Hello again, everyone!
Last Wednesday, we finally released the new and improved Prehistoric Kingdom Pre-Alpha Demo - a collaboration of 11 months of unpaid work from a team that can be found all over the world. While we are still humbled by the positive reception and thank you all dearly for supporting us, there are obvious issues with the game which we are working hard at to fix! Most notably we have added grass removal for paths and buildings, as well as improving how terraforming behaves with fences, paths, and more. We have a very large, text filled blog post to get through today, so please enjoy the patch notes below.
PRE-ALPHA DEMO V.0.1.4.3 PATCH NOTES
FIXES:
CHANGES:
ADDITIONS:
Things and Tips You Might Have Missed!
Dinosaurs:
Building:
Vehicles:
Gameplay:
Miscellaneous:
The Future of the Project
Updating the Demo
Two words; Jurassic Patch.
Yes. The Jurassic Patch is the main content update that is expected to hit Steam “Soon™”. In other words, we do not have an ETA on its arrival. But we do however have a very clear idea on what to expect, so hold onto your butts!
“But Mr. and Mrs. Developers, what are the new objects?!” we hear you cry! They’re a surprise, but we are very confident that you will all enjoy what we have planned. Regarding the Lite-Challenge Mode, it will act as a taste of basic management that follows the current Sandbox mode goal (build a park that isn’t designed for guests but rather a reserve). This means that players will have to deal with money, complete missions/objectives to earn money, wrangle a monthly upkeep, and ship resources to the island in order to sustain their animals and build structures. The AI will be getting an improvement too, leading to the much anticipated hunting and herding! To accommodate our new additions to the demo roster, we’ve overhauled the Nursery UI (as detailed below). Stay tuned for more info!
“Okay, that nice and all, but what can we expect in the meantime?” Bug fixes, mostly. With today’s patch, we’re hoping to eliminate the majority of the issues that users have experienced in the demo. And while in a perfect world that’d be all done and dusted, we’ll continue checking the #pk-bug-reporting channel on our Discord server and try to add some quality of life improvements.
In terms of updates, there might be one or two more blog posts before we go to Kickstarter (which will be preluded by the Jurassic Patch). Behind the scenes, we are hoping to stream more often and interact with the community directly, but due to the global location of our team it is incredibly hard to find an appropriate time where a large portion of the development team is available at once.
Redesigning the Nursery
As development picked up its pace over the last few weeks before releasing the demo, we realized that we were going to have to look at a new approach to how users will navigate the user interface for our Nursery building. Combining our intentions for the future and looking at user feedback, we are hoping that this new design will mitigate issues such as being unable to find certain animals (for example, we have found that some are unable to find the Triceratops) and will make the future animal additions far easier to recognise.
Non-final concept art of the new Nursery UI. Text + Icons are a work in progress.
Breakdown of the user interface.
Type Selection (Purple)
Preview Window (Red)
Creature List (Green)
“Quick Stats” (Turquoise)
Description (Blue)
Animal Sequencer (Orange)
Animal Holder (White)
Community Spotlight
We have seen some amazing things built so far in the demo! Because of this, we wanted to share some of the screenshots and builds that have impressed us the most. With longtime players of multiple tycoon games becoming interested in our project, we only expect to become more blown away by the creativity of our community each and every day.
Fountain - Created by Narwhaler
Estuary with Mangroves - Created by T_L
Small Paddock - Created by DrBylund
T. rex on the Hill - Created by Gale
Cave - Created by Ammonite
Sleeping Tyrannosaurs - Created by YourCasualFox
Smile! - Created by Byron (Developer)
Addressing the News
We would like to reconfirm our dedication to Prehistoric Kingdom. We are confident that it'll give our players a unique and fun experience. Because of this, we tip our hats, and greatly look forward to where we want to take the game.
Until Next Time…
We are both humbled and pleased with the reception to our initial Pre-Alpha demo. The feedback given over the last week has been crucial for our understanding towards player interaction, usability, and expectations. There could not have been a better result, and we hope that you, our supporters, are as excited as we are regarding the future of Prehistoric Kingdom.
With Kickstarter on the horizon, we hope to begin explaining the game in a broader sense. To the now 6000 (and counting) players who have played the demo, and thousands more who have watched gameplay on YouTube, we thank you deeply. If you’d like to keep up to date with the game, we have an Official Discord Server: https://discord.gg/3pRpYTE
