Parkasaurus Review | Relaxing park tycoon management.

Right away I want to set the expectations of Parkasaurus as a relaxing game and not a simulator. It's somewhat opposite to Parkitect or Roller Coaster Tycoon. And while those games can be relaxing they are usually played more seriously. However, whatever Parkasaourus does lack it makes back in the cute department.

Just look at these little guys! I suppose if this was focused on realism they would have feathers. Anyhow, in Parkasaurus you're not able to fail, customers will show up and pay the maximum price to get into an empty park. But that's the reason you're playing.

A chill experience where you can build your custom dinosaur theme park. We start where we must, how to love and care for your dinosaurs. If you're going to cage an animal the least you can do is make it comfortable for them. First, you must build an enclosure big enough to suit them and change the biome to their liking.

You can adjust the base floor tile, the wetness, and the ruggedness. Allow me to demonstrate turning this forest biome into an alpine biome. It starts off with swamp tiles then you add pools of water to increase the wetness. Then raise the terrain to make it more mountainous.

Now you can finish it off with trees, bushes, and rocks. Depending on the size of the exhibit you need to add more but there are handy bars to show how many you need to build the perfect habitat. I enjoy building the exhibits, they allowed me to creatively construct the space.

I know no one will build the same exhibit as me and so many of the parks are going to be unique. My favorite mechanic is privacy. If I were a dinosaur I wouldn't want people gawking at me all day. It's polite to include tall grass or concrete walls they can hide in.

It becomes a bigger issue as more people pour into the park and surround the cage. The dino can get stressed out with everyone watching them. Be nice to your dinos and give them a little space, unless you're a monster and want them to suffer. Unfortunately, there are a few things that make building the exhibits more difficult than it needs to be.

First, if you make an oddly shaped exhibit then it's going to be a pain to cover the floor with the correct tile. The best you can do is place tiles in a square where a paint bucket-like tool would have been nice. I can't think of any reason you wouldn't cover the entire exhibit with the same floor tile.

Another slight annoyance is trying to size the exhibit correctly. Each dinosaur has a preference for exhibit size but when placing the fence it doesn't tell you how big it's going to be. If you could plan the space out then click a button to build the fence.

Instead, I guess the size and waste money destroying the fence to make it bigger. It gets a little trickier if you want to stick two dinos in there since you have to make it twice as big. If you're going to build boxy enclosures then it isn't an issue because you can multiply the sides but if you want a strange shape it's going to be a pain.

While these aren't deal-breakers it can be cumbersome when you're building many exhibits in your park. I don't think it's a reason to avoid Parkasaurus. We're going live to a dinosaur breakout at Parkasaurus! We've had to blur some of the footage because it's too gory to show on TV! Oh the humanity, I hope those people make it out alive.

Now back to you. Anyway, to get more of the thirty-two dinosaurs you need to hatch them. But it's not a free for all. You need to use both in-game currencies to unlock the ability to hatch them. However, once they're unlocked you still need two fossils and a gem to create the egg.

It's an extensive process! The gems are purchased at the gem store and they are expensive, it limits how many dinos you can get quickly. For the fossils, you need to go on an archaeological dig through a portal. You and your team go through the portal and play a minigame using tetrominoes to dig out the fossils.

It's fun and mixes up the gameplay a bit. It starts off free but quickly gets expensive if you want to find more items. You should keep in mind you must select the correct classification to find the required fossil type. For example, the triceratops is classified as a Ceratopsia.

I'm not going to promise you'll learn about dinosaurs but you might pick up something. Now that you have stuff people want to see it's time to profit. Let's add some shops! There are plenty of options for food like french fries and ice cream but once you have food you need to handle the waste.

Yes, I mean garbage and poop. Now you need to start placing trash cans and outhouses to keep your park clean. They're kinda gross to look at so you should add decorations to your park too. There are so many options to build your park the way you want.

It's going to be great to see your designs. Especially at night with all the cool lighting. However, the game starts with limited building options. You must buy a science research center and assign a scientist to create research points. Then you spend those in the science tree to unlock more choices.

The same is true for what's available to build inside the dino's exhibit. You start with extremely limited options, you can only add feeders. But at the end of the day for every happy dinosaur, you earn a heart. There's a separate tree to spend those on things like desert foliage or toys.

I find it kinda surprising you can't build a great desert biome right from the start of the game but with a couple happy dinosaurs you can afford it quick enough. And you want to because giving dinosaurs toys to play with increases the cute factor of Parkasaurus immensely.

Moving on to the two game modes, campaign, and custom. The campaign offers several small challenges as you meet the goals of each. It's part teaching and part forcing the player to work in the confines of the level. They're fun and are different enough to keep them interesting.

They're not a challenge though. You could push yourself to finish the level under the time limit for a bonus. The custom mode allows you to select a new standard game or sandbox. The standard game doesn't allow you to change any of the settings and gives you a big open space to build your park from scratch.

Sandbox mode lets you change some settings and allows for unlimited funds if you want to goof off. The downside is you will not be awarded any achievements. Finally, there is one small issue to point out. The terrain tool is tricky to use. If you want to flatten the land then it's simple but if you want to design a mountain range you're going to be in for a bad time.

I always stick to the simplest tool that moves the ground up a little at a time. Trying to create a slope for a pathway is impossible. The guests will take all sorts of paths so it's not an issue for them but is a problem if you want a perfect looking park.