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bengraven · Sep 7, 2015

If you're like me and fucking loved the under-rated Operation Genesis on PC/Xbox/PS2 back in the day, looks like we're not alone.

Introducing Mesozoica.

What is Mesozoica?

Mesozoica is a theme park simulator in the vein of Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, a game where you take prehistoric creatures and create several scenarios in a theme park of your own design. A land of opportunity where the player has free control over what he/she puts into her park, what she charges to enter the park and how the prehistoric creatures look and create.

Website: http://www.playmesozoica.com/

Mesozoica is different because it is evolutionary. It is one of the only tycoon games to let you play the game through several different perspectives as well as an optional, but immense quest system. the project is also making strides in customization which should allow the player to change everything from how their creatures look, to how they react.

Life has not always just existed on land, so why should we only give creatures that live on land? No, there is a fantastic array of creatures adapted to an aerial lifestyle or an aquatic lifestyle present in the game as well. Adding the two addition kingdoms of animals means more design challenges for the project but it also means we can offer a lineup that hasn't been seen in any game to date.

Prehistoric creatures and a great amount of diversity we offer with them is only a portion of what Mesozoica is. Mesozoica is a tycoon simulator a majority of the player's time will be spent playing from the manager perspective building park utilities, pens and attractions. To further our goal of deeper and more rich customization options we have included a slew of different buildings, attractions and a new swing on hatcheries.

Having a wide variety of prehistoric creatures to choose from is beyond important for Mesozoica. During our 9 month pre- development cycle we tried to knock this challenge out as soon as we possible could and thanks to our top tier modelers we were able to accumulate a pre-development roster of 40 + creatures(fully modeled, either animated or ready to be animated.

Below are just a few of those creatures.

finalflame · Sep 7, 2015

That pitch video was terrible, but it looks like it could be decent.

Nanashrew · Sep 7, 2015

Just a couple of days ago I was talking about Jurassic Park Tycoon simulator games like the one I played on GBA and also brought up Operation Genesis. This is exactly what I have been asking for.

Tagyhag · Sep 7, 2015

Hell yeah, will keep this on my radar.

Ominym · Sep 7, 2015

victor.m said:
That pitch video was terrible, but it looks like it could be decent.

No kidding, that was profoundly awful. But I love the idea.

CheeseConey · Sep 7, 2015

Sounds great, I want an operation genesis sequel so bad

bengraven · Sep 7, 2015

Already sold out on the 15 and 20 dollar tiers.

Not sure if that was smart on their part, but they're also going for a very small KS. Their goal is short, their rewards are simple, and that could be good or it could show some lack of foresight.

Regardless, they're 1/3 of the way there already!

Oh and put up the Bish symbol. I know he loves dinos.

Nanashrew said:
Just a couple of days ago I was talking about Jurassic Park Tycoon simulator games like the one I played on GBA and also brought up Operation Genesis. This is exactly what I have been asking for.

Exactly. I've been wanting another OG game since the first one came out. This is like a dream come true.

I can't wait to see what "human" mode is. To be able to walk around and look through your own attractions, view finders, jungle rides, etc, would be awesome. Of course, you'd also be on the ground with a shotgun when the Utahraptors got loose...

Edit:

"Message from Dr. Grant"
"What do you want to do about this?"

Anarki · Sep 7, 2015

Enjoyed operation genesis, I shamefully gave up after spending hours building up a nice park, loads of attractions, etc but could never build the safari adventure attraction correctly which really really annoyed me so I gave up the whole game after that.

I need to go back to it and try again.

Sesha · Sep 7, 2015

The Kickstarter page and the other videos they have on there is doing a much better job at selling me on this than that pitch video.

Still, not sold on it. They feature a lot of various screenshots and they talk about some of the work they've done, but there's still very little on the actual game. What is the scope of the gameplay beyond the animals and modes they mentioned? They mentioned they were going to add more animals, but are there any stretch goals? Who exactly are the people on the development team? And $50k sounds modest even for a project of this scope.

Also I'm not fond of the visual style. It looks a bit off, in an amateur 3D-modeler on DeviantArt way. A slightly more stylized or softer, more color-saturated visual style would be more to my liking.

Jawmuncher · Sep 7, 2015

Game is also on Steam Greenlight.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=514451004

They said that the betas will be DRM free, but at the end of it you can choose Steam or DRM. It should make it through the process easily but we should still vote for it.

Javin98 · Sep 7, 2015

This sounds amazing so far and I really hope it succeeds, but can anyone identify this thing?

Jawmuncher · Sep 7, 2015

Javin98 said:
This sounds amazing so far and I really hope it succeeds, but can anyone identify this thing?

Ahhh the Duckosaurus.

Bonfires Down · Sep 7, 2015

Uhm, the rewards are listed for december 2015 but the game looks like a prototype...

Javin98 · Sep 7, 2015

Jawmuncher said:
Ahhh the Duckosaurus.

I just hope it's not a Spinosaurus....

bengraven · Sep 8, 2015

Javin98 said:
This sounds amazing so far and I really hope it succeeds, but can anyone identify this thing?

A kind of Baryonyx?

They had a community creating new skins and designs for classic dinos. For example, the mososaurus in my OP is in the "optional green" flavor. They may apparently do "real" versions (feathers) and classic versions (no feathers) for example.

PhantomZone · Sep 8, 2015

Looks amazing, hope they pull it off.

NoFaceNico · Sep 8, 2015

All the dinosaurs look pretty derpy. I don't care how you try to sell it to me- feathered dinosaurs suck.

T-Rex looks like he got punched in the face by meth.

I was a huge fan of Operations Genesis but I think a lot of people need to consider whether such a game needs a spiritual successor before they decide to pledge. I loved the game but I rarely think about it unless it's brought up and even at the time I felt like it was a good one-n-done gameplay experience. And let's be honest- the Jurassic Park license made that game worth getting into.

The game also looks very very unfinished and I don't think $50k is going to float it. Those cute little park ID tags make the team reek of inexperience and don't even explain what fuck these people do.

I'm interested to see where they go because I liked the game they're trying to follow but I never wanted a sequel to that game and I don't think we'll find it here.

adj_noun · Sep 8, 2015

My wife used Operation Genesis as a "Feed the Janitorial Staff to the Raptors" simulator.

Good times.

DrSlek · Sep 8, 2015

When can we get a spiritual sequel to the masterpiece that was Trespasser?

bengraven · Oct 3, 2015

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1896199000/mesozoica

Just funded with a few hours to go! Apparently some big backers turned out to be hoaxes, so it's on the edge of a knife right now in case some others back out.

I'm looking forward to this!

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