Parkasaurus (Switch) – Test: There are dinos with hats, do you need to know more?

A cute dino park simulation with an entertaining campaign and flexible sandbox mode, but sometimes too small texts.

Alex has already raved about the Dinopark simulation Parkasaurus in the past. Now the game is also available for the Nintendo Switch and since I enjoy dealing with management games like this – unfortunately less than I would like in practice – I couldn’t resist the temptation. Is Parkasaurus really that good? And has the implementation on Nintendo’s console succeeded? It’s not 100 percent perfect!

The good news is that it’s not for gaming reasons. No, unfortunately it’s the lyrics, although not all of them. Some information is really small in handheld mode of the switch and not fun to decipher. This is less of a problem in the dock, but on the go it is. Unfortunately, there is no possibility of adjustment in the settings, this would have to be improved a bit with a patch.

Happy dinosaurs are good dinosaurs

In essence, you get here what Parkasaurus already offered you on the PC. A motley Dinopark simulation that doesn’t look quite as serious as Frontier’s Jurassic World Evolution, but is based on similar principles. You have to build the right environment for your dinosaurs and make sure that they feel comfortable there. Because: happy dinosaurs are peaceful dinosaurs. The same applies to the guests. If they are satisfied with what they have offered, they leave all the more cash with you and your business.

On the other hand, if one of the animals is dissatisfied, it starts rampaging more and more. It damages fences, throws donation boxes around, shreds stalls. And just look at this cute pink dino with his hat spinning the panicked visitor around in his mouth. Uh, wait a minute… It’s best not to let it get that far. But that requires hard work. Luckily, the campaign does a good job of introducing you to its missions and sandbox mode. You will gradually get to know the subtleties analogously to more demanding tasks and after a few hours at the latest you will know what to look out for.

Although the sandbox mode is available from the start, I would still recommend at least taking a look at the tutorial and some campaign missions beforehand. This is especially true for those who are not yet familiar with such games. Knowing everything there is to know about Parkasaurus will help you immensely. This will help you enormously in reaching the ultimate goal: designing a park that makes residents and visitors alike happy and makes enough money for you.

Detail work that pays off

And as mentioned, that’s a lot. You can influence so many things, down to the height of the terrain, the size of the water areas and the placement of the individual stones. Which is definitely necessary in order to perfectly coordinate everything with the animal residents. The learning curve in the campaign is smooth, and when you’re feeling ready, there’s nothing stopping you from playing sandbox mode to your heart’s content.

Aside from some relatively small text, the controls on the switch work pretty well. Of course, you have advantages in the dock when it comes to the texts, but otherwise nothing speaks against enjoying Parkasaurus on the small screen. I couldn’t identify any performance problems. Given the charming, but not exactly technically demanding graphics, I would also be surprised if there were any. Although there are enough examples to show that this means little. Regardless, Parkasaurus runs great on the Switch!

Parkasaurus test – conclusion

Fancy a Dinopark simulation for relatively little money (20.99 euros)? Parkasaurus will definitely satisfy your cravings, I can promise you that much. Sure, it doesn’t have the most modern look you’ve ever seen, but it makes up for it with its charm – you can put hats on your dinosaurs! – out again. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be fine with it and have a lot of fun creating and managing your ideal park. The developers should only lend a hand with some of the somewhat too small texts.