Welcome to the November Development Diary!

As the team will be on their holiday break in late December, this is officially our last blog post for the year. There’s quite a lot of text to get through in this one, so let’s dig right into it.

First up, the team is trying to get Update 16 into public testing as soon as possible. While the content will be restricted and unfinished, we are aiming to start the PTB during December to gauge early feedback, fix bugs and lock down a release date. Obviously December is a busy month due to the holidays, but stay tuned for more info and we’ll do our best!

Funding Recap & Thank You

Looking back to the start of the year, we want to provide an update on our financial situation. For those unaware, PK was almost entirely out of funding as of January 2025. As you might imagine, this was a very stressful time for the team and many of us voluntarily made pay sacrifices to keep the game afloat.

Thankfully over the last 11 months, we have been able to push out game-changing updates like breeding and seamless growth entirely thanks to your support. Whether it’s been through buying a copy or supporting us directly on Patreon, you have made an incredible difference and provided us with the security to keep going.

While sales do fluctuate month to month depending on discounts or game updates, the overall interest in Prehistoric Kingdom continues to increase. Patreon has been a massive help when making up for dry months, so if you can spare it, we will forever appreciate supporting us there.

Truly, thank you all so much for your help.

- The PK Team

Update 16

Vivariums

New Species

This is Yi and Yi is basically a wyvern. Well, it’s really a dinosaur from China BUT instead of using feathers to glide, its wings were made from a bat-like membrane! Inside its mouth is a set of needle-like teeth that love to munch on insects, kibble and the occasional finger.

The first concept art for this fluffy fellow was drawn all the way back in 2021, with Yi originally intended to be part of the Early Access launch roster. We even had Nigel record lines for it, but due to the difficulties that came from the original Mini-Aviary, Yi was shelved until now. Revisiting the original concept was a real treat!

From a time long before the dinosaurs, Tiktaalik is one of the oldest animals coming to Prehistoric Kingdom. This fish is what’s considered to be a transitional species, a link between land and water. Using its surprisingly sturdy limbs and muscular body, guests love to watch Tiktaalik propel itself onto the shores of their vivarium. It may not be graceful but it sure is fascinating!

If it’s not on land, you’ll commonly catch Tiktaalik below the surface exploring its aquatic domain. It’s great exercise for grandpa!

Making A Home

Since Vivariums are quite a small space to build in, we’ve designed a system that allows players to quickly add or remove nature with just a couple clicks.

Depending on the chosen environment, there are a variety of nature presets that can be made more or less dense. These options can be freely mixed and matched or even include Mesozoic plants if they’ve been unlocked. If you’re not happy with how the items have been placed, you can even set or randomize the Vivarium’s seed, redistributing your nature pieces.

Of course if you’re more of a sandbox builder, you can always turn off the generated nature or simply add your own touches on top of it.

When it comes to enrichment items, these can be toggled within the same menu. Each Vivarium comes with its own predetermined enrichment spots that add new locations for your animals to explore. For example, your Compsognathus can jump up onto logs and your Microraptors can glide to climbing frames.

All vivariums above were made using a mix of hand placement and auto-generation!

One of our favorite items is the arboreal tree. When disabled, the perch looks more like something you’d see in a real zoo. Turn it on, however, and your flyers are right at home! The vibe is up to you.

We should also mention that ALL of these enrichment items will be available as separate decorative modular pieces!

Enlightening

And so after all that, Vivariums are almost done! We’re currently working on the management side of things and are animating the remaining species. We really like how this system turned out and love its flexibility, especially when it comes to things like the null styling and enrichment.

To finish off the work on their customization, players can also change the vivarium’s light color! This is perfect for making reptile houses or nocturnal habitats, we cannot wait to see what you do with them.

Vets & Diseases

Diseases and ailments can come in a variety of forms. There are over 25 different conditions, each caused by things like the weather, poor habitats or worsening sickness. Some examples include:

Common Cold
A contagious disease potentially contracted from weather or swimming
Silicosis
Particulate caught in the lungs, caused by a lack of plants in the habitat
Roundworms
Contracted from eating contaminated feeders
Plant Toxicosis
Contracted from eating plants of the wrong era
Mites
Contracted from using dirty bedding

Most diseases can be treated early to stop them developing into something much worse (e.g. the common cold into pneumonia). For this, you’ll need a special type of staff member.

Vets

To identify and deal with disease in the park, players will need to hire vets. Their primary task is to walk around and automatically survey habitats, alerting the player to issues as they arise.

If an animal becomes sick and they have not been recently surveyed by a vet, the player will not be aware that something is wrong until the next survey. Despite this, many illnesses will show physical symptoms such as sneezing, skin irritation, lethargy or frequent droppings. If the player notices or thinks something is wrong, they have the option to manually call a vet to visit the animal.

When a disease has been found, vets will medicate animals from a distance or sedate them and use the new ‘Medicine’ resource to treat them in the field. A sick animal cannot lose its survey status until all its issues have been cured.

Preventing Disease

As vets inspect your habitats (and vivariums), they’ll also check the cleanliness of any feeders, water troughs and bedding within an area. The less spread out these modules are in the enclosure, the quicker this process will be.

Dirty modules are a potential source of disease, so if they’re found, keepers will be called in to clean them. In the case of feeders, food will be completely thrown out and replaced if a disease is identified.

Players can also add supplements to feeders by using the Medicine delivered by vets. Once ingested, animals will receive temporary buffs depending on what the player has enabled.

Vitamins
Animals are more resistant to getting sick, increases immunity and growth speed
Steroids
Animals heal faster from light wounds, increases vitality and growth speed (will be useful for competitive species like Triceratops once combat is added)
Mating Booster
Increases courtship during the breeding season
Mating Suppressant
Decreases courtship during the breeding season
Mutagen
Increases the chance and intensity of mutations from parent to offspring (e.g. wider variation in genetic immunity, fertility and random skins for babies)

To compensate for these changes, the growth speed for animals will be lowered across the board while the courtship chance will become more varied per species.

Research & Quarantine

While vets can deal with basic illnesses right away in the field, some advanced ailments might need the player to explore new treatment options. This first starts by researching the Quarantine Bay - a module that’s required to treat certain things like Bird Flu, Sepsis or eventually in U17, broken bones.

Once an animal has been moved into a Quarantine Bay, this will give your vets a sterile place to work while also protecting nearby animals from any contagious disease. A Quarantine Bay must be stocked with Medicine in order to treat animals.

As you can see below, all of the mid-late stage illnesses either must be researched to perform treatment in the field or entirely rely on the Quarantine Bay. To prevent the worst from happening, you’ll want your vets available, habitats spotless and this research tree completed!

Next Year

Since this is our last Dev Diary for the year, we wanted to briefly talk a little about 2026. If you’ve been keeping up with the roadmap, you’ll know that after U16, Prehistoric Kingdom will be two major updates away from full release!

There are a few features here and there that are yet to be revealed, but the biggest headliners for next year will definitely be hunting, combat and breakouts. These remaining updates are going to be substantial and very time consuming, but they’ll finally bring all the pieces together. By the end of 2026, PK should be mechanically complete.

In terms of next year’s roster, it’s finally time for Stegosaurus! This Jurassic classic will be arriving with four different designs: two for Stegosaurus stenops and two for Stegosaurus ungulatus. We can’t wait to show you how the others look.

The 3D model will have different proportions to the concept art.

Its contemporary predator, Allosaurus, will also be stalking its way into the game! This ferocious predator will have four different alt species, each with their proper skull shape to make it one of the most diverse and deadly animals in Prehistoric Kingdom.

Created by JKOC1115

Created by Sr Yepetto

Created by Errant

Thank you for reading November’s dev diary!

Once again, thank you so much for your support over the past 12 months. You kept PK alive and helped us create our biggest year ever. The Dev Diary will return in January with our roadmap for 2026 outlining what we hope will be an even BIGGER year filled with the things that you’ve been begging for.

Combat, hunting, management improvements, [redacted], [redacted], it’s going to be great. In the mean time, we’ll be keeping you updated on U16 with hopefully some playable stuff in December!

Until next time and happy holidays,

- The PK Team