About
Prehistoric Kingdom
$88,950
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Prehistoric Kingdom is a modern take on the tycoon simulator game genre, focused on building and managing your very own prehistoric-themed zoo, populating it with a large variety of extinct animals and opening its gates to the public for your guests to enjoy. As such, our main goals with the project can be brought down to three major aspects:
- Ensuring a high level of customization for buildings and their placement modes, allowing for almost limitless creative potential. With multiple creative tools provided to help you build the ultimate prehistoric zoo, the possibilities are endless.
- Providing a fairly realistic and scientifically accurate in-game depiction of each animal, from its looks to its sounds and behavior. Each and every creature is designed and created with the utmost love and attention.
- Offering challenging, detailed, and enjoyable management mechanics that will immerse you even more in the very world that you built!
The project was born as a result of shared passion towards both extinct animals and tycoon simulators, upon realizing that this particular gaming niche doesn't quite offer what we believe we can deliver. Prehistoric Kingdom aims to give players something to enjoy for years to come.
Being inspired by classics of the genre such as Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis and Zoo Tycoon 2, this project takes elements seen in previous titles and implements them into a new world, expanding upon these ideas so that players can truly build the ultimate zoo of their dreams in Prehistoric Kingdom's refreshing setting.
We have a pre-alpha demo available on Steam! As an indie team, we strongly believe in marketing ourselves through the product itself as a way to demonstrate where we would like to take the project.
The current demo contains the following features (with more incoming with the soon-to-be-released Jurassic Patch):
- 4 Creatures with alternate skins and full ontogeny: Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Gallimimus and Velociraptor.
- 30+ placeable decorations and buildings.
- Terraforming and foliage placement.
- Drivable vehicles.
- Basic animal care.
- Basic resource management.
You can find the demo on our store page on the right-hand side, here.
The customization that comes with building and terraforming is paramount to us as a team. Apart from offering a building system that's up to the standards set by previous tycoon games, we also strive to include curved placement modes, modular building (for some structures only), and highly customizable decorative items such as rocks, logs, and more!
Terrain painting will be an additional gameplay feature to help make exhibits feel alive and natural. While missing from the public Pre-Alpha demo, this feature will find its way into the Beta, Early Access, and final versions of the game.
We recognise and value the creativity of communities and the longevity they can bring to a game's life cycle. Because of this, Prehistoric Kingdom will offer multiple ways to share your ideas with the world:
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Modding:
Unofficial mod support is already here! The community has taken it upon itself to implement new objects and features to our pre-alpha demo such as fountains and playable dinosaurs. Once the core game of Prehistoric Kingdom has been developed, we may look into official modding utilities and API's for the community down the road.
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Map Editor:
Create custom maps to be played and shared with the map creator. Use our climates and your skill to paint, sculpt, and design a landscape to your liking. The opportunities are endless!
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Exhibit Designer:
Design exhibits and paddocks in the dedicated exhibit builder to save and export them directly to the Steam Workshop! Make use of the existing park assets and import your own to maximize your creativity and add a personal touch to your zoo.
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Steam Workshop:
The Steam Workshop will allow players to easily share their save games and custom exhibits directly to the cloud for everyone to access.
Keep your park up and running by creating a working resource layout, hiring staff and seeing to their housing needs, providing a suitable habitat for your animals, and holding guest happiness to a high degree by building attractions, amenities, as well as placing effective security measures.
Help increase the popularity of your zoo by running various advertisements and catering to the needs of your guests by listening to guest feedback and ensuring your facilities are in tip-top condition.
Gain 'Science Points' by breeding new species and building new structures (or alternatively, through milestones) to unlock new technology and upgrades. Dispatch Dig Teams to fossil-rich sites around the world to discover and create new animal species for your park.
Three main game modes are planned for the fully released title, each offering a different and exciting experience!
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Campaign:
Engage in your standard game of tycoon management, featuring progressive and challenging gameplay! Players will experience an in-depth research mechanic, unlock prehistoric life through fossil hunting, and threatening weather that could potentially put you and your zoo on the brink of bankruptcy.
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Scenario:
Select a mission out of a diverse range of premade scenarios - from capturing rampaging animals, to ensuring the quality of your themed exhibits, we will have them all!
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Sandbox:
Choose how you want to play by setting difficulty, starting funds, disaster occurrence chance, (and more!) in the start game menu; craft your experience just as you like!
- Ranger Mode: A special mechanic central to the game, the ranger mode is a fundamental feature included in all the other modes that will allow you to walk through your park as one of the park's wardens.
You will have at your disposition a large roster of extinct animals to fill your exhibits with, ranging from the tiny Velociraptor, to the gigantic Brachiosaurus, and from the long-gone Dimetrodon, to the more recently-extinct Mammuthus.
Below are some of the animals that will be making their way into the Early Access version of Prehistoric Kingdom over the course of its development! For the initial release, we are expecting 50 terrestrial creatures, with aquatics, aerial, and additional animals being added in the form of content updates.
To see additional concept art and images for various aspects of the game, we have a Deviant Art gallery available here.
Starting with 50 planned species for the Early Access release, we only hope we can increase that count over the course of the game's development, reaching to more than 100 prehistoric animals of all types.
Guests
The visitors of Prehistoric Kingdom will be varied and always looking to have a good time in your park, exploring exhibits, viewing animals, and enjoying the services offered by yours amenities and attractions.
Through our randomizer system, your guests will not only be always different from each other in terms of their looks (age, skin tone, physique, clothing, etc.), but also in terms of their preferences and likings. Based on that, you will be able to categorize most guests under 3 groups:
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Thrill Seekers
These are the visitors that will always enjoy action and all around being thrilled. Their main preference will be large animals, especially carnivores. -
Paleo Enthusiasts
This group of people is characterized by their fondness of prehistory: they will always appreciate a scientifically accurate exhibit, and always like most animals in your park. -
Mainstream
Not entering in any of the above categories, mainstreams will be satisfied with most exhibits and animals, as long as they are properly cared for.
Personnel
Prehistoric Kingdom cannot function without proper staff. As such, you will have to hire your very own crew: tour guides, janitors, maintenance workers, and rangers, all playing their part in keeping a healthy and safe environment for guests and animals alike.
In order to make a realistic natural reserve, every structure needs to reflect on real world designs found in zoos and parks all around the globe. Even though the game is going to allow for a certain level of stylistic originality varied for each player, all paths, fences, buildings, rides, and even decorations are going to retain the same approach to their design, sporting a healthy mix between modern architecture and the use of common, earthy materials.
Although there are probably going to be hundreds of structure types in the fully released game, all of them can be neatly separated into 7 main building categories:
- Fences. Self-explanatory - fences are what contain your animals, and they come in a variety of designs, styles, but also security levels.
- Animal Care. Any building that has a role in keeping your animals safe and happy - from nurseries to shelters, feeders, and even recreational toys.
- Infrastructure. These buildings are the true core of your park, as they keep Prehistoric Kingdom up and running. Here you can find power generators, utility buildings, but even vehicle depots and staff-exclusive compounds.
- Amenities. Structures like vendors, kiosks, restaurants, restrooms, and more, are what maintain a high level of comfort and satisfaction between your park attendants.
- Attractions. Visitors will always have fun with these buildings, may they be simple viewing platforms, vehicle rides, or even playgrounds.
- Paths and Roads. Just like fences, paths will come in a great variety of textures: dirt, stone, sand, wood, asphalt and much, much more!
- Decorations. Being special structures, most often of small size, decorations will contribute greatly to the overall visuals of your creations. Sometimes, they even have a more functional status (i.e. benches, picnic tables, lamps, etc.).
We are going to include 3 premade islands in the Early Access release for you to build on. Each can be found in a different location, featuring a distinct climate: Subtropical, Tropical, and Boreal. Moreover, you will have at your disposal 3 terraforming climates, each with their own 8 plant types, and 4 ground textures, these being the same plants and soils present in the premade maps. As these are part of the terraforming toolset, players will be able to use them on whichever map they like.
Eventually, throughout development, we are going to expand on this feature in order to include 8 total different maps and climates.
Sound Effects
Our animal sound effects are obtained mixing and editing the sounds produced by modern, living animals, most of the times the closest available relatives of said prehistoric species. Much effort and time is put into crafting sounds, in such a way that the finished product will make you feel immersed in a living, breathing world.
Soundtrack
Our talented composer, Byron McKay (previous work includes the soundtrack for the Minecraft Fossils and Archeology mod) is responsible for the musical arrangements accompanying your choices throughout the game. Not unlike film music, our goal with the soundtrack is to capture the emotions of awe and wonder presented by the concept of the game, acting as a guiding hand alongside the player throughout their journey.
You can have a taste of the soundtrack's style and themes down below.
We have been working on the project in our spare time and with no funding for the past 4 years, going from iteration to iteration and bettering ourselves at the game-making craft. We believe that your support will be highly beneficial to the game's development process, as it will allow us to focus more time and put more effort into its creation.
Through your generous donations, we will effectively be able to speed up the working pace (otherwise limited to a spare-time-basis) and release a game to be enjoyed for years to come!
How will your donations be used?
Our budget schedule was crafted to allow most of us to spend more time on the game and thus truly focus on its development, for the months prior to the Early Access release. This should effectively speed up the game-making process, resulting in quicker and better results.
You can see below how the starting goal's funds will be distributed (ratios may vary depending on the final raised amount).
Our goal is to release the game in Early Access on Steam, but only after ensuring all the main planned features are ready to go. We want to overcome the social stigma revolving around Early Access titles, and as such, we want to make Prehistoric Kingdom stand on its own as an enjoyable experience throughout the whole process.
Above are the global members that comprise Shadow Raven Studios LLC, working day and night to continually develop and expand the scope of Prehistoric Kingdom. With a current total of 10 active members, we are hoping to eventually expand the available roles to new programmers and animators.
Digital copies of Prehistoric Kingdom (PC/MAC) are estimated to arrive during 2018. All other rewards will be received later in the year or early 2019 due to the production and continued addition of new content to the game.
Risks and challenges
As a small indie team, we don't have access to the business tools and experience big game dev companies have to offer, so there could always be potential problems we could bump into, both from a design and a development standpoint. This is, after all, our first big project as a group, and even though we hope this problem will never arise, slight delays due to unexpected circumstances are to be considered. Thus we can only ask our fans and community to wait patiently while we do our best in order to deliver on a product where quality is always put first.
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Funding period
- (30 days)