11, we aim to rectify this.

Coming in Update 11 is a brand new module - the Fossil Depot! This building provides space for the park’s dig teams and grants access to the Excavations menu.

It is here that players will be able to both buy and send out dig teams to various dig sites around the world. These sites are used to obtain the necessary DNA required to create animals in the Animal Nursery. Any idle dig teams currently not excavating will eventually be visible in the car park below.



(Wikimedia Commons: Hell Creek photograph by Vladimír Socha)

By hovering over a dig site, players will be able to see the potential operating costs of an excavation, the estimated time per excavation cycle and whether or not there are events impacting the dig site. Once opened, up to 5 dig teams can be assigned at once, increasing the ongoing operating costs in exchange for a higher DNA yield every cycle.

There’s no financial penalty for moving teams from dig site to dig site, but they will have to travel back to the park first.



Each excavation cycle, your assigned teams will send their findings back to the park in the form of DNA.

The yield amount for DNA is random, but can be improved by installing infrastructure at the dig site such as housing (decreases total excavation time) and their own personal genetics lab (improves DNA yield amounts).

Different species have their own yield rarities, so even if you decide to tackle Hell Creek from day one, you’re unlikely to unlock a Tyrannosaurus before Edmontosaurus. Once 100% of the DNA has been found for a species, it can be bred from the Animal Nursery!

Completing all animals within a dig site will unassign the relevant teams and return them to the park.

Everything we’ve discussed so far assumes that your excavation has gone smoothly, though! Every month, there are global events that randomly impact dig sites all across the globe.

A positive event like the Fossil Boom can help speed up the excavation process, drastically increasing yield amounts for as long as the event is active in a dig site. On the other hand, a negative event like High Export Tax can increase your operating costs, excavation time and lower yields as your teams struggle to send your excavated goods back to the park.




Players may need to pivot their excavations from month to month depending on how these conditions change, taking advantage of sudden opportunities or temporarily leaving a site behind. What might have been a great month in the Hell Creek Formation may quickly turn to an expensive crawl the next!

Moving into a more stylized art direction, the future brings a new era of visitors to Prehistoric Kingdom; intended to introduce better faces, hairs, clothing, new ethnicities and an expressive suite of animations that make the park feel more alive.




Below you can see some of the work in progress animations we’ve been making. Though not all will be in-game as of Update 11 (there are some technical things required to make the selfie work!) we hope this shows our commitment to improving the quality of our humans.




Mesh topology is non-final, we’ll be improving those elbows!

Update 11 is planned to bring the first stage of this guest art overhaul with it, focused on upgrading our technical backend to support these new visual features. There have been a lot of assets to design, model and curate, but we are getting there! We will have more info about what guest features are ready for Update 11 once it hits PTB.

And yes… we’re working on bench sitting!





To close out this month’s Dev Diary, we’ll leave you with a work in progress look at our baby Tyrannosaurus! We’re expecting some proportions and face shapes to change before ontogeny is fully implemented and added to the public game, but this at least gives you an early look at how these fluff balls could look. You can even spot an adolescent T. rex in the back based on the Jane specimen!



As mentioned previously, all baby skins are designed to blend into their adult coloration regardless of what skin was selected. In the case of our T. rex here, that means all Tyrannosaurs would start as feathered infants and either lose feathers through maturation (e.g. growing up into a scaly skin) or retain them (e.g. growing up into the feathered skin). We can’t wait to share more looks at ontogeny with you in the future!

EDIT: Here’s an additional look at the baby rex with improved proportions! Since ontogeny in Prehistoric Kingdom is seamless, infant animals cannot have perfect 1:1 limb sizes to what’s found in the fossil record. We will be doing our best to make the babies feel cute and somewhat accurate without overly warping the models!





Created by Incog


Created by ASSASSINSPINO


Created by CarlosG72



Thank you for reading March’s dev diary!

There was a lot to read this month, but we hope you got through it okay! We’re very excited to continue developing Update 11 and can’t wait to share more once the PTB version goes live.

- The PK Team

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Welcome, Park Managers!

We're pleased to announce that the Supporter Bundle is now live on Steam; featuring volume one of the Prehistoric Kingdom digital art book and soundtrack!

The Supporter Bundle is intended for players who would like to continue supporting our development team and is available for $7.99 USD as optional downloadable content here.

For new players looking to jump into Prehistoric Kingdom, there is also a Base Game + Supporter Bundle option available to purchase.

Alternatively, the art book and soundtrack can be purchased independently.



Who is this for?
This bundle is meant for people who would like to continue supporting the development team, that may have missed out on Kickstarter rewards, or simply want to listen to some PK music and read a book!

I’m a backer/early adopter! How can I get this?
Please check your Crytivo account for elligible rewards. We are still working on getting everything correct, so please give it a few days for your rewards to appear. We will post to Twitter and Facebook if major changes need to occur!

What does this mean for the game’s monetization?
We will continue to release free content updates as we continue to go through Early Access and beyond! It’s way too early to think about paid gameplay/animal DLC.

These art books and music releases simply help fund development and give the community something to enjoy in return! We hope that everyone looks forward to and enjoys the Supporter Bundle when it releases on March 8th.

Welcome, Park Managers!

We hope you’ve been enjoying the recent release of Update 10! In case you missed it, this update introduces the new prehistoric mammals Elasmotherium, Sinotherium, and two species of cave lion. On top of that, there’s a brand new map, stone age building set and an updated boreal biome!

You can find the full patch notes for Update 10 here. We don’t have a traditional Dev Diary for you this month due to the release of Update 10, but we do have a rather exciting announcement instead!



We’re proud to announce that on March 8th (next Friday!), we’ll be launching the Supporter Bundle on Steam: featuring volume one of the Prehistoric Kingdom digital art book and soundtrack!

This collection has been lovingly put together by our team’s artists and composer over the last few months, working together to build dozens of beautiful pages and a gorgeous selection of music from the game.



The Supporter Bundle is intended for players who would like to continue supporting our development team and will be available for $7.99 USD as optional downloadable content.

Alternatively, the art book and soundtrack can be purchased independently.



Available separately for $5.99 USD on March 8th

Over 180 pages of artwork, including exclusive early looks at upcoming animals and behind the scenes information about how we work on the game and our design decisions.





Non-final previews.

This volume provides an in-depth look at our process, animal concept art, the science behind some of our creatures and a deep dive into the wealth of structural art we’ve painted for the game. Whether you’re a paleo fanatic or simply interested in the art process of game dev, you won’t wanna miss this!



Available separately for $3.99 USD on March 8th

Ranging from dino-sized orchestral soundscapes to introspective instrumentals, take a walk in the park and enjoy 30 minutes of music of Prehistoric Kingdom composed by Byron McKay.


This release features 15 tracks (including 4 bonus biome medley tracks) in addition to updated music arrangements not yet heard in-game with live woodwinds performed by Joe Di Fiore and mixing by Adam Miller. You can wishlist the soundtrack page on Steam right now!



Who is this for?
This bundle is meant for people who would like to continue supporting the development team, that may have missed out on Kickstarter rewards, or simply want to listen to some PK music and read a book!

I’m a backer/early adopter! How can I get this?
We’ll be sharing info on how to get your copies next week! Thank you for your patience.

What does this mean for the game’s monetization?
We will continue to release free content updates as we continue to go through Early Access and beyond! It’s way too early to think about paid gameplay/animal DLC.

These art books and music releases simply help fund development and give the community something to enjoy in return! We hope that everyone looks forward to and enjoys the Supporter Bundle when it releases on March 8th.