Dev Diary: June 2026
Welcome to the June Development Diary!
This month we released Update 17 - a massive update introducing 3 new genera, dynamic combat and a wealth of other changes. It took a lot of hard work and a lot of long hours, but we’re happy to finally have the basis of combat in your hands.
You can currently grab the game for 30% off during the Steam Summer Sale, so if you’ve been waiting to buy, now’s a great time to jump in! You can read all the changes in the patch notes here.
As you might expect, this post is going to be a bit of a shorter one but we wanted to touch base and keep the community in the loop. To start, let’s reflect on U17.
Over its 5 and a half month dev cycle, it took us a little less than 4 months to go from implementing combat to having it in your hands. Despite the behavioral complexities, new tech and all the required animations, the team pushed really hard to make sure that we could deliver something for the first half of 2026.
While there are things we’d like to iron out and polish, we’ve loved seeing your appreciation and surprise for how variable animal encounters can be. That certainly proved troublesome during testing, but that’s kind of the beauty of it. An animal making a “silly” choice to fight something is not guaranteed - it’s an unpredictable simulation. Our goal was always to make something that feels fun and alive over something that is overly sanitised or perfect. The animals need to make their own choices, not have the animation make it for them.
Though combat is clearly the main attraction for many players, there were a couple of other additions that might’ve snuck under your radar! As a big one for casual players, community member Sticky kindly lent us over 70 prefabs to expand the game’s library of animal shelters and infrastructure.
When adjusting their colors to fit our existing themes, one of our artists, Ida, also took the time to prepare themed prefabs for the Staff Breakrooms introduced in U17.
And of course we have to mention the rock rework. These updated pieces strike a more balanced middle-ground between the original alpha rocks and their second iteration, aiming for strong silhouettes and more readable surfaces. The improved fidelity applies not only to our igneous rocks but also to the basalt and stone henge pieces, too.
A number of new shapes and pebbles were also added to the core igneous set, so there’s a lot more you can do with them! Players may have to make some changes to their existing parks or prefabs due to the nature of Early Access, but we don’t expect to touch these specific rocks ever again.
Incoming Hotfix
With the main update out of the way, the team’s currently working on a hotfix. In addition to the usual stability improvements and bug fixes, this upcoming patch will correct the management tutorials and sneak in a couple of other changes.
On the behavioral side of things, we’ll be expanding familial defense by making babies actively try to stay behind their parents when threatened. Since the initial update launched with parents already standing between their babies and an aggressor, having their offspring respond should make that interaction feel a lot more natural! There are a couple of other behavioral fixes coming, too.
As a bonus, there’ll be new baby skins coming for the wildberry Nasutoceratops and hiburnal Leaellynasaura! While each animal typically has 1 baby skin, we occasionally design extras to make the transition from baby to adult more pleasing if a species has highly varied skins.
We’ve also added a new panting behavior for when an animal’s stamina gets low enough from running or fighting, clearly indicating that they’re out of breath and need a break. We’ll be adding audio after the hotfix in a follow up patch!
Future Improvements
As we continue to develop combat, we’ll be working to reduce extreme cases where bodies clip inside each other. However, due to the nature of dynamic combat, clipping is generally not something that can be eliminated entirely.
In the case of intraspecific sauropod fights, trying to stop neck clipping is basically impossible. To help improve this specific instance, we would like to have a few partner animations (beyond the current Brontosmash) that they can play while fighting for the best result.
Shortly, the team will also begin work on a new combat feature for large predators: prey grabbing! Originally seen way back in our 2017 demo, this behavior allows creatures like a T. rex to pick up and swallow small animals when hunting. Since then, we’d like to expand the feature by letting carnivores hold and occasionally shake their prey before ultimately digesting them.
We’ll show it off properly after implementation, but for now you can check out the distinct pick up, shake and swallow state animations below.
Thank You!
As we close out this Dev Diary, we’d like to thank everyone who has supported us along the journey so far. It’s been a long time coming, but we finally have ontogeny, breeding and dynamic combat all together.
With work soon beginning on Update 18 (aiming to release Q4 2026) and next year’s full release on the horizon, we will be polishing and improving gameplay clarity where possible to create the best experience we can. This includes working on controller support and enhancing aspects of the UI to better serve all players, no matter which input device they use. You can see a (very) early version of controller usage below.
Speaking of full release, there are a lot of exciting new animals currently in production that we cannot wait to show you once we’re closer to launch. However, to celebrate U17, we’d like to officially announce two new species coming to the 1.0 roster: the long-horned bison and the steppe bison!
To tell them apart, the long-horned Bison latifrons has a much larger overall size and those classic horns. The steppe bison, however (B. priscus) can be identified by its S-shaped horns and smaller size. Bison priscus will also have alternate colors and fur length inspired by both summer/winter seasons and cave art, giving park managers even more choice when bringing these creatures back to life!
The team knows how much the community loves Cenozoic animals and we’re pleased to say that our Bison here won’t be the only two joining us for 1.0!
Created by Francoo192
Created by MysteryDryo
Created by Arden
Thank you for reading June’s dev diary!
We’ll be back next month for more news on Update 18 and the future of Prehistoric Kingdom. Until then, we hope you enjoy U17 and we look forward to reading more of your feedback!
- The PK Team
