Mau

Thanks! It will get even better over time, as there's some clipping issues we want to resolve, but I'm glad to know you're liking it! :D

Some very good points raised in here! We'll definitely keep balancing some of the costs, as well as scaling some of the ratings better. I agree that currently getting a higher rated animal doesn't feel rewarding enough, and that's something I want to address soon.

Thanks for the feedback!

If this issue persists, please report it, I'm working on more tutorial fixes and hopefully they'll be out soon!

When you're in as small a team as ours working on a game as anticipated as this, you run into a dilemma: do you keep postponing the release until everything is just as good as you'd want it to be, or do you bite the bullet and risk some initial flack in favor of actually getting enough funding in the form of sales to be able to keep working on the game?

We took the first route for a few years, but it has gotten to the point where delaying any further would simply not be practical. So we decided to launch the game as it is, which entails:
-deep building and customization system
-rich landscaping and biome options
-basic tycoon progression and economy
-basic welfare and exhibit management

We feel like the feature line-up, while basic and maybe even shallow, ticks all the main boxes of a modern tycoon game, and is very in line with the Early Access process. We understand this is not for everyone, so the best option for those still sitting on the fen... Read more

Originally posted by SBA77:

Originally posted by Rosie:
-You will need a nursery facility to "breed animals". They do not breed with each other.

Really? I get that you can only make dinosaurs from the nursery now, but I thought having the dinosaurs breed on their own was always planned and was going to included in the final product.

That's right, we do plan to have animal breeding in the final product, just keep in mind that Early Access launch is not the final product. :)... Read more

Very neat thread. Can't wait to see this gets bigger after the 27th.

Originally posted by Paddy (Irish):

Originally posted by Nederbeest: They have nailed the building / designing aspect of the game, so the creative people will get their worth out of it. Being able to scale things is a godsend and gamechanger as you can use less modular items to build something.

Anything else is barebones and basic and there is no management available in the current Beta build (there will be with Early Access, but probably basic). Animal AI is also very basic so don't expect too...

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As others have mentioned, the game will cost $29.99 at launch and is not expected to bump up during any point in development.

No, Collision Course, or Project Crynosaur hasn't been in development for what I'd call "a very short amount of time"... in fact, I'm pretty sure they've been in development for longer than we've been. You might say their latest game iteration has been in development for a fraction of that, but then again, so has ours. Like our credits point out, our demo took around 1 year to make, completely unfunded. Either way, indie teams are different, different developers can come from different backgrounds, live under different circumstances, thus comparing unpaid workflows is never fair or accurate.

Other than that, yeah, we may not be the game for you if the park building is not what you enjoy in a park builder. Not to say we don't want our animals to feel more realistic eventually, as we fully express to expand on their AI, but that's simply not the focus right now, considering we've just released a first iteration on what is supposed to be a game with a huge scope.

A... Read more

Oh boy, are there things wrong with this.

Alright, first of all, the demo you played now and what we were working on 3 years ago (yep, not 4, closest trailer we've ever released was in 2014) are entirely different things. Inefficient? Probably, but it's to be expected for an indie studio to undergo major changes caused by various issues especially that early in development. This demo should however prove we've got a much better idea of what we're doing and what we're going for right now.

Secondly, as we said many times, this is not an AI simulator where you let your animals run loose and take notes on their every behaviour variable. This game is a zoo builder first and foremost. Sure, we would love for our animals to have as much of a realistic behaviour as possible in the future, but the massive undertaking that 'hunting and herding' is made it clear for us that we would focus on the core of the game first.

So no, neither lazy, nor camera tricks. Just ... Read more