Dinosaur World Review

This time, its war! No, wait, wrong franchise.

Pandasaurus created something as fast as they could, but should they have stopped to think if they should?

Dinosaurs are cool, there I said it! That’s it, that’s the review. I could go on about how Pandasaurus’ latest Jurassic themed Dinosaur World builds on the concepts of its previous Dinosaur Island game, I could even expound the virtues of the higher level park simulator elements that this newest iteration introduce to the series. But what would be the point? You’re here because, like me, you love dinosaurs in all their scaly/feathery goodness. But if you insist, I suppose I could tell you just a little more about….

Dinosaur World is a 1-4 player park building game utilising worker placement and tile laying as its base. Players begin with a laboratory board, a park board, a modest amount of start up cash and a Welcome Centre. The game is played over 5 rounds with each round divided into 5 phases, Hire Workers, Public Actions, Private Actions, Jeeple Tour and the Income & Cleanup phase. Play repeats in this way until the end of the final round where end game scores are calculated, so, fairly standard for a game of this type.

Triceratops, not necessarily moving in herds.

Players work to achieve global objectives during play with the highest score going to the player who completed an objective first, with diminishing returns for the second and third players. Players who finish fourth miss out on the objective entirely. Game play is quite snappy with at least 3 out fo the five phases being simultaneous, resulting in little downtime between turns.

A beautiful, but deadly addition to Dinosaur World.

The artwork is consistent with what’s we’ve come to expect from the series, though, like the movies from which they draw inspiration, the style has evolved to a more modern sensibility, gone are the bright eye-popping neons and pastels of Dinosaur World, replaced with more subtle tones here. Many players weren’t fans of the orginal games aesthetic so those players may find more too love this time around. As for me, I actually enjoyed the brighter style and felt it added a more whimsical sense of nostalgia to the gameplay. That being said, Dinosaur World does appear to be taking itself more seriously and the design reflects this.

Wind up your windows when driving past the Dilophosaur paddock….

Dinosaur World takes some of the bests elements from the previous game, those big chunky DNA dice, the dino-meeples and the upgradable dino paddocks and flies that helicopter just a little higher, taking what was a more tight, intimate view of the day to day running of a theme park and elevating the action to a more overarching, and a little less personal approach to park building. Where the earlier game felt more like you were a front line park operator, hiring and firing and dealing with the meat and potatoes (carnivore and herbivore?) details, Dinosaur World feels more like you’re a majority stakeholder directing the action at a distance. This works well as it provides a different perspective on the theme without feeling like its retreading old ground.

Still some of the prettiest dice in any game.

One element I enjoyed the most was the Jeeple Tour. Each round, after you’d researched and upgraded more park elements, you get to take a tour of your park using the aptly named, jeeple. Each of the tiles in your park represent an attraction, a dinosaur paddock or some other store or commodity, each one providing a different points bonus, income or thrill. As you can only move around a maximum of 5 tiles with a fully upgraded jeeple, the layout of your park becomes more important. Many tiles also require workers to be placed during this phase in order to activate, so ensuring you don’t overextend your workers during the earlier research phases is key to maintaining an exciting and profitable dino park.

Laboratories looked much different in my day.

Speaking of workers, another aspect I really enjoyed this time around was worker recruitment. Each round in turn order, players selects a card with a variant mix of the different worker types, that player then gets that configuration of workers to use this round with any unused workers being carried over to the following round. I appreciated this last part as too often games seem obsessed with discarding everything you haven’t used in a round and starting from scratch each turn. No so here and it was pleasantly liberating to know you could potentially save workers for when they were needed most allowing me to plan ahead. Any worker can be used on any action or tile, but they shone when used for their speciality, for example, using a blue scientist worker to research DNA will net you an extra basic or advanced DNA of your choice. Likewise, using a yellow security worker to upgrade your park’s security will make it cheaper to do so. But you never feel stuck since even if you run out of your preferred work type you can still do something with what you have.

The recruitment process can leave you feeling like just another number.

While it recreates the park building elements very well, there are a few things I felt Dinosaur Island did a little better. The dinosaur research felt harder won in the previous game and I enjoyed hiring experts for my park, something that is available in the solo variant of Dinosaur Island but not in the standard game. However, the previous game was a sprawling table-hog that often took too long to play, Dinosaur Island feels tighter, more restrained and as a result, more refined as a gameplay experience. It’s faster to set up, easier to get into and plays more smoothly. Theres very little downtime and it feels easier to get the attractions you want in your park. Is there a place for both in your collection? I’ll let you be the judge. I plan to keep both (because dinosaurs) as I feel the two offer differing experiences that can appeal to various gaming groups. While it hasn’t surpassed Dinosaur Island for me, Dinosaur World is an excellent theme park simulator that achieves what is set out to do; it gives you something real, something you can see, and touch.

A flyover of the parks.

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