Jurassic World Evolution 3 getting island generator at launch, Frontier surprise-announces

Jurassic World Evolution 3 releases in less than two weeks, yet Frontier Developments, as teased during our recent interview with two developers, is keeping a few surprises close to its chest. As part of the lead-up to October 21, it’s just been revealed the park management sim will get a custom island generation feature in the vein of Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis’ sandbox generator.

The surprise announcement came via the official PlayStation Blog, though it seems some influencers and content creators also got an early look at the new feature ahead of the reveal. When I previewed the game in late September, we weren’t told anything about this feature, in case you were wondering. We’re just as surprised as you are.

This island generator isn’t a “build your island from scratch” kind of deal, however. In very similar fashion to Operation Genesis’ approach, you can choose a type of overall shape and select the amount of trees, water, and mountains you want. Then, you can get as many random island layouts as you need based on those parameters. While it may not look like a lot at first glance, getting access to entire islands vs. the limited-area, hand-made vanilla maps is a big deal, especially when you can later transform the scenery in big ways.

When these options are mixed with all the new decoration and custom content tools, we’re potentially looking at an extremely deep park management and creation experience. Custom islands will, of course, be limited to the Sandbox mode, but park managers will be able to share them online (either the complete parks or only island seeds) like every piece of user-made content in the game.

Jurassic World Evolution 3 roars into PC (Steam, Epic, Xbox app), PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on October 21. Stay tuned for our full review closer to launch.

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