There’s a contradiction at the heart of Jurassic World Evolution. Fundamentally, Jurassic Park is a disaster movie series. Steven Spielberg knew that it's a much less interesting watch if everything at John Hammond’s dino-Disneyland goes exactly as planned. And yet Frontier Developments’ management sim series largely concerns itself with what comes before the films' high-stakes misadventures: the creation of a (mostly) functioning dinosaur-centric theme park.

Andy Fletcher, Game Director for Jurassic World Evolution 3, is responsible for designing history’s most dangerous conservation project. He understands better than anyone that a Jurassic Park management sim needs to have teeth—a dash of unpredictable peril.

“It's not just a petting zoo,” as he told us. “That's what distinguishes a Jurassic game—that willingness to embrace chaos and accept that it's part of the experience.”
 

Dino crisis

There’s certainly no petting zoo quite like this one. Mirroring the films’ blockbuster aesthetics, you aren’t restricted to a top-down view in Jurassic World Evolution. You can choose to be thrown right into the action, with past games inviting players to chase an escaped T. rex via helicopter, firing enough tranquilizer darts to sedate a herd of elephants. In Jurassic World Evolution 3, you can now tear about in an ATV and inspect and repair fences up close—hopefully before there's an Indoraptor breakout. Improved vehicle handling makes this an even wilder and more exhilarating experience.

For Fletcher, the unusually dynamic action-game mechanics are essential to capturing the feel of the Jurassic franchise, which brims with excitement whether it’s Spielberg or Gareth Edwards behind the camera. 

“That exciting visual and gameplay variety that comes from the peril is something that we want to make sure we maintain,” he said. “It's part of the franchise. It's a part of what we are, and the world that we are building.”

It’s a powerful appeal—and one that certain players of Tropico 6, Planet Coaster, and the like will instantly recognize. After all, who among us hasn’t built a pool without a ladder in The Sims just to see what would happen? In Jurassic World Evolution 3, it's the unhinged glee of watching someone get squashed by a 60-ton Brachiosaurus or gobbled up by a ravenous Giganotosaurus. Some Jurassic World Evolution players even make home-made disaster videos on YouTube, setting loose an entire park’s worth of vicious dinos on panicking guests or engineering gladiatorial contests to see which predator comes out on top. 

But for other players, the genre’s appeal comes from witnessing the immaculate order of a well-tuned park. No matter how immersive, ricocheting from one dino crisis to another can become an uneasy interruption that gets in the way of the genre’s more traditional pleasures. Striking that balance between cinematic safari thrill-seeking and the meticulous demands of management sim gameplay doesn’t come easy.

In previous games, Sandbox mode let the less disaster-minded Jurassic World Evolution players disable guest danger, meaning escaped dinosaurs wouldn't feast on hapless visitors. But for Jurassic World Evolution 3, Fletcher also detailed new solutions that will help players keep their park secure.

“In this third game, park managers who want an extra level of control and high-level management can put systems in place to allow themselves to control the chaos a bit more,” he said. Those systems include maintenance posts to outsource first-response duties within a set radius, and security cameras that raise the alarm and dispatch a capture team when an enclosure is breached.

Of course, there’s always the option to ditch the guardrails entirely, too. “When the player's left to their own devices, it's on them what kind of park and what sort of experience they want to have,” said Fletcher. “Particularly in Sandbox mode—if you want to have all the peril, all the dinosaur danger, you can crank those values up and see how you fare. Or you can tone that down and embrace the creative side of the game, building the enclosures of your dreams without having to worry too much about it all falling over.”
 

Paleontology heaven

Dino drama would count for little if the reptilian stars of the show weren't believable to begin with. “We're dinosaur nerds in our own right,” Fletcher said of the team. 

With Jurassic World Evolution 3, he’s proud to beat the movies by introducing a recent discovery from the Montana Badlands: the Lokiceratops, which was only recognized as a new species last year. Among the first to share its charms with a wider audience, Jurassic World Evolution 3 takes players to the Judith River Formation dig site (where it was unearthed) as the first stop in the globetrotting campaign.

“It’s a beautiful, big Ceratopsian with a magnificent, huge frill and asymmetrical horns,” said Fletcher. “Whenever a new dinosaur species is discovered and we get the first scientific drawings, our eyes widen and we're like ‘That would be amazing to have in the game!’ It's a balance between the familiar, what will add variety to the game's roster, and what's new and exciting in the world of paleontology.”

The Jurassic World Evolution 3 team takes pride in making their lovingly re-created dinosaurs convincing in both likeness and animations. These dinos and their surrounding habitats have never looked better, thanks to a wealth of graphical advancements that are pushing the parks ever closer to photorealism.

“We’ve got subsurface scattering on the skins of the dinosaurs to make them look scaly, fleshy, and as realistic as possible,” said Fletcher. “Almost like you can reach out and touch them.”

Even with extensive research and the input of Universal Studios’ go-to paleontologist Steve Brusatte, dinosaur behavior remains a great unknown. Opportunities for direct observation vanished 66 million years ago. With only hints offered by the fossil record, the Jurassic World Evolution 3 team takes a lot of inspiration from the natural world to inform its dinosaurs’ behavior and interactions seen in-game.

“For smaller Ceratopsians, we might look at rhinoceros juveniles and how they behave around their parents,” Fletcher explained. “Other dinosaurs may be more closely linked to ostriches and emus [like the new bipedal addition Ornithomimus], and we'll look at their behaviors and gait and movements. You're not making monsters—these were real animals, real creatures.”

A Jurassic Park movie can only fit so many dinosaurs into its runtime. Frontier faces no such limitations, which is why you can find over 80 distinct species in Jurassic World Evolution 3. In previous games, they brought pop culture favorites to life, such as the Triceratops and Velociraptors, alongside some of the films' more obscure pulls (like the formidable Quetzalcoatlus) or entirely original creations like Jurassic World's notorious hybrid Indominus Rex.
 

Natural selection

You can think of Jurassic World Evolution 3 as the series’ equivalent of Pokémon Gold and Silver. No, you won’t be sending your Expedition Center paleontologists to the Johto region, but you'll find similar additions that’ve been high on many fans’ wishlists for years: baby dinosaurs, sexual dimorphism, and natural breeding.

“Now it's not just about individual species. It's about how the whole family unit—female, male, and juvenile—all interact with one another, keeping them all thriving, and cohabiting with other species,” said Fletcher.

It’s a big deal for the broader Jurassic franchise. The first Jurassic Park contained exclusively female dinosaurs, intended to prevent breeding in the (seemingly inevitable) scenario of dinosaurs escaping into the wild—but things changed after the events of 2022's Jurassic World: Dominion, when dinosaurs of both genders were unleashed across the globe.

As a result, Jurassic World Evolution 3 players have a new way to create more dinosaurs alongside the series’ traditional genetic synthetization. Place an appropriate nesting ground, bring two dinosaurs of opposite genders together in an enclosure in the fertile stage of their life cycles, and what happens next? Fletcher skipped the birds-and-the-bees talk and instead called on Dr. Ian Malcolm’s famous line with a suggestive twist: “Life, uh, finds a way.”

Juvenile dinosaurs required wide-ranging design changes to Jurassic World Evolution 3. They behave differently from their elders, often chasing each other or approaching other species out of curiosity. Each new generation adds further demands on your enclosures to provide a suitable habitat. They’ll have environmental and social needs that must be met, be it appropriate food sources for baby Sauropods whose necks can’t reach the treetop heights just yet or the need for the company of other juveniles to become properly socialized. Do well, and you'll have happy, well-adjusted dinosaurs, which are highly appealing to park visitors.

Family tensions are found in any species, though. Rearing a T. rex from egg to adulthood will give you a marquee attraction that's sure to draw crowds of guests to your park, but it comes with particular challenges due to their territorial instincts. When a juvenile T. rex reaches maturity, you’ve got a problem. The solitary apex predator doesn’t like competition. Their discomfort level rises, as does their aggression, and you’ll need to manage the population to avoid a violent end.

Luckily, you have a lot of tools at your disposal when it comes to building a park that's good for both dinosaurs and humans. In Jurassic World Evolution 3, players can make more visually spectacular parks thanks to new terraforming tools. Plateaus erupt from flat plains at your command, while deep water bodies and scenic features like waterfalls create magnificent environments for your Megalodons and Plesiosaurus.

These improved tools open the door for naturalistic safari parks where dinosaurs are penned in by natural rock faces rather than metal enclosures. Deformed terrain also dynamically applies textures, suitably arranging rocks and foliage for natural arrangements—unless you’d rather customize and place every single rock by hand.

And Frontier has made it easier than ever for players to share their creations. The new Frontier Workshop enables players on any platform to share custom-built parks, enclosures, and scenery pieces for anyone to use.
 

Dominion of the reptiles

There's also a campaign for those who want a bit more structure. The Jurassic World Evolution 3 campaign comes after perhaps the most seismic change yet in the Jurassic Park timeline. As mentioned, Jurassic World Dominion saw dinosaurs escape into the wild, throwing the existing natural order into turmoil.

“That's a point in the Jurassic timeline where dinosaurs are all around the world. It's all about how we can live with them, how can they integrate into the modern world?” said Fletcher, who immediately noticed the opportunities this created for the Jurassic World Evolution series. “The first thing that brought to our mind is: We can go global, we can go anywhere we want.”

The Jurassic World Evolution 3 campaign introduces numerous locations, centered around famous dig sites that have never been seen before in the Jurassic franchise. Expect huge variations in biomes and architectural styles as you head to locations like China and Japan that have long been demanded by fans. One level even arose from a passing reference in the original Michael Crichton novel. More than 30 years later, we finally get to see Jurassic Park Europe—and the geography of its location, a volcanic island off the coast of Portugal, provides a particular challenge when it comes to park design. Most of these locations come with unique challenges, in fact, whether it's saboteurs or roaming wild dinosaurs. 

And is it really Jurassic Park without Jeff Goldblum? Good thing you can depend on Dr. Malcom’s return, as Goldblum reprises the role he’s played since the beginning. Needless to say, Fletcher’s a fan. Meeting your heroes can be a mistake—but don’t worry, this particular Hollywood superstar is a rare Jurassic Park character who won't bite.

“When we did some promo for the first game in LA, that was a bit of a starstruck moment for me. He even sang to us while we were having our pictures taken with him!” said Fletcher, who knows he can rest easy during voiceover sessions whenever Goldblum returns to the role.

“He just nails it every time, really. He doesn't need direction from me to be Dr. Ian Malcolm! He knows that character inside out.”

Jurassic World Evolution 3 rampages onto the Epic Games Store on October 21.