Welcome to the January Development Diary!

The team hopes that you’ve all had a safe and happy holiday. As this is our first blog post of the year, we’ll primarily be talking about our plans to outline what you’ll see in 2026. There’s a looot of reading to do this time folks, so strap yourselves in!

First off, thank you for your warm reception to Update 16! We’re pleased to see how beloved the vivarium animals have become. They’re a fun way to fill out the roster and we have more on the way for full release. In the meantime, our animators have been working to add a few more animations to the current vivarium lineup.

This includes more movement locations for the Titanoboa as well as eventually making it compatible with the amphibious vivariums! We’ll have more to show on that in the future.

Speaking of updates, our final two major releases coming this year are Update 17 and Update 18. By the end of 2026, all of our major gameplay mechanics will be finished! As we’ve explained in the past, these are massive updates and will each take a number of months to complete. At this stage, we expect to release Update 17 around June if things go smoothly.

Full Release: 1.0 Launch

Looking ahead, Prehistoric Kingdom will leave Early Access next year in 2027, launching with even more animals, content and some unannounced gameplay aspects.

As we continue the journey to full release, there are a number of things that’ll be improved, added or polished once 1.0 drops. Two of these aspects will be controller support and improved UI scaling, providing a more optimal experience for those playing on the couch, Steam Deck or who sit further away from their monitor. This is still very much a mouse and keyboard game at heart, but having more ways to play is always great.

The team has also started preliminary work on the scenarios that will be coming at launch. We can’t promise how many will be there on day one just yet, but can we talk more about the planned experience.

Story Campaign
The Story Campaign will provide players with a guided onboarding experience as they work to learn the game’s mechanics and resolve different parks-in-need with the help of Nigel and other characters.

We don’t expect the story itself to be super long, but each level will be designed to let you keep playing and complete additional tasks in order to achieve its “Gold Rank”.
Missions
For more experienced players, Missions are self-contained scenarios that see the player completing objectives under different restrictions or settings (e.g. no terraforming, selective dig sites, can’t delete existing buildings, etc).

One mission may ask you to build a successful park within a tiny area while another may see you rescuing a failing zoo from bankruptcy, breeding certain species and improving its infrastructure.

Like the story, each mission will have an optional “Gold Rank” objective for park managers who want to go all the way!

Stay tuned for more information on scenarios and their rewards closer to launch!

Update 17: The First PTB

[some details below may change from now]

While combat is undoubtedly the most exciting thing coming in U17, we also want to improve the game’s core management experience. So in the next two months a PTB (with no combat) will be going live with the following adjustments to Challenge Mode.

Loading Bay Rework

The Loading Bay is a crucial facility in Prehistoric Kingdom, but the player never really interacts with it. Our issues with the current system can be boiled down to:

A Lack Of Responsibility
The current Loading Bay is entirely passive, infinitely bringing in resources and figuring out what the player needs on its own. Unless you delete all the Loading Bays, there is no failure point.
A Lack Of Input
Due to its automated nature, sometimes the player can be at odds with its decision making. “I want more medicine” but the game keeps importing plants, for example.

So let’s start fresh! In U17, the player will begin with a basic supply of plants, meat, merch and meals - enough to get things running. But beyond that initial shipment, the Loading Bay will be your responsibility to manage.

How will it work?

Selecting the Loading bay will reveal an order sheet where the player can buy a few different resources at a time. Next to each resource, the player can choose how much they need in increments - but be careful! Your order is limited by the 4 ‘slots’ shown at the top of the menu.

i.e. If you’ve picked 3 increments of meals, you’ll only have 1 slot left for something else.

Once the player is happy, they’ll need to press the ‘Place Order’ button and wait at least 1 month for the delivery to arrive.

If the player knows they’ll need a lot of specific resources, they can choose to repeat a shipment (up to 12 times) before placing their order. This can be useful for planning ahead, burning cash or simply letting the Loading Bay operate by itself for a couple of months. It won’t last forever, though, so be mindful!

Later in the game, players can increase their limited delivery capacity by researching additional trucks, going from a measly 4 slots all the way up to a whopping 12! Combine that with repeat shipments and whew, that’s a lot of stuff.

So to summarize, the Loading Bay:

will be manually set
can’t infinitely bring in shipments
can ship more resources at once through researching additional trucks

Logistics Managment View

To help players figure out what they need from the Loading Bay, we’ll be adding a new logistics tab to the management view. This screen will show how many resources you have park-wide, pointing out what’s in storage vs. what’s needed.

The second screen shows a quarterly usage breakdown, highlighting exactly which modules generate or consume the most resources. Clicking on their icons will take you directly to their location.

Guest Needs Rework

So far, guest-related gameplay has never felt particularly clear or rewarding for three main reasons:

Super Delayed Feedback
Guests are individually simulated, which means that to “resolve” hunger, guests need to physically buy food and eat it before being satisfied. Since the gameplay values are directly based on this simulation, it can take a long time to improve the state of your park.
No Visual Guidance
Due to being based on the simulation, using the management view shows a sea of green, yellow or red guests randomly scattered around. While it highlights exactly what each individual guest is feeling, the player can’t make an actionable decision from this!
No Impact
In order to make the guest needs less overwhelming, we had to skew what the game considered a happy or unhappy guest. After years of reduction, guest needs mostly hover around 90-100% and aren’t meaningfully part of the game, even if the player neglects them.

So, how do we make things better? Starting in U17, the guest gameplay is no longer completely dependent on the simulation!

Instead, we only consider guests who have decided “I am hungry” or “I need to find a bathroom” and make them measure how accessible nearby modules are. If a guest is somewhat close to or within the ‘satisfaction range’ of a functioning kiosk or toilet, their needs are counted as met.

However, if a hungry guest is too far away, they’ll begin to detract from your guest needs and create a negative area. Using the management view, you can see exactly where you should consider building more modules for guests! Try adding Restaurants or Shopping Centers if you need to cover a large area.

Do keep in mind though that even if you add a kiosk, it’ll need to be stocked and staffed before nearby guests can be happy! The heatmap also updates in real time, so some negative guests may resolve their issue as they move closer to facilities.

Welfare percentages and kiosk ranges are not final!

Staff Breakrooms

Once staff finish their shifts in U17, they’ll begin looking for a new module: the breakroom!

Players will want to build these facilities so that staff have a place to rest. Don’t make them too sporadic, though, since staff cannot start their break until finding an available breakroom. If it takes too long to find one, staff might get upset. And if they get too frustrated, they’ll quit.

Breakrooms can only fit so many staff at a time, so be sure to build strategically as the park grows!

Staff Progression 2.0

With this overhaul, we aim to make staff progression more clear and engaging, moving away from the macro-style management currently found in the game. From a top-down view, we’ll be condensing the amount of skill levels and putting more control into the hands of the player.

Training

New hires will begin at Level 1 - an entry level position with the cheapest salary and access to a single perk. Staff will now need to be individually trained up to Level 2 and 3, increasing their salary in exchange for additional perks.

To help with this process, training is no longer locked behind research and can instead be scheduled from the get-go. This allows players to plan ahead, set some staff members the goal of achieving Level 3 and wait for them to train up in the background.

Once staff have finished training, their promotion cannot be undone! You’ll need to think about how many you’re promoting and consider their increased costs. If you start to struggle, the only way to reduce monthly wages is to fire people and lose their contribution.

As you can see below, we’ll be making a bunch of UI adjustments to accommodate these changes. This includes new buttons for setting their skill level, workzone (huh?!) and a panel for editing multiple staff members at once!

Veterancy Perks

As a reward for keeping someone employed in the long term, staff will eventually begin to unlock veterancy perks! These are special buffs that only become available once staff have spent enough time at their current level.

These perks are unlocked consecutively, so if a newbie gets promoted to Level 3, they’ll still need to achieve Veterancy 1 before they can move onto Veterancy 2 and 3.

Staff Workzones

Yes, after MANY requests, we’re finally adding Workzones! As the name implies, these areas are a way to manage staff assignments and limit where they can wander during downtime.

If you’ve played a modern city builder, you’ll be pretty familiar with how these work. Simply open the Management View, visit Workzones and choose how you’d like to paint them! You can use the brush to create freeform shapes or opt for rectangle mode if you want something more structured.

While staff will prioritize using a breakroom, storage or Loading Bay that’s inside their workzone, they’ll still venture out to pick up resources or rest if they can’t find any. This will allow players to create zones for specific habitats or shops without worrying about access to their existing supplies.

Once you’ve made and selected your workzone, you can automatically assign staff by entering a target number for each role. As long as someone hasn’t been manually assigned to another workzone, the game will try to auto-distribute staff where possible.

Similarly, unassigned “free roaming” staff will also be able to provide a helping hand and accept jobs that’re within workzones. If you’d prefer total exclusivity, however, this behavior can be toggled off.

There’s a little bit more to talk about, but we’ll save those details for a future Dev Diary. We hope you look forward to learning more about Workzones!

Update 17: Combat Preparation

As expected, the biggest task for Update 17 is animal combat. While we are busy preparing to start proper prototyping, it’s too early to show anything substantial given our holiday break. As mentioned, this will also not be part of the initial U17 PTB.

For today’s diary, we wanted to show off our visual wounds and scarring shader. Much like diseases, animals that have experienced combat will show varying levels of damage. As these wounds heal, they’ll eventually turn to scars. Their position and rotation are random, so each animal will be unique in that regard.

The damage on an animal won’t correspond to where they’ve actually been hit, but considering that we’re not a fighting game, we think that’s a fine compromise. Showing that an animal’s injured at all is more important.

WARNING!
If you’re a bit squeamish or don’t like seeing injured animals, these images might not be for you! We’re considering an option that’ll let players turn off wounds, so if that sounds nice, please let us know.

Here’s the shader in action, showing how animals can have varying levels of damage. We plan to be pretty conservative with its usage so that common scraps don’t result in massive wounds. With more development, we’d also like to have some faint blood patches around the animal, but we are happy with the effect overall.

For mammals and fluffy dinosaurs, deep wounds and scarring is especially noticeable as their fuzz will appear bald in these areas.

A fun detail we’re also aiming to include (though not quite sure if it’ll be implemented for U17) is bloodied mouths for predators! This effect will fade in and linger while carnivores are eating or participating in combat.

As far as we know something like this hasn’t been seen in a zoo-sim before, so we’re excited to bring it to Prehistoric Kingdom.

“Why so saur-ious?”

We hope to be able to discuss our plans for the various behaviors soon and start showing more of combat itself in the coming months!

Update 18

Looking to the second half of the year, we have our final Early Access update. The major additions for this release will include new staff types (engineers, security), breakouts, human death and the wetland map. There’ll also be 3 new wetland species, one of which we’d like you to meet right now.

New Species

Britain’s very own spinosaurid is finally reemerging from the depths! This heavy-clawed theropod is of course none other than Baryonyx, a carnivorous dinosaur with an appetite for fish.

Each skin for Baryonyx will lean into an alternate integument, providing options for those who prefer a spiky, classic or more speculative look. Please look forward to them!

Created by JWEscreenshots

Created by fly away

Created by Errant

Thank you for reading January’s dev diary!

It’s going to be a huge year for Prehistoric Kingdom, but as always, we’re up for the challenge.

Once again thank you for your continued support and if you’d like to see more frequent updates throughout 2026, consider joining our Patreon for sneak peeks and behind the scenes info. We will see you again next month for our February Dev Diary!

- The PK Team