Essentially, the game is a theme park simulation with many facets. Your job is to build and run Jurassic Park, proving to INGEN that it can be done. You will receive messages throughout from characters such as John Hammond, Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler - who only bothers you when there is something wrong with a dinosaur - and Dr. Wu, who pesters you to spend money on his research teams.
When it comes to building, you have a lot of choice. You can alter the island's shape, how mountainous it is, how many rivers there are, and how much foliage. You add paths, build enclosures, install the entrance. However, you don't have everything available immediately. Dr. Wu's teams will work on research of your choice a bit at a time, but this does cost. You don't have unlimited funds and must spend wisely before finally opening the park and earning money from visitors, after which you can gradually add features to it.
You can place limited pieces of path, so keep everything close together at first. Be sure to place copious numbers of rubbish bins to avoid visitors complaining about dirt. You can check up on what visitors are feeling and thinking, to help you improve your park. They come in different categories: Mainstream, Thrill Seeker, Dino Nerd and Fun Lover. You can change the names of some attractions with the aim of appealing to a specific group, e.g. calling a Viewing Dome a "Terror Dome" if it looks into an enclosure of carnivorous dinosaurs. They all have basic needs, such as that to rest, use the toilet and order fast food. You can go out of your way to please them, but it won't always work out, for example when a visitor is moaning about the lack of toilets, while continuing to walk past them.
Annoyingly, they are able to leave the park dissatisfied due to lack of seen dinosaurs. Even if they spend their whole trip walking along a path next to a fence, on the other side of which is a dinosaur, it will not count as a sighting.
When it comes to the dinosaurs themselves, you'll need to manage fossil hunts with the help of Doctor Grant. You start out with one hunting team in a random unlocked zone. When you have the money, you can purchase additional teams to speed up the process, and as your park becomes more popular, earning star ratings, you will be rewarded by INGEN with the choice of some of the remaining sites. Choose carefully, and remember that different regions contain different dinosaurs from different periods!
DNA needs to be extracted from fossils. Once a dinosaur genome is at 50%, you can breed one and have it in the park. But, you must keep hunting for fossils until you have 100%, otherwise the species will not live for very long. Different dinosaurs have different levels of popularity, indicated by star ratings, and it is best to host as wide a variety as possible. You could have different enclosures for small herbivores, large ones, different sizes of carnivore, or even a mixed enclosure if you dare! In total there are twenty-five breeds of dinosaur to choose from, including the loveable Brachiosaurus and impressive Spinosauraus.
Some of the important things to have Dr. Wu's teams researching early on are antidotes to dinosaur diseases that will cause problems in the starting days of your park. You'll also need a Ranger station, so that you can sedate agitated creatures and revive comatose ones.
Dinosaurs of course need feeding, so make sure they have automatic feeders in their pens, and that a river or artificial lake goes through the enclosure. I like to build my dinosaur pens on the outskirts of the island, so that there is room to run around in the sea. You have to think carefully about pairing the right attractions with the type of dinosaur. For example, a drive-in safari is not the best for an angry Carcharadontosaurus.
Although they would have been very interesting, plans for water-borne and flying species were scrapped.
The island itself will sometimes present you with issues. Just as everything seems to be going swimmingly, you're earning a bit of money and your visitors are happy, there'll be a twister or severe storm. You'll have thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of damage. You can follow twisters around the island, watching as they toss around visitors, dinosaurs and even poor goats and cows! For these kind of situations, you will need to have researched and built Visitor Shelters, and the likes of Avoidance Beacons, which repel straying dinosaurs from important human areas.
Once you have created a successful, five-star park, you can keep playing for your own enjoyment!
There is more to the game than all this, however. There are also timed missions you can complete, such as photographing dinosaurs, retiring rampaging carnivores and destroying out of control hardware. When all of these missions are completed, you unlock the treasured Site B, a private park where you can watch dinosaurs live out their lives. No visitors allowed!
A criticism I do have is that save files are identified by the time and date they were most recently played, which is confusing and it strikes me that there could be some erroneous overwrites if you have more than one park.
In summary though, I find this to be an absolutely delightful game, and I think it would be loved by many.
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