Jurassic World Evolution has "grown well beyond the initial vision," says Frontier
In 2018, we got Jurassic World Evolution, which lets you live out that park management dream, whatever your play style. And it seems as though that dream hasn't lost any potency, even some 30 years on from the original Jurassic Park itself. With Jurassic World Evolution now having stomped its way onto Xbox Game Pass, we asked Frontier producer Brendon Morgan about dinosaurs, disasters, and designing a game which can turn so quickly from park management to prehistoric chaos. "For a lot of our players, it’s the nostalgia of connecting so closely with such an iconic and beloved franchise that is so important to them," Morgan says. "There’s nothing that really comes close to releasing your first T. rex, or Triceratops, and hearing beloved film characters help you on your mission to open and manage a park for millions of awaiting guests."
Three years and several major expansions later, Jurassic World Evolution is a different beast to what it was at launch, and Morgan and his team seem happy with the transformation. "It’s been an unbelievable experience and we’ve had an incredible reception from the players and our community," he says. "It’s grown well beyond the initial vision that we had at the beginning of the project, that’s for sure. I think that happens for a lot of Frontier games and the fact that we can keep adding value to our games is something that we are pretty proud of." Frontier's other popular park management sim, Planet Coaster, made its way to Xbox Game Pass just last year — "it was only natural Jurassic World Evolution would also make its way to the service," Morgan continues. "Watching players experience the campaign story for the first time is wonderful, and for players I think the first time you release your favourite dinosaur really stays with you... to be able to welcome even more players to the community is something I’m really looking forward to."
Evolution asks you to manage the needs of your guests as well as handling storms, power outages, sabotages from dissatisfied colleagues, and the inevitable escape of the dinosaurs themselves. It's a volatile mix and it only takes a few seconds for things to get out of control, yet we seem just as tempted to try managing a park where so much can go wrong as we would be with more laid-back sims like Planet Coaster. "I think it’s about control and being able to build a better, safer park; easy to say in hindsight," Morgan explains. "Or maybe it’s about being so close to the danger and destruction. But even the best preparations can run into problems, especially when those problems are a towering T. rex or a pack of velociraptors!" Evolution walks a wafer-thin line between park management and damage control, and the missions revolve around ideas of both conservation and dangerous experimentation. "It was an interesting experience and we do leave a lot of this up to the player," Morgan says. "You’ve got to give a lot of respect to these amazing creatures and while some of them are very docile, others are literally a disaster waiting to happen." These ideas were explored further with the Claire’s Sanctuary DLC, which introduced new paleobotany features for dinosaur wellbeing, as well as a rescue angle with players looking to save their dinos from an imminent volcanic eruption.
Like other complex management sims, Evolution features a lot of in-game tools for micro-managing your park. We asked Morgan what it was like to bring a game like Jurassic World Evolution to consoles, where players would be armed with a controller rather than a mouse and keyboard. "Frontier has a long history of bringing rich management simulation games to console, and it’s something that we’ve spent a great deal of time working on to ensure that players have the same great experience no matter which platform they choose to play on," Morgan replies. "This strive for player parity means we look at every aspect of the game from UI to game controls to ensure the game feels just as at home on a console as it does on PC." He goes on to describe the work the Evolution team put into making Evolution and Planet Coaster "play just as well when using a controller as they do when using a mouse and keyboard," telling us that the developers themselves tend to swap between using a mouse and keyboard and playing with a controller. "I think this comes through when you look at how easy it is to play, something that management games on console have sometimes struggled with previously," he adds.
Previous Evolution DLC packs had tied in with the release of Jurassic World movies — with the Jurassic World: Dominion movie on the way, a lot of Evolution fans have been hoping for more DLC or even news of a sequel. But Morgan isn't giving anything away. "Our main focus at this time is on delivering a great gameplay experience with Jurassic World Evolution on Xbox Game Pass. We have nothing further to announce right now."
