Hello Everyone!
The latest DLC and update came around on the 8th of March, and with what has been shared over the past two weeks, I was definitely excited to jump into Jurassic World Evolution 2.
When it comes to replaying this game, I am someone who likes to build parks from the ground up instead of plopping down any asset desired without work or consequence. There is nothing wrong playing creatively over on sandbox mode, but I miss that sense of risk when building a park. Back in JWE1, I favored challenge mode then as it allowed me to build a park from the ground up, doing everything from scratch, and be vulnerable to disease, storms, and bankruptcy. JWE2's challenge mode does bring in some challenge, but the scenarios were too restricted for my liking, there are only 5 maps in challenge mode, each with a unique set of conditions the higher the difficulty, and you could only ever use a specific and limited roster of dinosaurs tied to each map.
They were fine for what they were, but the replayability with these challenge maps were low, especially when factoring in how you could only ever use the default Jurassic World Assets. So I was left hoping that a more custom form of challenge mode could come to JWE2 where you are free to set up the map, era, and difficulty like that of Jurassic World Evolution 1, but you have to work with your management skills in order to attain the assets and prehistoric animals you desire for your parks.
Update 2.0 now shines a light in that form of play. By allowing players to research and incubate everything from scratch, as well as setting new difficulty settings to the "JURASSIC" difficulty, sandbox mode is looking to expand itself to allow a bit of challenge when it comes to building a park, but how was that experience?
I was able to play 8 hours of sandbox mode with the custom settings shared below. From what I have played, I wanted to share with you all to showcase how challenging sandbox mode could be, my enjoyment of the updated game mode, and if there are areas that could be improved on.
And as usual, this will be quite the read, so I hope you have your favorite beverage at hand, as we dive into JWE2 sandbox mode, and see what update 2.0 would bring!
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WELCOME TO...
The first thing I immediately wanted to do was to build a version of Jurassic Park in the new sandbox mode. I was very used to the Jurassic World assets when it came to challenge mode and early stages of sandbox mode, when aviaries and lagoons were exclusive to Jurassic World Assets. So I wanted to go full on Jurassic Park during this play through. That, and I wanted to experience a game where I am limited to a single era and their decoration options instead of using the mixed era with all assets, a self implemented limitation to see how the park would grow in this new custom sandbox map.
The excitement this time around are from the new research and fossil expedition options, the new decorations, first person view, as well as the camp cretaceous content. Though it is the Jurassic Park era, I won't shy away from using dinosaurs not cannon to the original trilogy, and simply move forward and see what dinosaurs I could access with research.
EARNING THAT DINO DNA
Now this game mode is what I am talking about! The fun I had researching and digging fossils for new prehistoric pals from challenge mode has been successfully transfered over to sandbox mode. I had a lot of fun looking into what to research next and plan my park accordingly.
When it comes to dinosaurs, you will be relegated to an initial batch. Dinosaurs like struthiomimus, dilophosaurus, ceratosaurus, and amargasaurus are available to dig from the expedition map from the get go in order for you to start your dinosaur theme park. Though it looks to be a similar situation to JWE1 with only a set dinosaurs per star rating, research in JWE2 is much more malleable and would branch access to different species provided you meet the research requirements.
While I did start off with the struthiomimus and dilophosaurus, I was able to grow my park to include the nodosaurus, corythosaurus, nigersaurus, olorotitan, ceratosaurus, minmi, monolophosaurus, ouranosaurus, cearadactylus, huayangosaurus, gallimimus, Tyrannosaurus rex and the new hybrid scorpius rex!
When it came to choosing my next dinosaur, it was a very straightforward experience. I was able to skip a ton of dinosaurs I didn’t want to include in my park and was able to reach my favorites at a good pace. The only one that proved a challenge was unlocking access to the Tyrannosaurus rex, which included multiple steps of breeding specific dinosaurs, getting specific genes, and having to pit my nodosaurs against each other to win enough battles.
Same with genetics, I found that a similar level of effort is needed to earn the genes I want. At first it will be limiting, and your dinosaurs would look bland for a bit, but soon you should be able to open yourself to genes to color your dinosaurs and breed animals to fill in specific niches. One great thing to note is that the canonical skins and variants for dinosaurs are unlocked from the get go. So your bioluminescent parasaurolophus, 2015 ouranosaurus, 1993 triceratops, and 2001 velociraptors are available as soon as you attain that species viable genome.
SOMETHING THAT IS REAL
Park management has also been a blast. What I loved a lot during this playthrough was the pacing of the game.
Now with research and expeditions being a factor again, your spend more time getting busy preparing the shops and exhibits until you could incubate your first batch of eggs. The research needed to unlock buildings was fair and straightforward but needed time, time that would leave me exposed to diseases and storms while my park is still growing ever so slowly. It makes the end result of hatching a new batch of dinosaurs much more rewarding knowing the effort went behind it.
Wait time however could also be a negative factor for park management, which would have bothered me if not for....
EXPANDED VEGETATION & DECORATIONS!
I love the amount of decorations introduced to JWE2 from update 2.0. Even when limited to the Jurassic Park era of assets, I find myself having plenty to work with.
Small spaces that would awkwardly be empty could be filled with stones, amber, planters, plants, fountains, light and the like to turn that space into a visually pleasing guest area. I find it surprisingly easy to plop down the decorations to set up these areas, as I was using a controller instead of a mouse and keyboard. What is more that the downtime I would sometimes bear with is not used to spruce up my parks, sometimes to the point where sprucing up the place would take away valuable time!
Vegetation was also a plus, as the new placeable individual plants made exhibit curation much more involved, and I found that my park is now much greener as a result, making it feel more like a jungle at times. The best part of decorating your parks?
YOU COULD GET UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
A new feature that really made this experience an immersive one. It harkens me back to the days of the Playstation 1, where I played Bullfrog's Theme Park World and unlocking the 'camcorder' feature with my golden tickets! Here we take a plunge down to the guests perspective and walk around in the park we have built. This new perspective would allow us to go to the ground and appreciate a level of detail often not appreciated from the god-view we are accustomed to.
I find myself goofing around and walking with my guests when research needs a bit more time to complete. That and I love visiting the dinosaurs in their enclosures as they do their thing, these dinosaurs are much bigger from a grounded level. Some favorite moments of mine was walking by the fence and peering through the chain link barrier and try to find the smaller dinosaurs in the bush. This is not a necessary feature, but the level of immersiveness it brings is so much fun!
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So far I had a blast with the new custom sandbox mode. Being able to research and dig for my park made the end result so satisfying, as my park's path is littered with small objectives like "How do I unlock this gene?" and "Are my scientists able to handle this task?", all the while I decorate the park during the small downtime and pop down to relish in my work. This was the updated I waited for so long, and it made my sandbox experience a lot more engaging as a result.
But is it perfect?.... Well.....
YOU NEVER WORRY ABOUT MONEY
"Spare no expense"is definitely on brand, but I did find the amount of money I earned from my sandbox playthrough practically killed any excitement I had after my first star.
When I started out, I had $3 million to work with, and my park was ready to start with $1 million in the bank, moving forward I expect to earn some money, but the profit growth is exponential!
By 1 star, I got back my $3 million, by 2 starts it has more than doubled to $7 million, it has grown exponentially to around $50 million at 3 stars, and now it rests at nearly $165 million at a 4 star fame.
While having $165 million at the bank would make anyone happy, it does diminish that appeal of park growth. Now decisions are not balanced between time, park status, and limited spendings, now it is just a matter of doing what is needed next, as having that much money in such a short amount of time is akin to playing it with the unlimited cash setting.
SOMETHINGS ARE A BIT OFF
Thankfully I didn’t encounter any bugs during my playthrough, but I did encounter some strange omissions and oversights when it comes to the game. I will be submitting them over on the issue tracker but you could find them below for reference.
1. The new Monolophosaurus and Scorpios Rex lack any commentary when released from the hatchery. Every other dinosaur and reptile would have been accompanied by a character's commentary when released into your park to have a more narrative experience, but the new dinosaurs don’t. I am unsure why, it could be that they weren’t recorded yet, or the dialogue is ready but it simply doesn’t activate when these two are brought into your park.
2. One of the monolophosaurus scenetic incubation lab exits has the camera clip by the side of the hatchery. This is noticeable with the Jurassic World hatchery and especially with the Jurassic Park hatchery, as you could see the gate phase through an opening that should have been hidden from view. I think it is simply a bit too close and could be repositioned a bit further from the hatchery.
3. The two upgrade slots per building research does not activate, leaving me with only the single research slot to work with all of my buildings. Limiting upgrade flexibility.
4. Guests would complain of limited space, even though traffic and hotel capacities have been taken care of. I think it may have to do with how in the Jurassic Park assets only playthrough of sandbox, transportations isn’t a factor to your park's growth, but could is still taken into consideration by the notification system.
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BIGGER, BETTER, MORE TEETH
I had a wonderful experience in the new sandbox custom game mode, as it does scratch that itch I have when it comes to building parks from scratch. I do think there is room for a few more additions and tweaks to refine the challenging direction of park management, and after checking out the challenge mode maps in the game, I think these would do lovely.
1. Introduce more sandbox options
Here are some sandbox options that would help enhance the building experience in sandbox mode:
1. Income Tax: [None, Low, Normal, Moderate, High]
2. Research Cost: [Low, Normal, Moderate, High]
3. Staff Salary: [Low, Normal, Moderate, High]
4. Scientist Rest: [Low, Normal, Moderate, Long]
The biggest issue I had was earning too much money, and it was something I wish had the option to be bottlenecked in order to still maintain that cautious level of money spending so as to avoid risking a lot when it comes to park management. I find that challenge mode does this well by affecting the cost of staff salary and research cost to match the difficulty of the challenge, as well as the ever important income tax that would suppress your otherwise large income. Having the option to toggle with these option in sandbox mode I find would enhance the experience for me greatly, and would invite that frugal mindset of spending to avoid a financial disaster.
Down below, you should also find a link to a thread post I made on the Ideas and Features request section of the forums. There you should find some additional sandbox options requested to enhance the experience further, including the option to lock further sandbox modifications to commit to the rules set before the game begins!
forums.frontier.co.uk
2. Introduce a new sandbox preset: Challenge
Currently there are 3 presets for sandbox: Standard, Creative, and Custom. I think a new preset could be introduced to fit the riskier side of park management: Challenge.
This is simply for player convenience to rely on a preset to quickly jump into the game. Just like challenge mode, you could set your sandbox to focus on finance and elements that would hinder park progress such as income tax, staff salary, research cost, storm frequency, disease level and so on. This preset would also have a secondary option to choose the level of difficulty, so that you could adjust to an easy, medium, hard, or jurassic challenge for your sandbox game.
BUILDING A BETTER WORLD
Aside from sandbox mode itself, additional content and quality of life improvements will improve the re-playability of this game. Over time, more updates would come to Jurassic World Evolution 2, and the experience of managing a dinosaur park would be expanded on to deliver a fun package to keep players coming back. Moving forward, I think these areas need to be taken into consideration to enhance the game even further:
1. MORE ATTRACTIONS
Let us use the Jurassic Park arena in any map, or maybe build a gondola line over the park. A tunnel that could pass through aviaries and lagoons, or an underground viewing method for your guests to get up close to your dinosaurs. The more attractions this game would have, the more it would deliver on park variety. A park focused on galleries for example would look different in layout than a park focused on tours, so introducing more attractions would push players to try out new layouts and methods for their guests to enjoy your dinosaurs, and would make each playthrough unique from the last.
2. MORE DECORATIONS
Update 2.0 brought about 40+ decorations alongside placeable vegetation, and park management has been a lot of fun. By introducing more decorations, that level of outfitting your park would expand greatly, making your parks prettier than ever. I do plan to make a thread post with inspiration boards, as there are some areas untouched by decorations, such as vehicles, pathway arches, statues, decaying park assets and dinosaurs, decorative flowers, and more iconic franchise scenery.
3. MORE MECHANICS
New mechanics could be introduced over time to add more aspects of park management to balance out, or flesh out an existing feature that could do with more meat. Some ideas I had include:
• MANAGING PARK CLEANLINESS: Establishing a franchise would often bring about waste management and cleanliness to raise guest appeal. I think cleanliness could be a factor of guest management to plan for once the visitor population starts to grow. Janitorial staff could be tasked to tend to areas of a park with high guest traffic, while old guest facilities could be given new life by having them be freshened up after years have passed in game to raise appeal and service effectiveness. This is an area I think has potential to be included and would work well in such a management game.
• MANAGING FOOD SUPPLY: How well do we raise our goats? Could the meat feeder include hidden supplements? Could we have other prey options for our carnivores? And where do we get all of these great white sharks? These are questions that made me wonder if we could have a mechanic in game where we could expand the management of the meat and fish feeders, similar to how the paleobotany mechanic was introduced in JWE1. A carnivore's prey preference could be expanded on to include favorites and induce comfort, while the food could be modified to boost aspects of a dinosaur such as disease immunity, strength, and lifespan.
• EXPAND LAGOON GAMEPLAY: One of the weaker parts of JWE2 is the lagoon. It is more or less a glorified fish tank, which is what it is, but I would have loved it if we could do some stuff in a lagoon similar to how the aviaries were expanded on. Why not introduce a means to customize the lagoon based on a species preference by introducing rocks, vegetation, and sand to an aquatic reptile's environment needs? Or make it so you could set up an environment where it is so comfortable that they won’t hunt each other. Maybe a filter system could be added to modify the water of the lagoon, by altering the water's salt percentage, temperature, and filtering the water from waste that is built up over time, and would require staff to monitor and clean the lagon's filter. I feel this area could be expanded on to make it enjoyable to build in your parks.
4. INDIVIDUALLY PLACED VEGETATION TWEAKS
I love the new individually placeable plants, they really add a nice nature touch in areas of the park where the vegetation brush could only do so much. My only feedback is:
Have the individual plants be accessible via Environment Tab: Of the new plants introduced in update 2.0, 10 of the vegetation options would affect a dinosaur's forest need. I like this as it helps smaller exhibits where a dinosaur may require more forest, but you do not need to risk losing area space or competing vegetation. My issue is that they are not accessible via the environment tab, as that is how we could modify our exhibit while monitoring our dinosaur's need. By having the individual plants be only accessible via decorations, we have to jump between windows and modify the exhibit without knowing how our dinosaur has responded to the change until we swap back to the dinosaur's need window. By having the individual plants be accessible in the environment section, it should be a much more convenient experience.
Include some plants from the paleobotany vegetation: The current section of individually placed vegetation is regulated to the biome the park is set on, and I could respect that. My request is that the selection of plants could be expanded to include the paleobotany plants as well, as they are already available on all maps, could be used to fine tune an exhibit's plant makeup to satisfy dinosaur needs, and they do provide some visually impressive specimens that would work great for decorative purposes.
5. MODULAR SYSTEM COULD BE EXPANDED
The modular system for our guest related buildings are great, they just need more options when it comes to visuals. I think a few more Jurassic Park themed building styles would be great, as well as some Department of Fish and Wildlife to match the attractions and aesthetics they are going for. Also, the ability to save a building's architecture setup would be an amazing QOL update.
6. MORE JURASSIC PARK AND DFW THEMED ASSETS
The ability to swap between the Jurassic World, Jurassic Park, and DFW assets for sandbox is amazing. The change in atmosphere to a park is noticeable when using the different assets, and updates have done well to improve the experience by introducing assets to the Jurassic Park and DFW assets to balance out the content available. With that said, I do think there needs to be more inclusions to define the assets further from each other and really deliver that exclusive atmosphere, such as:
JURASSIC PARK
• Introduce more dinosaur signage from the last game
• Make the fencing gate red like how it was in RTJP
• Make the pylons rustic like how it was in RTJP, as the current pylons are too modern and clean to fit the JP aesthetic.
• JP themed drones and submarines
• More decoration options, like the alamosaurus vs Tyrannosaurus fossils, the small decorative bathroom, and additional ingen equipment.
DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE
• Introduce dinosaur signage
• Make the fencing gate DFW themed
• Change the pylons look to differentiate from Jurassic World.
• DFW themed drones and submarines
• More decoration options to do with the Department of Fish and Wildlife like educational signage and statues of the non-prehistoric animals they otherwise took care of.
• Introduce a level 5 fencing option
• Introduce a tour like attraction so as to balance out gameplay and have a means to attract adventurous guests outside of dinosaur combat.
7. MORE PATH AND FENCING OPTIONS
I believe we need more path options from the current 3 we have been using. Staff, Normal, and Fancy would be visually pleasing for so long and some variety would be much appreciated. Introduce more path types like wooden, stone, sand stone, gravel, bricks, sand, and the like. Variety would very much be appreciated and these options could be tied to the Normal and Fancy research options to make them easy to categorize based on their visuals.
As for fence options, I do think we need shorter fencing to break away from the tall imposing fences we have in the game. With more smaller dinosaur in this game's roster, and with how some species would require small areas to call home, a small fence option would be a nice means to make certain small exhibits look less busy and imposing visually. Below is a link to a proposal I made if you would like to look into this further.
forums.frontier.co.uk
8. SOME VISUAL TOUCHES WOULD BE NICE
Now that the game has introduced a first person mode, some attention to detail would be appreciated in order for the game to be visually pleasing from the first person perspective. I made two thread requests to cover this up close detail.
The first is to introduce ambient creatures to the game, as dinosaurs (and live feed) are not the only animals to reside in your parks. It would be wonderful to see small ambient creatures in the game akin to special visual effects that would generate based on park setup, like butterflies over dense vegetation, dragonflies over water, and fire flies during the night. Likewise, birds could fly over your parks at times similar to how the pteranodon used to in JWE1, as now JWE2 is set around the world, and seeing birds fly over the park based on the biome and location would better immerse the players to that part of the world.
forums.frontier.co.uk
The second is simply to fine tune some visuals in JWE2, small touch up in details that would enhance the experience further. Below is a link to a thread I made and will be posting more if there is potential to improve some aspects of Jurassic World Evolution 2's visuals.
forums.frontier.co.uk
9. A FEW ANIMAL SIZE TOUCH UPS
Frontier has done an excellent work updating the dinosaurs based on player feedback. In this patch, the 2001 raptors skins were updated to include the correct eyes that they exclusively had in their Jurassic Park III movie, and this attention to detail is admirable! As the game moves forward with updates, I do want to bring up once again a few size changes to a few species in Jurassic World Evolution 2, which are:
• The 2001 pteranodon skin. (undersized)
• The nigersaurus. (oversized)
• The attenborosaurus. (oversized)
I have made a thread request about it you could find at the link below, which includes the size request as well as some charts and information to back up these size changes. JWE2 did do a lot when it comes to dinosaur size modifications and the roster in the game has been improved on greatly thanks to these changes, as most of the dinosaurs better respect real world studies and in film appearances when it comes to scale. The effort to modify these animal sizes would be much appreciated!
forums.frontier.co.uk
10. FIRST PERSON MODE FEEDBACK
First person mode in the latest update has been a blast, and I do enjoy playing the game by dropping down and experiencing the park I have built during the momentary downtime. Walking among the guests and venturing into exhibits is a refreshing perspective, and I only wish two things would be possible when it comes to this new game mode.
• LET US SIT ON THE DECORATIVE SEATING: I would walk by some of the decorative seating and would love to be able to just walk up to a table and (hopefully) a bench and sit down and absorb the atmosphere. Especially if a storm comes and the spinosaurus gets loose, I want to experience a "This is fine" moment while sitting down and observing the chaos.
• LET THE DINOSAURS NOTICE US: It is not possible to touch the dinosaurs in Jurassic World Evolution 2 or to be in danger when in first person mode, and I respect that, I understand the technical hurdles needed to have such a thing be implemented. What I would love however is to simply have the dinosaurs notice our presence. Usually when another dinosaur, helicopter, or ranger vehicle would come close to a dinosaur, their heads would turn towards that object and they would observe that other object within their field of vision. Sometimes they would bellow at that object of interest, and if it is a ranger vehicle, they might charge at it and attempt to intimidate the vehicle for entering their territory.
I would love something similar to be done in first person mode, where by walking into an exhibit, dinosaurs would look at us if we are close to their range and may bellow at us if we get a bit too close. If it is an animal with a skittish attribute, they might run away if we stay for too long or flash our lights at them repeatedly. Or if the animal has an aggressive trait, they would see our presence and charge towards us and scare us with a strong bellow or roar, as they could see us as a threat.
This would be a fun experience and level of immersion if possible, as having the dinosaurs notice us would almost be as satisfying as being able to pet them (almost). I will say that this feature may be a toggleable option in the gameplay settings, as some players may want the dinosaurs to ignore their presence altogether, possibly to capture that perfect cinemattic scene.
• LET US CONTROL THE AVIARY AND LAGOON DRONES: This is the final touch for the first person perspective. We could walk up to the dinosaurs, but what about the new flying and aquatic residents? I could imagine walking up to the aviary or lagoon hatchery and clicking on the new "Control Drone" option, and either fly in the aviary or submerge in the lagoon. To make it interesting, a new control setup could be made so that it feels like controlling an actual drone, with some new on screen visuals to imitate that remote controlled feeling. We should also be able to do tasks such as updating the status of the animals and darting the creatures with medical or tranquilizers if needed. The targeting system could be more automatic to make it easier targeting these animals, but it would be a blast to do so.
• PLEASE SWAP THE ASSIGNED BUTTONS FOR LIGHT AND HIDE UI: I am playing on the Playstation 5, so for me, the hide UI button is square, while the light button is down. I personally use the light button more than hiding the UI button, and the down button is rather uncomfortable when used repeatedly, reminds me of the Monster hunter claw grip back on the PSP, and that is uncomfortable if you experienced it yourself. I feel that it could be swapped as hiding the UI means you understand the setup, and would press the button less often, but the light button would be more satisfying if it is square, as it is easier to access with your thumb, making it comfortable in the long run.
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AS THE JURASSIC WORLD TURNS
Update 2.0 has greatly improved my experience with Jurassic World Evolution 2. By introducing the additional decorations, first person mode, and the sandbox settings, I found the game to be very re-playable than before, making me look forward to starting a new park losing so many hours within the game, I even had to stop myself during this play-through just to make sure I could write this thread!
Despite the issues I have shared, I am very optimistic and excited for the game's future. The issues I have could be resolved with future updates and patches, and the excitement of the upcoming Dominion movie has gotten me excited to see what else the Jurassic World Evolution team has in store for us. Regardless, this has been a lot of fun playing, and was just as much fun writing about it. I hope the information provided are useful, or at the very least entertaining, and may the feedback I have presented is informative to the community and be taken into consideration by the developers.
I hope you had enjoyed this read, and I want to thank you for reading till the end. Do let me know if you like similar thread posts be made with large upcoming updates and DLC.
Until next time, take care!
The latest DLC and update came around on the 8th of March, and with what has been shared over the past two weeks, I was definitely excited to jump into Jurassic World Evolution 2.
When it comes to replaying this game, I am someone who likes to build parks from the ground up instead of plopping down any asset desired without work or consequence. There is nothing wrong playing creatively over on sandbox mode, but I miss that sense of risk when building a park. Back in JWE1, I favored challenge mode then as it allowed me to build a park from the ground up, doing everything from scratch, and be vulnerable to disease, storms, and bankruptcy. JWE2's challenge mode does bring in some challenge, but the scenarios were too restricted for my liking, there are only 5 maps in challenge mode, each with a unique set of conditions the higher the difficulty, and you could only ever use a specific and limited roster of dinosaurs tied to each map.
They were fine for what they were, but the replayability with these challenge maps were low, especially when factoring in how you could only ever use the default Jurassic World Assets. So I was left hoping that a more custom form of challenge mode could come to JWE2 where you are free to set up the map, era, and difficulty like that of Jurassic World Evolution 1, but you have to work with your management skills in order to attain the assets and prehistoric animals you desire for your parks.
Update 2.0 now shines a light in that form of play. By allowing players to research and incubate everything from scratch, as well as setting new difficulty settings to the "JURASSIC" difficulty, sandbox mode is looking to expand itself to allow a bit of challenge when it comes to building a park, but how was that experience?
I was able to play 8 hours of sandbox mode with the custom settings shared below. From what I have played, I wanted to share with you all to showcase how challenging sandbox mode could be, my enjoyment of the updated game mode, and if there are areas that could be improved on.
And as usual, this will be quite the read, so I hope you have your favorite beverage at hand, as we dive into JWE2 sandbox mode, and see what update 2.0 would bring!
️Platform: Playstation 5
Game Mode: Sandbox (Custom)
Map: Nublar 2015 (Flattened)
Era: Jurassic Park (Guests and staff, assets & lighting)
Current game time: 8 Hours 14 minutes
SANDBOX SETTINGS
DINOSAUR WELFARE
No egg failures: OFF
Dinosaur disease level: NORMAL DISEASE
Dinosaurs don't starve: OFF
Dinosaur's don't dehydrate: OFF
Dinosaur lifespan: Normal
DINOSAUR BEHAVIOUR
Dinosaur escapes: NORMAL ESCAPES
Dinosaur comfort: ON
Dinosaur combat frequency: NORMAL
Herbivores able to initiate fights: ON
Dinosaur vehicle aggression: ON
PARK RATING AND ECONOMY
Cash: LOW ($3,000,000)
Appeal difficulty: JURASSIC
Guest count target: JURASSIC
Income target: JURASSIC
CONTRACTS
Contracts: ON
Narrative events: ON
SCIENTISTS AND TASKS
Scientists: ON
Scientist unrest: ON
Expeditions and Fossils: ON
Research: ON
Task time: 100%
Game Mode: Sandbox (Custom)
Map: Nublar 2015 (Flattened)
Era: Jurassic Park (Guests and staff, assets & lighting)
Current game time: 8 Hours 14 minutes
SANDBOX SETTINGS
DINOSAUR WELFARE
No egg failures: OFF
Dinosaur disease level: NORMAL DISEASE
Dinosaurs don't starve: OFF
Dinosaur's don't dehydrate: OFF
Dinosaur lifespan: Normal
DINOSAUR BEHAVIOUR
Dinosaur escapes: NORMAL ESCAPES
Dinosaur comfort: ON
Dinosaur combat frequency: NORMAL
Herbivores able to initiate fights: ON
Dinosaur vehicle aggression: ON
PARK RATING AND ECONOMY
Cash: LOW ($3,000,000)
Appeal difficulty: JURASSIC
Guest count target: JURASSIC
Income target: JURASSIC
CONTRACTS
Contracts: ON
Narrative events: ON
SCIENTISTS AND TASKS
Scientists: ON
Scientist unrest: ON
Expeditions and Fossils: ON
Research: ON
Task time: 100%
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WELCOME TO...
The first thing I immediately wanted to do was to build a version of Jurassic Park in the new sandbox mode. I was very used to the Jurassic World assets when it came to challenge mode and early stages of sandbox mode, when aviaries and lagoons were exclusive to Jurassic World Assets. So I wanted to go full on Jurassic Park during this play through. That, and I wanted to experience a game where I am limited to a single era and their decoration options instead of using the mixed era with all assets, a self implemented limitation to see how the park would grow in this new custom sandbox map.
The excitement this time around are from the new research and fossil expedition options, the new decorations, first person view, as well as the camp cretaceous content. Though it is the Jurassic Park era, I won't shy away from using dinosaurs not cannon to the original trilogy, and simply move forward and see what dinosaurs I could access with research.
EARNING THAT DINO DNA
Now this game mode is what I am talking about! The fun I had researching and digging fossils for new prehistoric pals from challenge mode has been successfully transfered over to sandbox mode. I had a lot of fun looking into what to research next and plan my park accordingly.
When it comes to dinosaurs, you will be relegated to an initial batch. Dinosaurs like struthiomimus, dilophosaurus, ceratosaurus, and amargasaurus are available to dig from the expedition map from the get go in order for you to start your dinosaur theme park. Though it looks to be a similar situation to JWE1 with only a set dinosaurs per star rating, research in JWE2 is much more malleable and would branch access to different species provided you meet the research requirements.
While I did start off with the struthiomimus and dilophosaurus, I was able to grow my park to include the nodosaurus, corythosaurus, nigersaurus, olorotitan, ceratosaurus, minmi, monolophosaurus, ouranosaurus, cearadactylus, huayangosaurus, gallimimus, Tyrannosaurus rex and the new hybrid scorpius rex!
When it came to choosing my next dinosaur, it was a very straightforward experience. I was able to skip a ton of dinosaurs I didn’t want to include in my park and was able to reach my favorites at a good pace. The only one that proved a challenge was unlocking access to the Tyrannosaurus rex, which included multiple steps of breeding specific dinosaurs, getting specific genes, and having to pit my nodosaurs against each other to win enough battles.
Same with genetics, I found that a similar level of effort is needed to earn the genes I want. At first it will be limiting, and your dinosaurs would look bland for a bit, but soon you should be able to open yourself to genes to color your dinosaurs and breed animals to fill in specific niches. One great thing to note is that the canonical skins and variants for dinosaurs are unlocked from the get go. So your bioluminescent parasaurolophus, 2015 ouranosaurus, 1993 triceratops, and 2001 velociraptors are available as soon as you attain that species viable genome.
SOMETHING THAT IS REAL
Park management has also been a blast. What I loved a lot during this playthrough was the pacing of the game.
Now with research and expeditions being a factor again, your spend more time getting busy preparing the shops and exhibits until you could incubate your first batch of eggs. The research needed to unlock buildings was fair and straightforward but needed time, time that would leave me exposed to diseases and storms while my park is still growing ever so slowly. It makes the end result of hatching a new batch of dinosaurs much more rewarding knowing the effort went behind it.
Wait time however could also be a negative factor for park management, which would have bothered me if not for....
EXPANDED VEGETATION & DECORATIONS!
I love the amount of decorations introduced to JWE2 from update 2.0. Even when limited to the Jurassic Park era of assets, I find myself having plenty to work with.
Small spaces that would awkwardly be empty could be filled with stones, amber, planters, plants, fountains, light and the like to turn that space into a visually pleasing guest area. I find it surprisingly easy to plop down the decorations to set up these areas, as I was using a controller instead of a mouse and keyboard. What is more that the downtime I would sometimes bear with is not used to spruce up my parks, sometimes to the point where sprucing up the place would take away valuable time!
Vegetation was also a plus, as the new placeable individual plants made exhibit curation much more involved, and I found that my park is now much greener as a result, making it feel more like a jungle at times. The best part of decorating your parks?
YOU COULD GET UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
A new feature that really made this experience an immersive one. It harkens me back to the days of the Playstation 1, where I played Bullfrog's Theme Park World and unlocking the 'camcorder' feature with my golden tickets! Here we take a plunge down to the guests perspective and walk around in the park we have built. This new perspective would allow us to go to the ground and appreciate a level of detail often not appreciated from the god-view we are accustomed to.
I find myself goofing around and walking with my guests when research needs a bit more time to complete. That and I love visiting the dinosaurs in their enclosures as they do their thing, these dinosaurs are much bigger from a grounded level. Some favorite moments of mine was walking by the fence and peering through the chain link barrier and try to find the smaller dinosaurs in the bush. This is not a necessary feature, but the level of immersiveness it brings is so much fun!
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So far I had a blast with the new custom sandbox mode. Being able to research and dig for my park made the end result so satisfying, as my park's path is littered with small objectives like "How do I unlock this gene?" and "Are my scientists able to handle this task?", all the while I decorate the park during the small downtime and pop down to relish in my work. This was the updated I waited for so long, and it made my sandbox experience a lot more engaging as a result.
But is it perfect?.... Well.....
YOU NEVER WORRY ABOUT MONEY
"Spare no expense"is definitely on brand, but I did find the amount of money I earned from my sandbox playthrough practically killed any excitement I had after my first star.
When I started out, I had $3 million to work with, and my park was ready to start with $1 million in the bank, moving forward I expect to earn some money, but the profit growth is exponential!
By 1 star, I got back my $3 million, by 2 starts it has more than doubled to $7 million, it has grown exponentially to around $50 million at 3 stars, and now it rests at nearly $165 million at a 4 star fame.
While having $165 million at the bank would make anyone happy, it does diminish that appeal of park growth. Now decisions are not balanced between time, park status, and limited spendings, now it is just a matter of doing what is needed next, as having that much money in such a short amount of time is akin to playing it with the unlimited cash setting.
SOMETHINGS ARE A BIT OFF
Thankfully I didn’t encounter any bugs during my playthrough, but I did encounter some strange omissions and oversights when it comes to the game. I will be submitting them over on the issue tracker but you could find them below for reference.
1. The new Monolophosaurus and Scorpios Rex lack any commentary when released from the hatchery. Every other dinosaur and reptile would have been accompanied by a character's commentary when released into your park to have a more narrative experience, but the new dinosaurs don’t. I am unsure why, it could be that they weren’t recorded yet, or the dialogue is ready but it simply doesn’t activate when these two are brought into your park.
2. One of the monolophosaurus scenetic incubation lab exits has the camera clip by the side of the hatchery. This is noticeable with the Jurassic World hatchery and especially with the Jurassic Park hatchery, as you could see the gate phase through an opening that should have been hidden from view. I think it is simply a bit too close and could be repositioned a bit further from the hatchery.
3. The two upgrade slots per building research does not activate, leaving me with only the single research slot to work with all of my buildings. Limiting upgrade flexibility.
4. Guests would complain of limited space, even though traffic and hotel capacities have been taken care of. I think it may have to do with how in the Jurassic Park assets only playthrough of sandbox, transportations isn’t a factor to your park's growth, but could is still taken into consideration by the notification system.
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BIGGER, BETTER, MORE TEETH
I had a wonderful experience in the new sandbox custom game mode, as it does scratch that itch I have when it comes to building parks from scratch. I do think there is room for a few more additions and tweaks to refine the challenging direction of park management, and after checking out the challenge mode maps in the game, I think these would do lovely.
1. Introduce more sandbox options
Here are some sandbox options that would help enhance the building experience in sandbox mode:
1. Income Tax: [None, Low, Normal, Moderate, High]
2. Research Cost: [Low, Normal, Moderate, High]
3. Staff Salary: [Low, Normal, Moderate, High]
4. Scientist Rest: [Low, Normal, Moderate, Long]
The biggest issue I had was earning too much money, and it was something I wish had the option to be bottlenecked in order to still maintain that cautious level of money spending so as to avoid risking a lot when it comes to park management. I find that challenge mode does this well by affecting the cost of staff salary and research cost to match the difficulty of the challenge, as well as the ever important income tax that would suppress your otherwise large income. Having the option to toggle with these option in sandbox mode I find would enhance the experience for me greatly, and would invite that frugal mindset of spending to avoid a financial disaster.
Down below, you should also find a link to a thread post I made on the Ideas and Features request section of the forums. There you should find some additional sandbox options requested to enhance the experience further, including the option to lock further sandbox modifications to commit to the rules set before the game begins!
Some potential sandbox setting options for additional challenge after update 2.0
This post has been updated on March 6th 11:10 AM GMT+3 to include 2 new additions: Researchable land expansions, and Locking Sandbox Settings. ----------------------------- With update 2.0 soon to be here, I am excited to jump into sandbox mode with a new gameplay perspective, one that is more...
2. Introduce a new sandbox preset: Challenge
Currently there are 3 presets for sandbox: Standard, Creative, and Custom. I think a new preset could be introduced to fit the riskier side of park management: Challenge.
This is simply for player convenience to rely on a preset to quickly jump into the game. Just like challenge mode, you could set your sandbox to focus on finance and elements that would hinder park progress such as income tax, staff salary, research cost, storm frequency, disease level and so on. This preset would also have a secondary option to choose the level of difficulty, so that you could adjust to an easy, medium, hard, or jurassic challenge for your sandbox game.
BUILDING A BETTER WORLD
Aside from sandbox mode itself, additional content and quality of life improvements will improve the re-playability of this game. Over time, more updates would come to Jurassic World Evolution 2, and the experience of managing a dinosaur park would be expanded on to deliver a fun package to keep players coming back. Moving forward, I think these areas need to be taken into consideration to enhance the game even further:
1. MORE ATTRACTIONS
Let us use the Jurassic Park arena in any map, or maybe build a gondola line over the park. A tunnel that could pass through aviaries and lagoons, or an underground viewing method for your guests to get up close to your dinosaurs. The more attractions this game would have, the more it would deliver on park variety. A park focused on galleries for example would look different in layout than a park focused on tours, so introducing more attractions would push players to try out new layouts and methods for their guests to enjoy your dinosaurs, and would make each playthrough unique from the last.
2. MORE DECORATIONS
Update 2.0 brought about 40+ decorations alongside placeable vegetation, and park management has been a lot of fun. By introducing more decorations, that level of outfitting your park would expand greatly, making your parks prettier than ever. I do plan to make a thread post with inspiration boards, as there are some areas untouched by decorations, such as vehicles, pathway arches, statues, decaying park assets and dinosaurs, decorative flowers, and more iconic franchise scenery.
3. MORE MECHANICS
New mechanics could be introduced over time to add more aspects of park management to balance out, or flesh out an existing feature that could do with more meat. Some ideas I had include:
• MANAGING PARK CLEANLINESS: Establishing a franchise would often bring about waste management and cleanliness to raise guest appeal. I think cleanliness could be a factor of guest management to plan for once the visitor population starts to grow. Janitorial staff could be tasked to tend to areas of a park with high guest traffic, while old guest facilities could be given new life by having them be freshened up after years have passed in game to raise appeal and service effectiveness. This is an area I think has potential to be included and would work well in such a management game.
• MANAGING FOOD SUPPLY: How well do we raise our goats? Could the meat feeder include hidden supplements? Could we have other prey options for our carnivores? And where do we get all of these great white sharks? These are questions that made me wonder if we could have a mechanic in game where we could expand the management of the meat and fish feeders, similar to how the paleobotany mechanic was introduced in JWE1. A carnivore's prey preference could be expanded on to include favorites and induce comfort, while the food could be modified to boost aspects of a dinosaur such as disease immunity, strength, and lifespan.
• EXPAND LAGOON GAMEPLAY: One of the weaker parts of JWE2 is the lagoon. It is more or less a glorified fish tank, which is what it is, but I would have loved it if we could do some stuff in a lagoon similar to how the aviaries were expanded on. Why not introduce a means to customize the lagoon based on a species preference by introducing rocks, vegetation, and sand to an aquatic reptile's environment needs? Or make it so you could set up an environment where it is so comfortable that they won’t hunt each other. Maybe a filter system could be added to modify the water of the lagoon, by altering the water's salt percentage, temperature, and filtering the water from waste that is built up over time, and would require staff to monitor and clean the lagon's filter. I feel this area could be expanded on to make it enjoyable to build in your parks.
4. INDIVIDUALLY PLACED VEGETATION TWEAKS
I love the new individually placeable plants, they really add a nice nature touch in areas of the park where the vegetation brush could only do so much. My only feedback is:
Have the individual plants be accessible via Environment Tab: Of the new plants introduced in update 2.0, 10 of the vegetation options would affect a dinosaur's forest need. I like this as it helps smaller exhibits where a dinosaur may require more forest, but you do not need to risk losing area space or competing vegetation. My issue is that they are not accessible via the environment tab, as that is how we could modify our exhibit while monitoring our dinosaur's need. By having the individual plants be only accessible via decorations, we have to jump between windows and modify the exhibit without knowing how our dinosaur has responded to the change until we swap back to the dinosaur's need window. By having the individual plants be accessible in the environment section, it should be a much more convenient experience.
Include some plants from the paleobotany vegetation: The current section of individually placed vegetation is regulated to the biome the park is set on, and I could respect that. My request is that the selection of plants could be expanded to include the paleobotany plants as well, as they are already available on all maps, could be used to fine tune an exhibit's plant makeup to satisfy dinosaur needs, and they do provide some visually impressive specimens that would work great for decorative purposes.
5. MODULAR SYSTEM COULD BE EXPANDED
The modular system for our guest related buildings are great, they just need more options when it comes to visuals. I think a few more Jurassic Park themed building styles would be great, as well as some Department of Fish and Wildlife to match the attractions and aesthetics they are going for. Also, the ability to save a building's architecture setup would be an amazing QOL update.
6. MORE JURASSIC PARK AND DFW THEMED ASSETS
The ability to swap between the Jurassic World, Jurassic Park, and DFW assets for sandbox is amazing. The change in atmosphere to a park is noticeable when using the different assets, and updates have done well to improve the experience by introducing assets to the Jurassic Park and DFW assets to balance out the content available. With that said, I do think there needs to be more inclusions to define the assets further from each other and really deliver that exclusive atmosphere, such as:
JURASSIC PARK
• Introduce more dinosaur signage from the last game
• Make the fencing gate red like how it was in RTJP
• Make the pylons rustic like how it was in RTJP, as the current pylons are too modern and clean to fit the JP aesthetic.
• JP themed drones and submarines
• More decoration options, like the alamosaurus vs Tyrannosaurus fossils, the small decorative bathroom, and additional ingen equipment.
DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE
• Introduce dinosaur signage
• Make the fencing gate DFW themed
• Change the pylons look to differentiate from Jurassic World.
• DFW themed drones and submarines
• More decoration options to do with the Department of Fish and Wildlife like educational signage and statues of the non-prehistoric animals they otherwise took care of.
• Introduce a level 5 fencing option
• Introduce a tour like attraction so as to balance out gameplay and have a means to attract adventurous guests outside of dinosaur combat.
7. MORE PATH AND FENCING OPTIONS
I believe we need more path options from the current 3 we have been using. Staff, Normal, and Fancy would be visually pleasing for so long and some variety would be much appreciated. Introduce more path types like wooden, stone, sand stone, gravel, bricks, sand, and the like. Variety would very much be appreciated and these options could be tied to the Normal and Fancy research options to make them easy to categorize based on their visuals.
As for fence options, I do think we need shorter fencing to break away from the tall imposing fences we have in the game. With more smaller dinosaur in this game's roster, and with how some species would require small areas to call home, a small fence option would be a nice means to make certain small exhibits look less busy and imposing visually. Below is a link to a proposal I made if you would like to look into this further.
Proposal for the inclusion of short fence options
Hey everyone, hope you all have been doing well and taking care. 👋 I was able to unlock all of the assets and dinosaurs needed to make the most off sandbox mode, so far I have been enjoying the game. One of the exhibits I wanted to make was a hotel enclosure where the dinosaurs would...
8. SOME VISUAL TOUCHES WOULD BE NICE
Now that the game has introduced a first person mode, some attention to detail would be appreciated in order for the game to be visually pleasing from the first person perspective. I made two thread requests to cover this up close detail.
The first is to introduce ambient creatures to the game, as dinosaurs (and live feed) are not the only animals to reside in your parks. It would be wonderful to see small ambient creatures in the game akin to special visual effects that would generate based on park setup, like butterflies over dense vegetation, dragonflies over water, and fire flies during the night. Likewise, birds could fly over your parks at times similar to how the pteranodon used to in JWE1, as now JWE2 is set around the world, and seeing birds fly over the park based on the biome and location would better immerse the players to that part of the world.
Ambient Creatures in Jurassic World Evolution 2 🦋 🐞 🪰 🦅 🐦 🐟
With Jurassic World Evolution, we had parrots fly from trees and Pteranodons fly over the park occasionally. In Jurassic World Evolution 2, could we have ambient creatures in the game? Like a flock of birds flying over the space based on the location of the park. That would be a great...
The second is simply to fine tune some visuals in JWE2, small touch up in details that would enhance the experience further. Below is a link to a thread I made and will be posting more if there is potential to improve some aspects of Jurassic World Evolution 2's visuals.
A list of visual touch ups for JWE2
Hey everyone, This is simply a list of visual touch up I think the game could use. They do not affect gameplay but could improve the user experience. If you have any visual touch ups the game could do with, please do share below. 1. Weather effects in JP and DFW Aviaries With the latest...
9. A FEW ANIMAL SIZE TOUCH UPS
Frontier has done an excellent work updating the dinosaurs based on player feedback. In this patch, the 2001 raptors skins were updated to include the correct eyes that they exclusively had in their Jurassic Park III movie, and this attention to detail is admirable! As the game moves forward with updates, I do want to bring up once again a few size changes to a few species in Jurassic World Evolution 2, which are:
• The 2001 pteranodon skin. (undersized)
• The nigersaurus. (oversized)
• The attenborosaurus. (oversized)
I have made a thread request about it you could find at the link below, which includes the size request as well as some charts and information to back up these size changes. JWE2 did do a lot when it comes to dinosaur size modifications and the roster in the game has been improved on greatly thanks to these changes, as most of the dinosaurs better respect real world studies and in film appearances when it comes to scale. The effort to modify these animal sizes would be much appreciated!
I think the Nigersaurus could do with a downscale
Hey everyone 👋 Before getting into this thread, I wanted to bring up something I was thinking of while working on this suggestion: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-dreadnoughtus-needs-to-be-scaled-up.509118/ Almost 3 years ago, before writing this thread on a cretaceous sauropod...
10. FIRST PERSON MODE FEEDBACK
First person mode in the latest update has been a blast, and I do enjoy playing the game by dropping down and experiencing the park I have built during the momentary downtime. Walking among the guests and venturing into exhibits is a refreshing perspective, and I only wish two things would be possible when it comes to this new game mode.
• LET US SIT ON THE DECORATIVE SEATING: I would walk by some of the decorative seating and would love to be able to just walk up to a table and (hopefully) a bench and sit down and absorb the atmosphere. Especially if a storm comes and the spinosaurus gets loose, I want to experience a "This is fine" moment while sitting down and observing the chaos.
• LET THE DINOSAURS NOTICE US: It is not possible to touch the dinosaurs in Jurassic World Evolution 2 or to be in danger when in first person mode, and I respect that, I understand the technical hurdles needed to have such a thing be implemented. What I would love however is to simply have the dinosaurs notice our presence. Usually when another dinosaur, helicopter, or ranger vehicle would come close to a dinosaur, their heads would turn towards that object and they would observe that other object within their field of vision. Sometimes they would bellow at that object of interest, and if it is a ranger vehicle, they might charge at it and attempt to intimidate the vehicle for entering their territory.
I would love something similar to be done in first person mode, where by walking into an exhibit, dinosaurs would look at us if we are close to their range and may bellow at us if we get a bit too close. If it is an animal with a skittish attribute, they might run away if we stay for too long or flash our lights at them repeatedly. Or if the animal has an aggressive trait, they would see our presence and charge towards us and scare us with a strong bellow or roar, as they could see us as a threat.
This would be a fun experience and level of immersion if possible, as having the dinosaurs notice us would almost be as satisfying as being able to pet them (almost). I will say that this feature may be a toggleable option in the gameplay settings, as some players may want the dinosaurs to ignore their presence altogether, possibly to capture that perfect cinemattic scene.
• LET US CONTROL THE AVIARY AND LAGOON DRONES: This is the final touch for the first person perspective. We could walk up to the dinosaurs, but what about the new flying and aquatic residents? I could imagine walking up to the aviary or lagoon hatchery and clicking on the new "Control Drone" option, and either fly in the aviary or submerge in the lagoon. To make it interesting, a new control setup could be made so that it feels like controlling an actual drone, with some new on screen visuals to imitate that remote controlled feeling. We should also be able to do tasks such as updating the status of the animals and darting the creatures with medical or tranquilizers if needed. The targeting system could be more automatic to make it easier targeting these animals, but it would be a blast to do so.
• PLEASE SWAP THE ASSIGNED BUTTONS FOR LIGHT AND HIDE UI: I am playing on the Playstation 5, so for me, the hide UI button is square, while the light button is down. I personally use the light button more than hiding the UI button, and the down button is rather uncomfortable when used repeatedly, reminds me of the Monster hunter claw grip back on the PSP, and that is uncomfortable if you experienced it yourself. I feel that it could be swapped as hiding the UI means you understand the setup, and would press the button less often, but the light button would be more satisfying if it is square, as it is easier to access with your thumb, making it comfortable in the long run.
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AS THE JURASSIC WORLD TURNS
Update 2.0 has greatly improved my experience with Jurassic World Evolution 2. By introducing the additional decorations, first person mode, and the sandbox settings, I found the game to be very re-playable than before, making me look forward to starting a new park losing so many hours within the game, I even had to stop myself during this play-through just to make sure I could write this thread!
Despite the issues I have shared, I am very optimistic and excited for the game's future. The issues I have could be resolved with future updates and patches, and the excitement of the upcoming Dominion movie has gotten me excited to see what else the Jurassic World Evolution team has in store for us. Regardless, this has been a lot of fun playing, and was just as much fun writing about it. I hope the information provided are useful, or at the very least entertaining, and may the feedback I have presented is informative to the community and be taken into consideration by the developers.
I hope you had enjoyed this read, and I want to thank you for reading till the end. Do let me know if you like similar thread posts be made with large upcoming updates and DLC.
Until next time, take care!
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