Behind the Scenes: Crafting the Jurassic World Evolution 3: Rebirth Expansion

Ever since the Frontier Developments team made a special trip to see an opening night screening of Jurassic World Rebirth in July 2025, we couldn't wait to get started crafting the Jurassic World Evolution 3: Rebirth Expansion!

Today's Behind the Scenes is a look at the process of how we brought this dramatic new expansion to life, from concept to final product, in collaboration with Universal Products & Experiences.

Finding Inspiration

Jurassic World Rebirth was action-packed, full of new dinosaurs and a brand-new island which gave us a fantastic base and plentiful opportunities for creating the Jurassic World Evolution 3: Rebirth Expansion.

We collected inspiration from a wide range of sources to start building a vision for this film expansion, including our exciting opening night trip to the cinema! Starting with Jurassic World Rebirth, there were a few key moments from the film itself that stuck out as opportunities for developing game mechanics and narratives.

One of these was the extensive Geothermal Power network shown across Île Saint-Hubert with its iconic winding pipes that lead to the Main Facility.

Managing power is already a big part of Jurassic World Evolution 3's campaign gameplay, so this gave us the opportunity to reassess the existing power system. We used this striking imagery to build a new system that evokes the world of the movie, while also giving players something new to manage as their island grows.

The secrecy surrounding Île Saint-Hubert and its island-wide facility was another core element of the film and became a focus for our development. Our narrative team relished the challenge of how we might create an original narrative within this timeline while maintaining the authenticity and mystery of the story from the film. Setting the expansion before the dramatic opening events of Jurassic World Rebirth, gives players the chance to experience the facility working at full capacity before the chaos.

Driving the campaign forward is the theme of experimental technology and the pioneering research being conducted at this secretive facility. The team used this as an opportunity to continue and build upon their work with a non-linear campaign structure from the Jurassic World Evolution 3 base game.

We wanted players to be able to choose which avenues of scientific work they'd like to explore as they help this facility grow and improve throughout the campaign. This resulted in concepts for the new Assignments mechanic, letting players choose their objectives and direction as they played through the campaign.

Finally, we wanted to take a close look at some of the biggest requests from our Community and opportunities for realising these within the expansion.

When building a picture of the kind of work being done by researchers and scientists on Île Saint-Hubert, impressive breakthroughs for containing certain uniquely challenging species only made sense! We know more flexibility with aviaries has been a request from our Community, so the Open Air Aviaries, alongside some other improvements, were conceived to deliver a new enclosure type for players.

Now we had a vision for the expansion, the next step in the process was to bring all these concepts together!

Creating Cinematic Moments

After condensing all our different ideas into a solid game plan, we turned our attention to fully fleshing out the new and improved features you'll be seeing in the Jurassic World Evolution 3: Rebirth Expansion.

The backbone of this expansion is the new Assignments system, allowing players to take control with a flexible campaign structure. Priority Assignments drive the campaign forward, while Standard Assignments allow players to explore different projects while unlocking new genomes, research opportunities, experimental traits and even more advanced Assignments.

Players can choose to simply stick to the basics, following the flow of the narrative as a new recruit at Île Saint-Hubert, or they can dive down a rabbit hole of tasks, completing any and all assignments!

Making this super flexible structure a reality did prove to be somewhat of a challenge for the team! Inspired by the quest type structure of other games, we wanted to give players control to choose how they would manage their own secret research facility. However, this meant we had to consider how we'd show all these potential tasks to players in a way that wouldn't be overwhelming or disrupt the flow of the game.

To navigate this, we chose to present the Assignment tasks in a few key places in the UI, showing players their active assignments in the corner of their screen with its sub-tasks, while the larger list of Assignments is available to browse in the wider Facility menu. This allows players to focus on the task at hand, while giving them the option to look at other tasks they might want to take on at their own speed.

Another consideration for the team was the need to have contingencies in place for the Assignments.

For example, what if a player had diligently built a new Open Air Aviary but then the species had escaped and it was needed for an assignment later? To counter this, the team built in additional starting stages to ensure players had all the right conditions to complete the assignment, such as needing a particular species to be synthesised before beginning their task.

We had to build these 'what ifs' into the structure of this new feature, to ensure players could continue to progress with their innovative research... although chaos is inevitable and we can't guarantee there won't be some hurdles player will have to face as they run the island!

Delivering the Vision

Developing the story of the campaign itself initially seemed like it might be a challenge due to the secrecy around Île Saint-Hubert and its experimental inhabitants! However, the team saw this as a positive and were really excited by how we might create an original narrative within the timeline, as a companion to what we knew of the island from Jurassic World Rebirth.

We focused on creating cinematic moments in the spirit of the film, but we also wanted to develop an engaging story of scientific comradery. As they explore and push the boundaries of nature with the new tools and features, we wanted players to really feel a part of the team on the island.

To shape this story of Île Saint-Hubert before the inevitable chaos of the film, we really wanted the levels to feel authentic to the setting. The team spent lots of time going through shots of the film to align the maps to their locations, looking at all the little details that would make it recognisable, while still functional within the game.

We wanted key areas and buildings, like the Staff and Research Centres, to be coherent with the visual language of the base game, but not look out of place on the island. The look for each building was considered and received a revamp, seamlessly blending them in with the utilitarian concrete and pipes of the Main Facility, while still maintaining an easily recognisable appearance.

Once we had these core features and we'd nailed the 'Jurassic World Rebirth' look, all that was left was the small task of adding the dinosaurs. We'll be going into more detail about how the team went about taking the new species from the movie screen to your monitor soon!

Wishlist Jurassic World Evolution 3: Rebirth Expansion Now

From start to finish, the Jurassic World Evolution 3: Rebirth Expansion was created from a love of the Jurassic franchise, with the development teams working together to deliver new mechanics, familiar silver screen sights and fantastic cinematic moments for players to enjoy.

Take control of the top-secret facility on Île Saint-Hubert and come face-to-face with the consequences of experimenting with the natural order. Wishlist Jurassic World Evolution 3: Rebirth Expansion on Steam and Epic.