Jurassic World Evolution 2 is finally in the wild and fans are ready to build their next dream dinosaur theme park. If you played the first game, you’ll already know this is a theme park sim that walks the line between business management crunch and accessible zoo tycoonery.
But the sequel makes some changes – things that returning players may not expect. So, with that in mind, here are seven things you should know before playing Jurassic World Evolution 2.
1. There are two campaigns
Where the original JWE featured a single, lengthier campaign made up of multiple islands, Jurassic World Evolution 2 has two shorter campaigns with different focuses.
The first of these campaigns is set between the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World: Dominion. The U.S. Government assigns Clare Dearing and Owen Grady to help the Department of Fish and Wildlife build safe sanctuaries for dangerous dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs, free of the Las Cinco Muertes islands, now roam the Earth. Docile herbivores migrate to open plains and national parks. Carnivores found near urban areas are considered a threat and must be contained in the name of public safety.
You might find you blast through this main campaign in a day or two. Don’t worry, you won’t be the only one.
That’s because there’s another campaign. Jurassic World Evolution 2’s second campaign is Chaos Theory. It’s similar in principle to the original game’s Return to Jurassic Park DLC. Players move through time to ensure catastrophe does not befall each island, starting with the original Jurassic Park in 1993. Each of the five Jurassic Park/World films gets its own scenario. Even Jurassic Park 3, a film so woeful this writer refuses to acknowledge it as canon, gets a look in.
So if you think you’ve finished the campaign, there’s actually another one still to go.
2. Managing your scientists is critical and will also mess up your entire life
One of the biggest changes Jurassic World Evolution 2 makes to its production pipeline is the addition of scientists. You need scientists for just about everything – research of all kinds, expeditions, medical response and new dinosaur incubation.
Each scientist has a skill set based on three stats: logistics, genetics and welfare. You’ll want to find a balance between them and create a team that covers all your bases. The higher a scientist’s skill, the more expensive they’ll be to keep on staff. A scientist with a genetics skill of 6 makes for an attractive candidate. The trouble is, that skill means they’ll get a lot of work. Overwork your scientists and they’ll burn out. Tired, overworked scientists are prone to unrest, and that leads to sabotage.
You’ll need to build a Staff Centre, where your scientists can take regular breaks and recover. This will not only slow your overall progress, but it also costs you money to send them on R&R. Plan accordingly.
3. Power stations now work via area of effect
Power stations have undergone a significant rework from the original. Gone are the power lines and substations required to juice your park, replaced by gas-operated power stations with an area of effect. As long as your buildings are within that AOE cone, they’ll receive power. The more buildings within that cone, the more fuel that station will burn.
This AOE extends to electric fencing for dinosaur pens. As long as even a part of a pen extends into the power station’s cone, it will supply the entire fence with electricity.
You’ll need to remember to check your power stations regularly, lest they burn through their fuel and shut down half your park.
4. The way certain staff buildings work is completely different
This leads us neatly to buildings and consumable resources. Jurassic World Evolution 2 features many new facilities, but just as many older ones have been consolidated. The Response Centre now houses both the Ranger units and ICU helicopters under one roof.
The Mobile Vet Unit is housed within the Paleo-Medical Facility, and is your one-stop-shop for diagnosing and treating basic illnesses. For certain diseases, limb fractures or grave injuries, dinosaurs will need to be transported directly to the facility for proper care. You’ll need an ICU chopper to knock the dinosaur out and a heavy-lift chopper to extract them from the pen.
Buildings like these require two materials to ensure uninterrupted operation – food for the dinos and fuel for getting around the park. You’ll need to check in regularly with each building to make sure they’re not burning through food and fuel too quickly and top them up if they’re getting low.
5. Dinosaur pens are more than a fence and shrubbery
You’ll need to start paying a little more attention to each dinosaur pen now. Updated dinosaur interactions mean they can and will behave in ways they simply didn’t in the original. The construction of each pen begins the same way – drop the fences, install a gate, set up a viewing gallery, create a patch of drinking water and drop in a Ranger Post.
Ranger Posts do away with the original game’s need to manually send Rangers to refill feeders. Instead, herbivores can now demand specific flora for their pen and are free to munch on it to their heart’s content. Carnivores will still require either live prey, fish or a dinosaur-sized pub meat tray. Assign a Ranger to each Ranger Post and they will automatically return to the pen for periodic status checks.
Status checks will tell you what is happening with your dinosaurs moment to moment. Are they comfortable? Hungry? Lonely? Ensure you’re looking in on them regularly so you don’t miss any changes. Neglected dinosaurs will break out of their pens and you don’t want that.
All of your dinosaurs will have different environmental needs. This may surprise returning players who are used to pen environments being purely decorative and not a factor in overall dino comfort.
6. Faction quests are gone
Though all three of the original game’s Science, Entertainment and Security heads return for Jurassic World Evolution 2, you won’t be crossing off objectives for them anymore. This is because, at least in the two major campaigns, attaining an overall star rating for your park is no longer your goal.
Your orders now come from the U.S. Government, which approves greater funding for each dinosaur preserve as you build them out. Your successes compound and the cash flow grows. Build too quickly and you’ll outpace incoming funding. Mistreat your dinosaurs, or allow them to break out, and the government suits will hesitate to provide you with more capital.
This also means that one of the original’s fastest and most reliable ways to generate early-game cash is gone. Your best bet for propping up ailing finances is now to go on an excursion into the wilderness around your base and get photos of roaming dinosaurs.
7. Hatcheries are now a whole thing
One of Jurassic World Evolution 2’s biggest reworks is the way it approaches hatcheries. In the original, players simply selected which dinosaur they wanted to incubate and the process would begin. The only thing that could derail an incubation was the percentage of research you’d conducted on the dinosaur in question. The lower that percentage, the higher chance of a failed incubation.
Now, hatcheries are able to create dinosaurs in batches from egg clusters. Egg clusters are created from fossils, and the fossils are retrieved from dig sites. Incubation is now a two-phase process. The first phase is all about creating the egg cluster and generating the number of viable eggs you can use. The second phase is bringing all those viable eggs to term.
Each step outlined above requires scientists to complete. Refer back to point number two on this list. Do you see what I mean about managing your scientists properly? You need them for everything.
At the end of a successful incubation period, you are free to release all the dinosaurs in that cluster at once as a group. This cuts out any likelihood that dinosaurs with a strong social need will be kept waiting for company, but it comes at the cost of more work on your end.
So there you have it! Everything we wish we’d known going into Jurassic World Evolution 2. If you’ve got any tips or tricks you’ve been working on, we’d love to hear about them. Drop them in the comments below and give your fellow dinosaur park tycoons a hand.
Jurassic World Evolution 2 is out now on PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
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