Ark Park takes Ark: Survival Evolved and turns it into a VR dino school

Open the door, get on the floor — everyone VR the dinosaur!

Ark: Survival Evolved is one of the biggest survival games in the industry, and its terrible terrors include dinosaurs. Studio Wildcard, though, wants you to learn more about its prehistoric stars, and it’s working with Snail Games on an educational virtual reality project about dinosaurs called Ark Park. The original Ark has long been in Early Access — while you can play it on Xbox One and PC, it’s still in development, even if Wildcard did recently release the game’s first batch of paid downloadable content.

The release from Snail didn’t include what VR platforms Ark Park would appear on, nor its price. GamesBeat asked for that information and is waiting for an answer from Snail’s representatives.

Snail Games says this VR experience takes viewers to a “futuristic theme park” that will feature more than 100 Jurassic Period dinos and animals. It’s a multiperson experience, and the publisher says that users “can share the visceral gameplay and the thrill of witnessing dinosaurs up-close and personal.” (GamesBeat has asked for more details on this, too.) It runs off the Unreal Engine, which means it should have a level of visual fidelity that matches the original.

“ARK Park is designed with the concept of creating a simulated world that could never exist in reality,” said Snail Games CEO Shi Hai. “Instead of a linear plot structure, we created this world where players have the freedom to explore and approach every single detail in the virtual space at their own pace. We wanted to achieve a level of visual authenticity and player interactivity that will set a benchmark in the VR industry.”