I am still buzzing with excitement from the recent announcement of the game. I was surprised to see that Frontier decided not to show a CGI trailer and went straight to a trailer with gameplay — and what a gameplay trailer it was!
From the offset, a lot of content was shown — a CRAZY ton — from the first trailer, and it got me really excited to learn so much about this game. I am happy to find a lot of new info from the newly released website: https://www.jurassicworldevolution.com/
Here are some things I am most excited for in the new game:
P.S. Please make a dedicated Jurassic World Evolution 3 segment in the forums soon!
BABY DINOSAURS ARE ACTUALLY A THING
If you were to ask me about the prospect of baby dinosaurs 24 hours ago, I was actually someone who expected the third game to not feature any at all. Not because I despise them — far from it! Planet Zoo is a testament to how much fun it is to have a creative management sim with baby animals as part of the core gameplay. If anything, I expected it to be something downright difficult to achieve.
I went by the notion that if baby animals were to be included, it would be a massive undertaking. Basically having to create completely new models and animations for the babies, introducing a breeding mechanic for the animals, and figuring out how to balance it out in the game — like, how long will they remain babies? Is there a reason to have babies instead of synthesizing adult dinosaurs? How will the babies interact with the world and vice versa? And is it realistic to have babies in a roster that has reached 122 prehistoric animals in the next installment?
While we do not have full details on how the game will work with babies, the fact of the matter is that we have baby prehistoric animals to take care of. At least 75 animals from the base game will be breedable, and that shows two things.
- WOW — they were able to create 75+ families: a male, female, and juvenile for 75 species that would interact with the world and each other is a HUGE accomplishment. JWE2 launched with over 75 species as the main selling point, which was a lot in 2021, and now there are 75+ species that are full-fledged families in JWE3? Amazing.
- It becomes apparent that there is a cut in the roster. From the website, it mentions that the game has 82 animals to take care of, which we could assume is 86 with the digital deluxe edition. While it is a lot, it definitely means that around 40 animals from the previous game have been axed. If there was a cut for any other situation, I would not be happy with this decision, but the fact that JWE3 is the game that introduces families per species with unique animations and behaviors — then I can definitely see why a cut has been made. It is more a focus on quality over quantity, and one I do not mind in this state, especially when we have 86 animals available to take care of from launch no less.
Who's getting cut? A simple question — but one with no definitive public answer until the game's launch on the 21st of October 2025.
Still, this is a thread about excitement, and to be blunt, as unfortunate as it is that there is a cut in the roster, I love the fact that we are getting babies in the sequel. It is a fresh take for the series and one that will be really interesting to both observe and manage.
ADVANCED TERRAIN TOOLS AND MANIPULATION
Pardon me, but you’re telling me that Jurassic World Evolution was developed by Frontier Developments — the same studio behind Planet Coaster?
I know it’s a silly thing to bring up, but I still remember the buzz back in 2017 when they first announced that the team behind Planet Coaster would be working on Jurassic World Evolution. People’s imaginations were running wild at the idea of building dinosaur parks with the same level of creative freedom. Of course, that was the hope in 2017 — and looking back, it’s easy to see how developing a creative management game to also work on consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One, combined with a tight movie tie-in deadline, resulted in a pretty limited sim when it came to terrain editing. Honestly, I kid you not, some of the most exciting moments in the first game involved finally getting access to the terrain brush… and a handful of rocks and trees. At least the game looked nice!
Fast forward to 2025 — and seeing what you could potentially do in Jurassic World Evolution 3 made me realize that this iteration is what really resonates with the Planet series Frontier have developed over the years.
Cliffs, mountains, deep water, waterfalls, advanced nature brushes, and the potential for more terrain options is such a huge step forward. As I rewatch the trailer, I am reminded more of Planet Zoo than I am Jurassic World Evolution. I loved making enclosures in Planet Zoo where the animals are enclosed in an environment with sharp cliffs and ditches to make it more seamless and natural. While enclosures look better in JWE2 than they did in the first one, they always feel boxed in with the fences available. I would love to make enclosures with locations that harken to the movies, like the pterosaur canyon in the Dominion prologue, the waterfall that Zack and Gray used to escape from the Indominus Rex, or even the infamous T-rex enclosure from the first film where a cliff came from nowhere.
What's even cooler is that it looks like the terrain tools would work for aviaries and lagoons. They tend to look very modular from the sky view, but to decorate the lagoons with complementary mountains would be really cool, and there is the possibility that it may open up for amphibious enclosures if Frontier plans to allow creatures like the Nothosaurus to rest on custom platforms. Aviaries are also essential, as one criticism was how small they are. If we could use the terrain tools to create deep ditches and canyons, we effectively have the potential to create quite the sizable air space for our flying reptiles — hopefully to the point where the kaiju-sized Biosyn Quetzalcoatlus doesn't look cramped.
Ultimately, this could be the game where we could comfortably build complex parks that are fully functional and pleasing without resorting to making the parks flat — and incentivizes us to create some impressive landscapes of our own.
DECORATING PARKS LIKE NEVER BEFORE
The terrain tools are not the only thing that is Planet-like. It is hard for me to imagine, but modular building in a Jurassic World Evolution game feels so unreal.
I think I am personally excited for this after playing with the modular building tools in Planet Coaster and Zoo on my PS5, so to be able to customize my parks further with modular buildings and decorations is a step up that would be astounding!
I always wanted to create downtown areas of my parks that act like museums, or to decorate the exterior enclosures of my star dinosaurs with a personal touch — and I LOVE making my tours feel more personalized by placing down decorations as props that would be entertaining to see alongside the tour.
After going through the gallery and seeing the trailer, this really is hard to believe. I love using free downtime in JWE2 decorating areas of my park, but to have decoration reach this level will make me wish I had more downtime! The many dinosaur statues are something I always wished the game had, as they make park decorating feel more personalized and give character to our star attractions. I am interested if park decorating would add to the gameplay — such as contributing to total park appeal, or at least the appeal of attractions or certain dinosaurs.
What is even cooler is that I have seen so far that guests could interact with these set pieces too! In the photo above, guests are chilling on the outdoor tables — but when you see the trailer and see the ATV gameplay where you rush through a storm, those very table decorations are not occupied, as the guests are appropriately running towards safety. I recalled when they added the last decorations in JWE2 with the benches and tables, that it was mentioned in the livestream that they had some intention for these types of park assets, which is the reason why it took so long to implement them. So to see them in the new game being utilized by the guests gives me hope that there are so many details and touches added to enhance the park-building experience further.
LOCATIONS FROM PREVIOUS TITLES ARE RETURNING!
This one is something I am really excited about and is what motivated me to make this thread.
When Jurassic World Evolution 2 came out, it really made me wonder how cool it would be to revisit the Muertes Archipelago from the first game and implement all the new features introduced in the sequel. The idea of redoing old maps with new assets and tools always gets me excited, as there have been so many changes in management and gameplay from JWE1 to 2.
Now that JWE3 is to introduce even more changes, this makes the aspect of revisiting old locations just as exciting. When going over the website in the Sandbox Mode segment, they explicitly mention that we could "Choose from a selection of locations featured across the campaign and previous Jurassic World Evolution titles."
It is cool that we get to see some previous locations from Jurassic World Evolution 2 make a comeback, since JWE3 will continue the global reach of setting up new prehistoric parks. If this also means that we get to revisit locations from the first game, then this would be the perfect opportunity to see what we could do after 7 years with the series. Giving the Muertes Parks a proper modern makeover with advanced tools and dinosaurs has my imagination going wild.
EXPANDED CAMPAIGN AND SANDBOX MODES
JWE2 is an overall better experience than JWE1, but one of the worst parts of JWE2 is the poor experience to be had with the main campaign — if it could be called that. The main campaign, as anyone who tried it knows, felt more like an expanded tutorial rather than an experience — and it doesn't even function that well as a tutorial to begin with!
A lot of players would reminisce about the experience they had with the first game's main campaign, as it felt really unique. Island hopping from one map to the other, slowly unlocking new assets, dinosaurs, and research to tackle each map's unique challenges is what made the first one memorable to me. It felt like an RPG where I was a park manager, with a single-player campaign that really made the most of building dinosaur parks.
JWE2 would later have this feel again with the Malta campaign, where not only would you island hop, but also move dinosaurs around from map to map. That was a lot of fun and felt like the single-player experience that was missing in Jurassic World Evolution 2. I liked the ability to jump around, as I got to figure out how to support my failing parks with the profits and resources of my successful ones. It never felt like I had to restart — just think outside of the box and use what I had learned and earned to fix any ailing parks I may have inadvertently set up for doom in the first place.
So to hear that the main campaign in JWE3 is to hop between parks around the world really felt like it was the campaign everyone wanted in JWE2. To slowly learn the game's mechanics in different locations around the world is a huge plus for me, as the sheer aesthetics alone would make the island-hopping experience exciting. I am very interested to see what the story will be like in this campaign, as we may very well be encountering new original characters and issues altogether in this game mode.
What is more exciting is that the Sandbox mode looks to incorporate more settings that would allow us to try JWE3's version of custom challenge mode from launch day. I loved Custom Challenge Mode in Jurassic World Evolution 2, as it felt like the ultimate game mode to build a park from scratch while testing yourself against the game's challenges. However, as much as I loved it, it always felt off, as I never felt like we got to make the most of what the game had to offer — such as with DFW with rescuing dinosaurs, Biosyn with rules that match the Dominion campaign, or a full-on experience with Malta's black market gameplay. It always felt like a few more updates and additions were needed in order to fully bring about what Jurassic World Evolution had to offer, as there were a lot of gameplay elements that were exclusive to JWE2's campaign, challenge, and chaos theory modes.
If JWE3's sandbox mode looks to be the main game mode for both creative sandbox and challenging park startup, then it is a really solid foundation for JWE3 when it comes to letting players play however they would like. We need to see more as the game gets revealed to us over the next few months, but I really hope that this game's sandbox mode is a suitable mode where the developers could easily implement new assets, gameplay mechanics, and rule sets without any compromises.
THIS GAME'S FOUNDATION FEELS PROMISING
Frontier games always go by releasing the game first and refining it over the years with additional support, and Jurassic World Evolution is no exception to that. What is off with Jurassic World Evolution 1 and 2 is that they never end up feeling complete. Both games are substantially better after years of support, but they end up feeling off in certain aspects. JWE1, for example, has greatly improved itself with the updates and DLC, but the game always felt limited with dinosaur A.I., park creativity, and an incomplete Jurassic World experience without the aviaries or lagoons. Jurassic World Evolution 2 has a much better glow-up with support over time, but it ends up feeling like it has many missed opportunities when it comes to gameplay implementation, odd design choices, and a LOT of bugs.
I would often play devil's advocate when it came to these two games. JWE1 was Frontier's first full-fledged management sim game that was expected to work on consoles, despite their previous success, Planet Coaster, being a PC exclusive. JWE2 was a substantial improvement, but was very likely marred by COVID during development, which made work in any field challenging — and the delay of Jurassic World Dominion potentially frustrating — while also having the games work on previous-gen consoles.
Jurassic World Evolution 3 is in a unique position. Development for this game is happening well after the worst of COVID-19 is over, and the experience developing and porting games to current-gen consoles will surely give the development team a better understanding of the technology they have available and deliver a much more optimized experience. With 7 years of community feedback over the socials, as well as the impressive quality of DLC and technology developed during the support of JWE2, JWE3 has the capacity to knock our socks off when it launches on October 2025.
So many requests are being implemented in the latest entry in this franchise. Baby dinosaurs, advanced terrain and decorating tools, new rides, semi-aquatic behavior, and additional levels of park management are at the top of a lot of players' wishlists. There is more to be revealed over the next few months, and I am very eager to see what this game has in store for us. I have secured a pre-order of this game, and I cannot wait to sink my teeth into the next installment of my favorite game.
Ultimately, I am pretty hyped for this game!
I always had the mindset that the best thing to come out of the revival of the Jurassic Park franchise has been these very games. I am very amazed to see how far these games have developed over the years. JWE1 was really quite some time ago — to the point it was hard to imagine that we would reach where we are now, with so many new dinosaurs to play with and a game where park management and curation vastly outdo previous entries.
I will be real and say that the biggest bummer for me so far is that the 122 dinosaurs we had been growing since 2018 have been cut. I do not use all of my dinosaurs all of the time, but it felt nice whenever I switched things up and used dinosaurs I didn’t often think of, as that alone really enhanced my prehistoric park experience. I do dream that, slowly over time, we will get the remaining roster back with the proper tweaks and improvements needed to fit in this iteration of Jurassic World Evolution.
Still, the positives significantly outweigh the negatives for me, and I am very eager to see what else is in store for us as the months pass by. October is quite some time away, and I will be much older than I was when I was waiting eagerly for the launch of JWE1 — still, this excitement I have for this franchise is one that I am grateful for, and I am looking forward to what other surprises Frontier has for this installment. Especially now that we can share parks, I am looking forward to seeing what parks we will end up making once the game launches.
I hope you all take care — thanks for reading!
