Jurassic World Evolution 3 review – life finds a way

The third Jurassic Park construction and management sim has greater customisation, more global locations, and some very cute baby dinosaurs.

In recent years, the relationship between games and popular IP has shifted in notable ways. Beyond the rise in successful movie and TV adaptations of games, like Sonic The Hedgehog and The Last Of Us, there have been cases where the gaming pillar has arguably become the strongest arm of an otherwise troubled franchise. Hogwarts Legacy gave Harry Potter new life after a string of diminishing returns with the Fantastic Beasts films, while Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 launched at a time when the Marvel Cinematic Universe had started to lose its grip on the box office.

Jurassic Park is a peculiar case because it’s still massively successful (the latest film, Jurassic World Rebirth, is the fourth highest grossing film of 2025), but by every other metric it feels like yesterday’s news. The only thing of any quality to come out of the series lately, is Jurassic World Evolution – a series of theme park simulators in the vein of RollerCoaster Tycoon, in what’s a perfect marriage between video game genre and licence.

Despite being superior in every way, Jurassic World Evolution 2 sold less than its predecessor (5.2 million versus 6 million copies, according to developer Frontier). But even with that small drop, it apparently did well enough to justify another sequel – one which represents another step forward for the series, in a smattering of small ways.

If you haven’t played the prior two games, or have a fleeting memory, Jurassic World Evolution 3 does a great job of explaining the basics through its campaign mode. At its core, you’re hopping between creating and establishing a profitable theme park and managing the needs of your dinosaur attractions, to avoid any disastrous breakouts.

Dinosaurs can escape if they’re not comfortable in their surroundings, or if other factors, like adverse weather conditions, damage the enclosures keeping them penned in. It’s up to you to keep on top of all the variables, between building different environments suitable for each of the 90 dinosaur species and ensuring you react efficiently to random events, like bouts of disease or in-fighting, and all while ensuring your park is robust enough to keep the profits ticking over.

This juggling act is easier to manage in Jurassic World Evolution 3 thanks to some small additions. You can now install maintenance posts and security cameras so your workers will automatically respond to damaged fences or roaming dinos within a specific area, allowing you to create an operational network which largely eliminates the minor busywork. You can still actively do these tasks yourself if you’d prefer, like tranquilizing dinosaurs in real-time, but it’s a handy option to streamline these parts if you’d prefer to prioritise the creative aspects.

The trade-off, if you use these tools, is a drop in difficulty. Jurassic World Evolution 3, more so than the prior two entries, can be a pretty sedate experience if you want it to be, by using these automatic loops to make countering random threats more trivial. It might prove divisive for some fans but considering all the different elements at play – between park building, expanding your roster of dinosaurs through expeditions, messing about with their genetic traits, and managing your crew of scientists – the choose your own adventure sentiment feels welcome.

If anything, this entry is all about expanding the formula into a more customisable, and flexible, experience. There is an overwhelming amount of tinkering you can do this time around, whether through the new terraforming tools to craft waterfalls or mountains on the landscape, or editing individual buildings to add decorative features, chop certain elements, and even swivel specific blocks if you’re particularly finicky. This is also the first entry to support the Frontier Workshop, an online sharing platform where you can download buildings, or entire parks, made by others and implement them into your own Jurassic visions.

The controls can be fiddly on console, especially when editing buildings at a granular level, but the detail and flexibility is nevertheless impressive. In the sandbox mode, where you can design any park you fancy under as much friction as you’d like, there’s even an island generator tool if you’re bored of the standard Isla Nublar or other preset locations – with adjustable sliders for the island’s shape, water volume, mountainous areas, and forests.

These creative tools will likely please a very specific audience, but for everyone else, Jurassic World Evolution 3 has another boon: baby dinosaurs. Instead of just synthesising new dinos the problematic way, you can now create life via natural means – albeit engineered under the watch of pervy scientists. The process of getting dinosaurs to bonk is fairly easy, as long as your adults are comfortable in their surroundings and there’s a nesting area nearby, it only takes a relatively short amount of time before an egg appears, and the influx of park guests shoots skywards.

Seeing a baby sauropod or triceratops stroll out into the enclosure is adorable, thanks to the still-impressive dinosaur animations, but their inclusion isn’t as meaningful as you’d expect. You might have to make adjustments to the environment, such as laying down ground fruit for a baby brachiosaurus which can’t yet reach the high trees – or consider moving them into a separate enclosure as they mature into adults – but, otherwise, they’re largely cute window dressing with little mechanical impact beyond the increase to profit margins.

The baby effect might be disappointingly slight in terms of new systems, but it does give Jurassic World Evolution 3 more personality. There’s something goofy, and broadly sinister, about concocting a family unit by synthesising male or female dinosaurs in a lab to please a respective other half, like some clinical cupid, especially as you look down on the game map from the heavens. Frontier leans into the silliness in the game’s writing, with comically awkward banter between the various eggheads and Jeff Goldblum’s Dr Ian Malcolm, who once again lends his vocal talents.

If this sequel is low on surprises, it’s still a more accomplished sim overall. The biggest improvement is the campaign, which is no longer a glorified tutorial but a globe-trotting sequence of levels with different environmental hurdles to overcome. It starts out with simple tasks to teach you the fundamentals, but later stages see you combat disease-prone dinosaurs in Indonesia and carnivorous outbreaks in Japan. Your progression is tied to each park’s star rating, so you’re encouraged to hop between sites as you unlock more tools to boost your overall score.

The campaign’s story is set after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, as dinosaurs inhabit all corners of the Earth. There’s still little to chew on plot-wise beyond vague connective tissue, but its place in the timeline allows Jurassic World Evolution 3 to have a greater spread of diversity in its locations – from the snow-covered Italian Dolomites, American deserts, to the richly coloured Japanese countryside. There’s some noticeable pop-in when swooping around the maps, but it’s the most visually eclectic entry in the series by some distance.

While the Chaos Theory mode from the last entry doesn’t return, which replicated scenarios from the Jurassic Park franchise, the challenge mode is back, where you’re tasked with beating specific trials in the fastest time. These challenges span photography-led missions to longer, more elaborate tasks, such as managing frequent dinosaur deliveries. While the roster will likely grow through inevitable DLC, it’s a little disappointing there are only nine at launch.

There are some quibbles, but Jurassic World Evolution 3 is the most refined, mechanically rich, and accessible entry in the series. It makes meaningful improvements in the park building aspects, over the actual dinosaur management, but while a sense of familiarity is starting to creep in this is still the best Jurassic Park fantasy around, if only by a baby (dinosaur) step.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Frontier
Developer: Frontier
Release Date: 21st October 2025
Age Rating: 16

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