Could a survival game based on the Jurassic World film franchise be on its way? Trademark and domain filings signal publisher Perfect World Entertainment is involved with Universal Studios to publish an open-world dinosaur title for PC and console, but can it beat ARK: Survival Evolved at its own game?
Fan site Jurassic Outpost discovered a trademark filing for a game called Jurassic World Survivor just before the New Year. The trademark filing was submitted on December 21 in the gaming and online gaming categories.
It turns out Perfect World Entertainment also filed a domain registration for JurassicWorldSurvivor.com even earlier, per a WhoIs lookup. The game publisher reserved the domain in October, 2016, but hasn’t done anything with it yet. Typing the website address in a browser only brings up a blank page.
There are also no hints on if Jurassic World Survivor will be developed by the Perfect World development house or one of the publisher’s other studios such as Cryptic Studios or Runic Games.
What’s interesting about this is Perfect World primarily publishes Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games like Neverwinter Online and Star Trek Online . Runic Games is an exception with the Torchlight games along with Zombie Studios’ free-to-play first-person shooter, Blacklight: Retribution .
While MMORPG titles are Perfect World’s wheelhouse, the name alone suggests Jurassic World Survivor will be another entry in the increasingly crowded survival genre. Additionally, this is not the first leak of information for the game.
An open-world game based on Jurassic World The title first surfaced with rumors in June, 2015, due to the closing of Cryptic Studios Seattle. Assets from the seemingly canceled game then leaked out in November via a Reddit post . The majority of these assets were removed due to copyright claims, but are still available to view via NeoGAF . Meanwhile, the Reddit post managed to provide a brief description of the game.
“I got to see some screenshots of Cryptic Studio’s newest game, which was based on Jurassic World. It was a 3rd person game where the player controlled Chris Pratt’s character. Several dinosaurs from the series were going to be in it including: Gallimimus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, Spinosaurus and Baryonyx (which the model was just Spino without a sail.)
“Not quite sure what you would have done in the game other than it being described as being similar to ‘H1Z1.’ Early Access on Steam would have come out soon but that’s all the info I know.”
The anonymous Reddit poster went on to state the game looked nearly finished. Whether Perfect World decided to go in a different direction or had other problems with the in-development Jurassic World game is unknown. However, it is clear both the publisher and Universal Studios has decided to push forward.
A release date is obviously not in the cards at the moment, but Perfect World could be pushing the open-world survival game to release via Early Access or as a full release around the time Jurassic World 2 hits theaters in June 2018.
The question is how interested the gaming community will be in an open-world survival game featuring dinosaurs. Studio Wildcard smartly took advantage of the first Jurassic World film by releasing ARK: Survival Evolved to Steam Early Access in June, 2015, the Xbox One in December, 2015, and most recently the PlayStation 4. The game isn’t scheduled to officially release until spring 2017. It has not been a smooth development, however, as players have experienced multiple delays caused by an expanded scope and distracting side projects, a controversial DLC release, and various in-game issues that are still frustrating to players even knowing the game is still being developed. Still, it has succeeded where other dinosaur survival games have failed.
Do you think an officially licensed Jurassic World Survivor title could do well? Sound off in the comments below.
[Featured Image by Universal Studios]